The Road To Excellence: The Acquisition of Expert Performance in the Arts and Sciences, Sports, and Games

466 Pages·2014·4.96 MB·English

by  K. Anders Ericsson

The Road to Excellence

The Acquisition of Expert Performance in the Arts

and Sciences, Sports, and Games

The Road to Excellence

The Acquisition of Expert Performance in
the Arts and Sciences, Sports, and Games

edited by

K. Anders Ericsson

Florida State University

First published 1996 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Published 2014 by Psychology Press
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY, 10017

and by Psychology Press
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Copyright © 1996 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The road to excellence : the acquisition of expert
performance in the arts and sciences, sports, and games / edited by K. Anders Ericsson.

p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8058-2231-3 (alk. paper). — ISBN 0-8058-2232-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-805-82232-

8 (pbk)

1. Expertise. 2. Excellence. 3. Gifted persons. I. Ericsson, K. Anders (Karl Anders), 1947– .

BF378.E94R63 1996
153—dc20
95-52848

CIP

Publisher’s Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some
imperfections in the original may be apparent.

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Contents

Preface

The Acquisition of Expert Performance: An Introduction to Some of the
Issues
K. Anders Ericsson

The Role of Practice and Coaching in Entrepreneurial Skill Domains: An
International Comparison of Life-Span Chess Skill Acquisition
Neil Charness, Ralf Krampe, and Ulrich Mayr

Deliberate Practice in Sports: What Is It Anyway?
Janet L. Starkes, Janice M. Deakin, Fran Allard, Nicola J. Hodges, and
April Hayes

The Acquisition of Musical Performance Expertise: Deconstructing the
“Talent” Account of Individual Differences in Musical Expressivity
John A. Sloboda

The Acquisition of Medical Expertise in Complex Dynamic Environments
Vimla L. Patel, David R. Kaufman, and Sheldon A. Magder

Perceptual and Memory Processes in the Acquisition of Expert
Performance: The EPAM Model
Howard B. Richman, Fernand Gobet, James J. Staszewski, and Herbert A.
Simon

Expertise in Reading
Richard K. Wagner and Keith E. Stanovich

Creative Expertise: A Life-Span Developmental Perspective
Dean Keith Simonton

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15

The Childhoods and Early Lives of Geniuses: Combining Psychological
and Biographical Evidence
Michael J. A. Howe

The Rage to Master: The Decisive Role of Talent in the Visual Arts
Ellen Winner

Changing the Agency for Learning: Acquiring Expert Performance
Robert Glaser

Expert Performance and the History of Science
Frederic L. Holmes

Capturing Expertise in Sports
John B. Shea and Geoffrey Pauli

Laboratory Experimentation on the Genesis of Expertise
Richard M. Shiffrin

Costs of Expertise
Robert J. Sternberg

Author Index

Subject Index

Preface

The highest levels of performance and achievement in sports, games, arts, and
sciences have always been an object of fascination, but only within the last
couple of decades have scientists been studying these empirical phenomena
within a general theoretical framework.

The origin of systematic theoretical and empirical work on expertise is linked

to the seminal work on chess expertise by de Groot (1946/1978). However, the
primary stimulus for the emerging interdisciplinary research on expertise is
generally attributed to a paper by Chase and Simon (1973). They proposed a
general theory for the structure of expertise that offered empirical predictions for
the structure of expert performance in a wide range of domains of expert
performance, such as “any skilled task (e.g., football, music)” (p. 279). Chase
and Simon (1973) proposed that most forms of expertise were the results of vast
amounts of knowledge and pattern-based retrieval mechanisms acquired over
many years of experience in the associated domain. Research on solving
textbook problems in physics (Larkin, McDermott, Simon, & Simon, 1980;
Simon & Simon, 1978) showed that novices, that is, beginners with all the
necessary knowledge, had to work backwards from the question of the problem
to identify relevant formulas in a step-wise fashion. In contrast, physics experts
retrieved a solution plan effortlessly as part of their initial comprehension of the
problem. Subsequently, Chi, Glaser, and Rees (1982) showed that physics
experts not only had more knowledge but better organized knowledge, allowing
them to represent physics problems in terms of the deeper theoretical principles,
whereas novices’ representations were based on the presence or absence of
surface features.

