PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

K Anders Ericsson

Publications and source records attributed to K Anders Ericsson.

5 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2005

Perceptual-cognitive expertise in sport: some considerations when applying the expert performance approach.

The number of researchers studying perceptual-cognitive expertise in sport is increasing. The intention in this paper is to review the currently accepted framework for studying expert performance and to consider implications for undertaking research work in the area of perceptual-cognitive expertise in sport. The expert performance approach presents a descriptive and inductive approach for the systematic study of expert performance. The nature of expert performance is initially captured in the laboratory using representative tasks that identify reliably superior performance. Process-tracing measures are employed to determine the mechanisms that mediate expert performance on the task. Finally, the specific types of activities that lead to the acquisition and development of these mediating mechanisms are identified. General principles and mechanisms may be discovered and then validated by more traditional experimental designs. The relevance of this approach to the study of perceptual-cognitive expertise in sport is discussed and suggestions for future work highlighted.

Attention↗
PubMed2004

Uncovering the structure of a memorist's superior "basic" memory capacity.

After extensive laboratory testing of the famous memorist Rajan, Thompson, Cowan, and Frieman (1993) proposed that he was innately endowed with a superior memory capacity for digits and letters and thus violated the hypothesis that exceptional memory fully reflects acquired "skilled memory." We successfully replicated the empirical phenomena that led them to their conclusions. From additional analyses and new experiments, we found support for an alternative hypothesis, namely that Rajan's superior memory for digits was mediated by learned encoding techniques that he acquired during nearly a thousand hours of practice memorizing the mathematical constant pi. Our paper describes a general experimental approach for studying the structure of exceptional memory and how Rajan's unique structure is consistent with the general theoretical framework of long-term working memory (Ericsson and Kintsch, 1995).

Analysis of Variance↗
PubMed2004

Immediate and sustained effects of planning in a problem-solving task.

In 4 experiments, instructions to plan a task (water jugs) that normally produces little planning altered how participants solved the problems and resulted in enhanced learning and memory. Experiment 1 identified planning strategies that allowed participants to plan full solutions to water jugs problems. Experiment 2 showed that experience with planning led to better solutions even after planning was no longer required, whereas control participants showed little improvement. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that although the most recent planned solution could be recalled following a long filled retention interval, retroactive interference (RI) between successive problems resulted in much lower recall of earlier solutions. RI during plan generation could also explain participants' choice of depth-first planning strategies.

Choice Behavior↗
PubMed2003

Exceptional memorizers: made, not born.

In a recent study, Maguire and colleagues failed to find systematic differences in brain anatomy between world-class memory performers and matched control subjects. The world-class performers exhibited distinctive patterns of brain activation during memorization, but these patterns were directly attributable to the experts' unique encoding strategies and acquired memory skills. Discussed here are the implications for broad attainability of highly skilled memory performance in professional and everyday activities.

Journal Article↗