The Psychology of Expertise: Cognitive Research and Empirical AI

398 Pages·1992·25.05 MB·English

by  Robert R. Hoffman (auth.)

The Psychology of Expertise
Robert R. Hoffman
Editor
The Psychology of Expertise
Cognitive Research and Empirical AI
With 31 Figures
Springer-Verlag
New York Berlin Heidelberg London Paris
Tokyo Hong Kong Barcelona Budapest
Robert R. Hoffman, Ph.D.
Department of Psychology
Adelphi University
Chapman Hall-Room 2
Garden City, NY 11530
USA
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The psychology of expertise: cognitive research and empirical All
edited by Robert R. Hoffman.
p. cm.
Based on papers presented at a conference on expert systems and
the psychology of expertise, held at Adelphi University on May 5,1989.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN-13:978-1-4613-9735-9
1. Expertise-Congresses. 2. Expertise-Research-Methodology
-Congresses. 3. Knowledge acquisition (Expert systems)-Congresses.
4. Expert systems (Computer science)-Congresses. 5. Artificial
intelligence-Congresses. 6. Cognitive science-Congresses.
I. Hoffman, Robert R.
BF378, E94P77 1992
153-dc20 91-33158
Printed on acid-free paper.
© 1992 Springer-Verlag New York, Inc.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1992
All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the
written permission of the publisher (Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New
York, NY 10010, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly
analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic
adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or
hereafter developed is forbidden.
The use of general descriptive names, trade names, trademarks, etc., in this publication, even
if the former are not especially identified, is not to be taken as a sign that such names, as
understood by the Trade Marks and Merchandise Marks Act, may accordingly be used freely
by anyone.
Production managed by Hal Henglein; manufacturing supervised by Jacqui Ashri.
Typeset by Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong.
9 8 7 6 5 432 1
ISBN-13:978-1-4613-9735-9 e-ISBN-13:978-1-4613-9733-5
DOl: 10.1007/978-1-4613-9733-5
This volume is dedicated to Olin Mintzer, expert aerial photo interpreter at
the "Engineer Topographic Laboratories" of the US Army Corps of
Engineers, Ft. Belvoir, Virginia. The opportunity to work with Olin was
both a privilege and an honor. From the perspective of the researchers
at the ETL, my job was to "model Olin's brain." From my perspective,
I was a fish well out of water. Olin not only gave me oxygen, he taught
me how to fly. For performing this transmutation, and for all the other
life-giving transformations he has wrought on students and colleagues,
I hereby promote him to the rank of Wizard.
Preface
Each year since 1982 Adelphi University has sponsored a conference on
applied experimental psychology. The first six conferences were broad in
scope in that each included a number of topical sessions. Around 1986,
however, we started to think about holding a series of specialized or topical
conferences, with some connection to applied experimental psychology (to
be sure) but also with a workshop atmosphere in that groups of researchers
would be collected so that they could hash out important issues. One such
conference was on the perception of illusory contours (Petry & Meyer,
1987). Another marked the centennial of the psychology of learning
(Gorfein & Hoffman, 1987). Another focused on behavior and social
attitude change (Curtis & Stricker, 1990). Yet another focused on research
on semantic ambiguity (Gorfein, 1989).
For 1988, we decided to focus on expert knowledge and the application
of experimental psychology to expert system development. It had become
clear that there was a need to get certain people together. Some of these
"certain" people were computer scientists and some were psychologists,
but all shared an empirical approach to the problem that artificial intel
ligence (AI) has encountered. Many had conceived of conducting em
pirical (if not experimental) analyses of knowledge elicitation issues, and
most had gotten their hands dirty in knowledge elicitation.
The conference titled "Expert Systems and The Psychology of Expertise"
was held at Adelphi on May 5, 1989. There were 14 participants, including
Keynote Speaker Robert Sternberg. Each participant gave a 30-minute
talk, followed by discussions. The conference was small (about 40 at
tendees) and had a workshop atmosphere. Actually it was rather intense.
It was certainly jam-packed with discussions.
Many of the debates were stimulated and nurtured by Stephen Regoczei
of Trent University. He came to the conference feeling hesitant to speak
up, being one of a few fish out of water. But his questions were perhaps
more novel and challenging than those that might be proffered by one of
the "experts" on expertise.
I should point out here that the focus on experimental psychology and
empirical approaches did not exclude the work by computer scientists on
automated knowledge acquisition (cf. Gaines & Boose, 1988). Such work
was described at the conference and is represented in this volume. How-
viii Preface
ever, as such conferences always go, I was not able to gather all of the
"certain people" I had initially set out to collect. I will not name the
research psychologists and computer scientists who were contacted, clearly
expressed an interest, but were unable to attend-mostly because of their
being overloaded already, the bane of us all. I want to take this oppor
tunity to thank them for encouraging me as I developed the conference
plan. They may all rest assured that their work and ideas appear in this
volume in spirit, and that their contributions form a valuable component
of the psychology of expertise.