The first conference focusing on the interdisciplinary nature of studies of

expertise was organized in 1983 by Chi, Glaser, and Farr in Pittsburgh. Their
conference on The Nature of Expertise had scientists report on a wide range of
pioneering research on expertise in very different domains. The presentations
were later published (1988) and had a great impact on the emerging interest in
the study of expertise.

In 1989, 6 years after that conference, Ericsson and Smith organized a

conference in West Berlin to assess the progress of research on expertise. This
conference was designed with the intent of producing an edited book
systematically covering the research in the major domains where expertise had
been studied. Hence, each participant in the conference had the dual obligation
of reviewing progress in that domain and reporting on more recent original
studies. The resulting book appeared in 1991 under the title Toward a General
Theory of Expertise: Prospects and Limits.

As a reflection of the growing interest in expertise, two important books on

specific topics of expertise have since appeared. A book based on a conference
in 1988 that had focused on “expert knowledge and the application of
experimental psychology to expert systems development” (p. vii) appeared in
1992 (Hoffman, 1992). A year later, Starkes and Allard (1993) published an
edited book on “cognitive issues in motor expertise.”

In 1993, I started to invite scientists to a conference with a new and different

focus—the generalizable characteristics of the acquisition of expert
performance. The previously reviewed research (Ericsson & Smith, 1991) had
shown that although expert performance in different domains is behaviorally
expressed in a variety of ways, the types of acquired mediating mechanisms are
remarkably similar across domains. Some earlier research indicated that there
may be a related set of characteristics with which expert performance is acquired
within and across domains. For example, Simon and Chase (1973) proposed that
individuals need to spend around 10 years of intensive preparation in the domain
before they can reach international levels of performance. More recent
examinations of the extended period of preparation of elite performers revealed
the critical importance of training activities designed exclusively for
improvement of performance (deliberate practice), which were found to be
distinct from playful interactions, competition, work, and other forms of
experience in the domain (Ericsson & Charness, 1994; Ericsson, Krampe, &
Tesch-Römer, 1993). Expert performance in young adults was found to be
closely related to the amount of deliberate practice accumulated during the
individual’s entire career.

The central idea for this conference was to bring together the world’s foremost

researchers on specific domains of expertise and related theoretical issues, such
as the importance of individual differences in ability and innate talent for
attaining expert levels of performance. The traditional domains of expertise were
all represented at the conference: chess (Charness), music (Sloboda), sports

(Starkes), and medicine (Patel). In addition, general mechanisms for acquiring
expert performance in traditional domains of expertise were discussed by
Herbert Simon. The issues of development and skill acquisition have been
extensively studied outside the traditional areas of expertise. Hence, leading
researchers in the study of creative expertise (Simonton) and reading (Wagner
and Stanovich) were invited to review and integrate the findings from their
domains. Finally, two presenters discussed issues concerning individual
differences in early preparation and innate talent for individuals with gifts
(Winner) and genius (Howe). All of the presenters were invited to summarize
information about developmental trajectories and training activities of expert
performers in specific domains and then to make proposals for characteristics
that appear to generalize across domains. To assess the generalizability and
applicability of the presented ideas, several outstanding scientists with different
backgrounds were invited to be discussants: Robert Glaser (education),
Lawrence Holmes (history of science), John Shea (motor learning and sports),
Richard Shiffrin (experimental psychology), and Robert Sternberg (individual
differences in abilities and intelligence).

A subset of these presentations were given as part of a symposium on “The

acquisition of expert performance: Implications for optimal professional
development” at the annual meeting of AERA in San Francisco on April 21,
1995. The main conference was successfully completed at Wakulla Springs,
Florida, on April 27–30, 1995.

