practice are often confounded in real life, due to the inherent self-selection
process wherein individuals may opt out as the result of repeated failures
(Sternberg, 1996).
Knowledge, Interest, and Strategies Underlying the Development of Exper-
tise. Cattell (1971) saw the development of intellectual competences as a re-
sponse to cultural concerns as well as individual inclinations. He also saw de-
veloped skills and interests as reciprocally related (an isomorphism in his
words). Alexander (chap. 10) carried out this line of inquiry further by ex-
ploring how advances in domain-knowledge, the development of a deeper in-
terest, and deep strategic processing may support one another and create a
functional synergy. Ackerman and Heggestad (1997) also found a several
cognitive abilities, personality traits, and interests tend to converge in an
adaptive way to support specific career paths. Formulated as such, deep en-
gagement cannot be solely a function of the willingness to exert mental efforts
(i.e., deliberate practice) but involves a developmental process of personal
identification reflected in intrinsic or individual interests (see also Hidi et al.,
chap. 4).
What Develops and How: Two Forms of Embodiment
The learning perspective also brings to focus the question of what exactly is
learned, and how it supports further learning in a domain. Kagan (2002) sug-
gested two basic forms of knowledge: schematic and semantic. They are em-
bodied in different ways.
It was Tolman (1932) who first postulated learning as the development of
expectations and a cognitive map of the causal texture of the environment in
question. Charting a new territory or learning the landscape becomes a pow-
erful root metaphor for knowing (Greeno, 1991). De Groot (1978), in his now
classic book on chess, introduced Selz’s concept of schematic anticipation as
a key to understanding the nature and development of expertise (see also
Neisser, 1967 for a similar proposition). The acquired anticipatory structure
is conative as well as cognitive in that it suggests where the action should be.
Development of such anticipatory structures may be associated with the de-
velopment of what Damasio (1994) called somatic markers, experience-based
secondary emotions that trigger emotional states and gut feeling that serves
as a top-down processing heuristic for problem solving and decision making
in familiar situations. As Damasio (2001) pointed out, “appropriate learning
can pair emotion with all manners of facts (for instance, facts that describe
the premises of a situation, the option taken relative to solving the problems
inherent in a situation, and, perhaps, most importantly, the outcomes of
- BEYOND COGNITIVISM 23