Chase and Simon theory of expertise. Then we shall briefly review some of the
empirical evidence concerning speedup of performance, superior memory per-
formance, and superior ability to plan, with the intent of pointing to issues
requiring further attention and elaboration.
The Chase and Simon Theory. Chase and Simon (1973) argued that the main
differences among masters, experts, and novices in a wide range of domains
were related to their immediate access to relevant knowledge. Chase and
Simon’s (1973) elegant theoretical account of chess expertise provided an ac-
count of how the masters rapidly retrieved the best move possibilities from
long-term memory. The recognized configurations of chess pieces (chunks)
served as cues to elicit the best move possibilities, which had been stored in
memory at an earlier time. The chess masters’ richer vocabulary of chunks thus
played a critical role in the storage and retrieval of superior chess moves.
Within the same theoretical framework, the speedup in selecting moves can
be accounted for in terms of recognition of chess configurations and direct re-
trieval of knowledge about appropriate move selections. Similarly, Chase and
Simon (1973) proposed that the superior memory performance for the briefly
presented chess positions was due to recognition of familiar configurations
of chess pieces by the masters. The near-perfect recall by the chess masters,
involving more than twenty chess pieces, was assumed to be mediated by ap-
proximately seven chunks or configurations—within the postulated limits of
short-term memory.
Finally, with respect to planning, Chase and Simon (1973) outlined a mecha-
nism whereby the experts’ chess knowledge could be accessed in response
to internally planned moves in the mind’s eye. Given that no evidence was
available to show that the depth of planning increased with a rise in the level
of expertise (Charness, 1981), they did not consider the acquisition of such a
mechanism.
Accounts Focusing on Practice and Learning. Across a wide range of tasks, an
improvement in performance is a direct function of the amount of practice, and
this relation can be remarkably accurately described by a power function
(Newell & Rosenbloom, 1981). This consistent relation between performance
and practice has been given a theoretical account by Newell and Rosenbloom
(1981) using a uniform mechanism of learning chunks, which they explicitly
relate to Chase and Simon’s (1973) analysis of chess expertise.
It is possible to describe skill acquisition in a broader range of tasks and
domains in which the subject at the outset does not have the prerequisite
knowledge to produce error-free performance. In systematizing a large body of
data on the acquisition of skills, Fitts (1964) proposed three different acquisition
stages: The ‘‘cognitive stage’’ is characterized by an effort to understand the
task and its demands and to learn to what information one must attend. The
‘‘associative stage’’ involves making the cognitive processes efficient to allow
rapid retrieval and perception of required information. During the ‘‘autono-
mous stage,’’ performance is automatic, and conscious cognition is minimal.
More recently, Anderson (1982) provided a theoretical model with three differ-
ent learning mechanisms, each corresponding to a stage of the Fitts model.
540 K. Anders Ericsson and Jacqui Smith