I hope that many readers will find the contributions in this book as exciting as

the speakers at the conference found them to be. Furthermore, the findings
presented in the book should be relevant on several levels. First the book
summarizes our emerging knowledge of the necessary conditions for reaching
international-level performance in many different domains: at least around a
decade of effortful practice under optimal training conditions. The controversy
over the role of innate individual differences (talent) has not been resolved, but
the alternative accounts have been better articulated and range from innate
general and domain-specific basic capacities to motivational differences
predisposing some individuals to engage in focused learning on a regular and
extended basis. Perhaps the most useful aspect of this book to researchers is that
it raises numerous issues that should stimulate future research and help expand
the growing field of research on expert performance.

On a more personal level the book will be relevant to all who aspire to reach

their highest level of performance in their respective domain of expertise. Most

everyone who has traveled on the road to excellence has reflected on how they
can improve most effectively and perhaps have even generated “experiments” to
identify the best daily habits and learning activities. Hopefully, this book will
stimulate you to reflect on your daily activities and how you might be able to
allocate more of your limited time and resources to those activities that are
critical to your continued improvement and the achievement of your most
desired goals. The ultimate test of the validity of theoretical ideas on expert
performance is not just whether they are interesting and thought provoking and
lead to new research and experiments, but also whether individuals find them
effective as principles guiding the design of their own daily lives in efforts to
optimize the attainment of their personal goals. In the case of expert
performance, I foresee exceptional opportunities for a mutually beneficial
interaction between theory and practice.

—K. Anders Ericsson

REFERENCES

Chase, W. G., & Simon, H. A. (1973). The mind’s eye in chess. In W. G. Chase (Ed.), Visual information

processing (pp. 215–281). New York: Academic Press.

Chi, M. T. H., Glaser, R., & Farr, M. J. (Eds.). (1988). The nature of expertise. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence

Erlbaum Associates.

Chi, M. T. H., Glaser, R., & Rees, E. (1982). Expertise in problem solving. In R. S. Sternberg (Ed.),

Advances in the psychology of human intelligence (Vol. 1, pp. 1–75). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates.

de Groot, A. (1978). Thought and choice and chess. The Hague: Mouton. (Original work published 1946).

Ericsson, K. A., & Charness, N. (1994). Expert performance: Its structure and acquisition. American

Psychologist, 49(8), 725–747.

Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, R. T., & Tesch-Römer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the

acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100(3), 363–406.

Ericsson, K. A., & Smith, J. (Eds.). (1991). Toward a general theory of expertise: Prospects and limits.

Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Hoffman, R. R. (Ed.). (1992). The psychology of expertise. New York: Springer-Verlag.

Larkin, J. H., McDermott, J., Simon, D. P., & Simon, H. A. (1980). Models of competence in solving

physics problems. Cognitive Science, 4, 317–345.

Simon, D. P., & Simon, H. A. (1978). Individual differences in solving physics problems. In R. S. Siegler

(Ed.), Children’s thinking: What develops? (pp. 325–348). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Simon, H. A., & Chase, W. G. (1973). Skill in chess. American Scientist, 61, 394–403.

Starkes, J. L., & Allard, F. (Eds.). (1993). Cognitive issues in motor expertise. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

Participants at the conference on “The Acquisition of Expert Performance” at Wakulla Springs
Conference Center, Florida, April 27–30,1995. Front row: John Shea, Anders Ericsson, Vimla Patel, John
Sloboda, Ellen Winner, Robert Glaser, Robert Sternberg, and Lawrence Holmes. Back row: Richard
Shiffrin, Herbert Simon, Neil Charness, Dean Simonton, Keith Stanovich, Richard Wagner, and Michael
Howe.

1

The Acquisition of Expert Performance: An Introduction to
Some of the Issues

K. Anders Ericsson
The Florida State University

In every domain of expertise, many start on the “road to excellence” but few
reach the highest levels of achievement and performance. Through the centuries,
a large body of historical facts, interviews, and observations have been collected
about these exceptional individuals in popular and academic biographies. In
many cases, the most detailed information is given retrospectively by the
exceptional individuals themselves years later when their outstanding
achievements have been recognized by their peers and society. For example, the
famous accounts of creative experience by Kekule, Poincare, and others were
first written down years or even decades after the events they describe, and
consequently suffer from many of the problematic biases of recollection
(Gruber, 1981b). The scarcity of relevant evidence often forces biographers to
lower their standards of evidence to the point where it is difficult to separate
hard facts from biased recollections and myths. Much of the popular evidence
for talent and inexplicable creativity is based on accounts that cannot be
subjected to scientific analysis (Ericsson & Charness, 1994). For example, many
of the famous descriptions of the young genius Gauss are based on unsupported
anecdotes told by Gauss himself as an old man (Bühler, 1981). The first step
toward a scientific account of exceptional achievements requires rejection of
unverifiable evidence and the identification and systematic accumulation of all
empirical evidence that meets standard scientific criteria.

