Smooth ice is paradise for those who dance with expertise.

Nietzsche

Expert perception

Experts differ from novices in perception, memory and reasoning/problem solving. In this blog we will look at perception.

Perception is an active process: we select and organise the data that bombards our senses, based on our knowledge base. Since experts’ knowledge is different to novices’, experts differ from novices as soon as a scene is perceived. Experts literally “see” situations taken from their domain of expertise differently to novices. This perceptual advantage is one of the keys to experts’ superior performance.

Here is an example from chess. How is this scene ‘perceived’ by a novice vs a master vs a grandmaster? The examples are from Fernand Gobet. What do YOU see when you see this chess board?

A novice may only be able to ‘take in’ one piece at a time, scanning from one to the other – like this.

A Master on the other hand sees ‘chunks’ of multiple pieces – familiar patterns, meaningful relationships of pieces, that are instantly seen as a unit – like the ones below. Masters have been estimated to have about 100,000 chunks that organize their perception.

A grandmaster may perceive an entire arrangement of pieces as one meaningful unit – one chunk, like this:

Research looking at where the eyes scan or ‘fixate’ a scene also reveal striking differences between chess Masters and novices. Experts perceive the relational elements of a scene in parallel while novices perceive elements one by one, and experts look at the key features of the situation more rapidly. This can be seen in below, where the Master quickly scans to where most of the moves will develop.

What is true for chess experts is true for experts in any domain. Experts literally see problems differently from novices: they see meaningful patterns and relationships, while novices just see the unrelated elements.

Think of your own area of expertise. When you perceive scenarios in your field, do you ‘chunk’ information in this way?