A number of the conference participants were unable, for a variety of
reasons, to contribute to this volume. Bill and Bev Thompson of the
Knowledge Garden, A. Michael Burton of the University of Nottingham,
and Jeff Bradshaw of Boeing Corporation all made valuable contributions
to the conference, and I am confident that the spirit of their work is
preserved in this volume.
Speaking on behalf of everyone who was involved with the conference, I
would like to thank the corporations that employ many of the participants
and attendees, for allowing their people to participate and for supporting
them in terms of travel and lodging expenses: Bell Communications
Research, Boeing Corporation, IBM, Klein Associates, the Knowledge
Garden, Universal Technology Corporation, and the U.S. Air Force.
Expenses for some participants were covered in part by their host
academic institutions and in part by the conference budget of the dean of
the College of Arts and Sciences of Adelphi University. Our special thanks
therefore go to Adelphi, and Dean Sean Cashman. Thanks also to Marianne
Walters, now of Felician College, who, as the dean's assistant, helped
with the details of budgeting and reimbursements.
I want to thank Eve Bhumitra and Jean Beck, both graduate students
in experimental psychology at Adelphi, for helping with the details of
conference management (transportation, visual aid setup, etc.). They are
each hereby promoted to the rank of Invaluable-to-the-Hectic.
A very special thanks goes to David Gorfein, chairman of the Depart
ment of Psychology at Adelphi. As chairman, he recently endured the
labors of Hercules. He nurtured the idea for the conference from its
inception through my subsequent devastation of our department's copying
budget. The final efforts involved in preparing this volume were made
especially efficient through his support.
In retrospect, I'm both pleased and shocked by this volume. My thanks
go out to the contributors for their prompt preparation of manuscripts and
for enduring the multiple rounds of my infamous marginal "green scratch
ings." Thanks also to the editorial staff at Springer-Verlag. A final word
of thanks goes to Pat Carey, Eleanor Shaw, and Angela Mavaro of the
Department of Psychology of Adelphi, who typed the bibliographies that
appear at the end of this volume, and to Robin Akerstrom of Marine
Safety, International, who assisted in the preparation of the subject and
author indexes.
A classic dig on psychologists is, "Give a psychologist a hammer and
he'll think everything's a nail." This is a reference to the experimental
ist's inclination to beat problems to death with fancy factorial statistical
analyses. The analogous tendency in computer science is for researchers
Preface ix
to assume that the only way to solve problems is to build more programs.
These biases can be self-serving, of course. Psychologists generate more
experiments; computer scientists generate more compilers. But when the
disciplines dovetail, as they do in "cognitive science," the research can
seem especially self-serving. The clearest example of this is the bounty (to
put it mildly) of reports on problem solving by computer programmers.
(Will we see computer models of the knowledge of expert computer
programmers?) I do not really mean to denigrate that particular research
topic; it is important. But surely there are other things in the world to
study. It is clear that all of us, psychologist and computer scientist, need
to expand our conceptual horizons ... and our capabilities. It also seems
clear that, for topics in expertise, it helps to work together. It is hoped
that this volume contributes to the spirit of interdisciplinary research,
both basic and applied.
Expert systems technology mayor may not evolve significantly beyond
rule-based operations and their brittleness problems (Keyes, 1989). But
imagine an empirically based "knowledge elicitation methods palette" that
enables one to specify the methods needed to capture the knowledge and
skills of experts in a given domain. Imagine the benefits to society of an
advanced technology for representing and disseminating the knowledge
and skills of the best corporate managers, the most seasoned pilots, or the
most renowned medical diagnosticians! It is hoped that this volume con
tributes in some way to that enterprise.
This volume should be of interest to cognitive psychologists and com
puter scientists, and to those who are out in the trenches developing
expert systems. It should be of interest to anyone who is pondering the
nature of expertise and the question of how it can be studied scientifically.
Long Island, NY Robert R. Hoffman
References
Curtis, R. c., & Stricker, G. (Eds.). (1990). How people change inside and
outside therapy. New York: Plenum.
Gaines, B. R., & Boose, J. H. (Eds.). (1988). Knowledge acquisition for knowledge
based systems. New York: Academic Press.
Gorfein, D. S. (Ed.). (1989). Resolving semantic ambiguity. New York: Springer
Verlag.
Gorfein, D. S., & Hoffman, R. R. (Eds.). (1987). Memory and learning; The
Ebbinghaus centennial conference. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Keyes, J. (1989, November). Why expert systems fail. AI Expert, pp. 50-53.