Outstanding human achievements usually consist of actual products, such as

works of art or scientific publications. In these cases, the date of completion and
the individual responsible for the achievement are known. However, the

psychological processes that led to the achievement are far more difficult to
investigate and explain scientifically. Part of the problem concerns their original
and creative nature. By definition, an innovative achievement goes beyond the
application of available knowledge in the domain at the time of its completion.
Hence, major innovations and discoveries emerge unpredictably and often
considerable time passes before they are widely accepted as valid great
accomplishments. We are thus primarily limited to the evaluation of post-hoc
explanations of major specific discoveries based on careful analysis of the
historical records such as notebooks and earlier drafts (Gruber, 1981a; Holmes,
1989). A complementary experimental approach is to recreate the historical
conditions in which a discovery of a mathematical law was made and study how
individuals who are unaware of that discovery but have all the necessary
knowledge are able to rediscover the original law (Qin & Simon, 1990).

An alternative approach to creative achievements involves a search for general

patterns of development across exceptional individuals. This approach is well
represented in this book. Simonton (chap. 8, this volume) has focused on time
course of creative productivity in different domains during the life span and
Howe (chap. 9, this volume) describes general characteristics of the childhoods
and early careers of geniuses. Furthermore, the chapters by Richman, Gobet,
Staszewski, and Simon (chap. 6, this volume) and Simonton (chap. 8, this
volume) discuss related mechanisms to account for the generation of innovative
ideas and creative products.

The major problem confronting the scientific investigation of extraordinary

achievements and their creative nature is their uniqueness. By focusing instead
on the highly replicable skills of exceptional performers (e.g., professional
musicians) one can identify high (expert) levels of performance (Ericsson,
Krampe, & Tesch-Römer, 1993) that correspond to phenomena that are more
tractable to analysis with scientific methods.

EXPERT PERFORMANCE AS AN EMPIRICAL

PHENOMENON

Empirical phenomena can be studied with scientific methods when they meet
several criteria. The first and most important criterion is that the phenomenon
occurs reliably in clearly specified situations with distinctive observable
characteristics. Current findings on the superior performance of experts shows
that it occurs reliably in many domains of expertise. Second, the phenomena
should be reproducible under controlled conditions in the laboratory to allow for
experimental variation and systematic observation of the mediating processes.
Following Ericsson and Smith (1991), I show that many forms of expert
performance can be reproduced and studied under laboratory conditions. Finally,
the observed phenomena for a specific situation should be predictable and
describable by objective absolute measurements. In some domains of expertise
such as individual sport events (e.g., running the 100-meter dash), the
performance is measured by absolute units of time. In other domains,
performance is evaluated in relative terms through comparison with other
contemporary performers (e.g., gymnastics). I propose methods for measuring
and describing even these types of expert performance by absolute standards that
are independent of the social and historical context of the studied expert
performance. In the next three sections I discuss the following characteristics of
expert performance: (a) its reliability, (b) its reproducibility in the laboratory,
and (c) its measurement in absolute terms.

Reliability of Superior Expert Performance

There are many domains of expertise in which individuals consistently exhibit
outstanding and superior performance under standardized testing conditions. In
perceptual motor activities, such as individualized sports and typing, the
outcome of performance can be directly measured. For competitive domains,
such as tennis and chess, results from tournaments can be analyzed to rank
individuals, often on an interval scale (Elo, 1978). The individual differences in
recorded performance between the best and the least accomplished performers in
these domains are among the largest reproducible differences in performance
observed for normal adults.

Similar large differences in performance would be expected in many

professional domains of expertise, such as medicine, auditing, physics, and