had been presented to them. There is also evidence that experts tend to represent
problems at a deeper level than novices because they search for principles and rules
rather than superficial features of the tasks in question (Woll, 2002).
One explanation of the cognitive superiority of experts over novices comes from
“skilled memory” theory (Chase and Ericsson, 1981). This theory proposes that experts
use their long-term memory advantages to enrich the coding of new information. In other
words, their rich database of knowledge appears to guide their chunking of new
information. This proposition is significant for two reasons. First, it highlights a paradox
of expertise (Smith, Adams and Schorr, 1978). Put simply, this paradox concerns the fact
that although experts have more knowledge to search through in their database than have
novices, they can retrieve information in their specialist domain more quickly. Perhaps
the reason for this difference in speed of search and retrieval is that experts’ knowledge
tends to be extensively cross-referenced whereas that of novices is usually
compartmentalised. The second reason that skilled memory theory is significant
psychologically is that it challenges a common misconception about the way in which our
memory system is designed. Briefly, many people believe that our minds resemble
containers which fill up with the knowledge we acquire but which may overflow if we
are exposed to too much information. Research on experts, however, shows that our
memory system is not passive but expands to accommodate new information. Put simply,
the more we know about a given field, the more we can remember in it (Moran, 2000b).
In summary, the study of expert-novice differences in memory yields several interesting
findings about the way in which our minds work.
Experts are faster, more consistent and have better anticipation skills than
novicesClassical studies on expertise showed that elite performers are usually faster at solving
problems in their specialist field than are novices (Woll, 2002). Furthermore, experts tend
to be more consistent than novices in performing their skills accurately. For example, top
golfers are able to perform basic skills like driving or putting several times more
consistently than are average players (Ericsson, 2001b). Finally, as indicated earlier, a
number of laboratory studies of ball sports have shown that expert athletes are superior to
novices in using advance cues from opponents to predict accurately shot placement and
destination (“what will happen next?”) in simulated sport-specific situations. Typically,
in these studies, participants are presented with specially prepared video sequences in
which key ball-flight information has been occluded selectively. The task is to predict the
likely destination or flight-path of the ball in the film. For example, A.M.Williams and
Burwitz (1993) reported that expert soccer players were better able to predict the
destination of filmed penalty-kicks than novices—but only during conditions of minimal
exposure (40 milliseconds after impact). Arising from these findings on expert-novice
differences in advance cue utilisation, a practical question arises. Do anticipatory abilities
in athletes develop over time? This issue is examined in Box 6.4.
What lies beneath the surface? Investigating expertise in sport 169