Petry, S., & Meyer, G. E. (Eds.). (1987). The perception of illusory contours.
New York: Springer-Verlag.
Contents
Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. xiii
Part I. Introduction
1. Doing Psychology in an AI Context: A Personal Perspective and
Introduction to This Volume. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Robert R. Hoffman
2. Knowledge and Knowledge Acquisition in the
Computational Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Stephen B. Regoczei and Graeme Hirst
Part II. Cognitive Theory and Expertise
3. Modeling Human Expertise in Expert Systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Nancy J. Cooke
4. Mental Models and the Acquisition of Expert Knowledge 61
Robert M. Schumacher and Mary P. Czerwinski
5. Conceptual Analysis as a Basis for Knowledge Acquisition 80
John F. Sowa
Part III. Knowledge Elicitation Methods
6. Implications of Cognitive Theory for Knowledge Acquisition 99
Sallie E. Gordon
7. Knowledge Acquisition and Constructivist Epistemology. . . . . .. 121
Kenneth M. Ford and Jack R. A dams-Webber .
8. Eliciting and Using Experiential Knowledge and General
Expertise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 137
David S. Prerau, Mark R. Adler, and Alan S. Gunderson
9. Managing and Documenting the Knowledge Acquisition
Process ............................................... " 149
Karen L. McGraw
Xll Contents
10. Using Knowledge Engineering to Preserve Corporate Memory.. 170
Gary A. Klein
Part IV. Psychological Research on Expertise
11. On Being an Expert: A Cost-Benefit Analysis 191
Robert J. Sternberg and Peter A. Frensch
12. Mnemonics and Expert Knowledge: Mental Cuing . . . . . . . . . . .. 204
Francis S. Bellezza
13. The Role of General Ability in Cognitive Complexity: A Case
Study of Expertise. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 218
Stephen J. Ceci and Ana Ruiz
Part V. Expert-Novice Differences and the Development of Expertise
14. Expert-Novice Differences and Knowledge Elicitation. . . . . . . .. 233
Michelil Foley and Anna Hart
15. When Novices Elicit Knowledge: Question Asking in Designing,
Evaluating, and Learning to Use Software ........ . . . . . . . . . .. 245
Robert Mack and Jill Burdett Robinson
16. The Programmer's Burden: Developing Expertise in
Programming. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 269
Robert L. Campbell, Norman R. Brown, and Lia A. DiBello
Part VI. Overview
17. The Psychology of Expertise and Knowledge Acquisition:
Comments on the Chapters in This Volume. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 297
Stephen Regoczei
Appendix A. Bibliography: Psychological Theory and Reviews. . . .. 314
Appendix B. Bibliography: Empirical and Experimental
Investigations of Expertise. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 324
Appendix C. Bibliography: Knowledge Elicitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 338
Appendix D. Bibliography: Automated Knowledge Elicitation,
Representation, and Instantiation ("Knowledge
Acquisition") . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 346
Appendix E. Bibliography: Expertise in Programming. . . . . . . . . . .. 359
Appendix F. Bibliography: AI Theory, Philosophy, and Reviews of
Expert Systems ................................. 363
Appendix G. Bibliography: Applications of Expert Systems ....... 371
Appendix H. Bibliography: Programming, Building, and Verifying
Expert Systems ................................. 378
Subject Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 383
Author Index ..... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 387
Contributors
Jack R. Adams-Webber Nancy J. Cooke
Department of Psychology Department of Psychology
Brock University Rice University
St. Catherines, Ontario, L2S 3Al Houston, TX 77001 USA
Canada
Mary P. Czerwinski
Mark R. Adler
Compaq Computer Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation
Houston, TX 77269-2000 USA
111 Locke Drive
Marlborough, MA 01752 USA
Lia A. DiBello
Laboratory for Cognitive Studies of
Francis S. Bellezza
Work
Department of Psychology
City University of New York
Ohio University
New York, NY 10036-8099 USA
Athens, OH45701-2979 USA
Norman R. Brown Micheal Foley
Department of Psychology Computer Services
Carnegie-Mellon University University College Galway
Pittsburgh, PA 15213 USA Galway, Ireland
Robert L. Campbell Kenneth M. Ford
Department of Psychology Institute for Human and Machine
Clemson University Cognition
Clemson, SC 92634-1511 USA Division of Computer Science
University of West Florida
Stephen J. Ceci Pensacola, FL 32514-5750 USA
Department of Human
Development and Family Studies Peter A. Frensch
College of Human Ecology Department of Psychology
Cornell University University of Missouri
Ithaca, NY 14853-4401 USA Columbia, MO 65211 USA