The Effects of Experience and Disuse on Crossword Solving

Deliberate Practice and Proposed Limits on the Effects of Practice on the Acquisition of Expert Performance: Why the Original Definition Matters and Recommendations for Future Research

Over 25 years ago Ericsson et al. (1993) published the results of their search for the most effective forms of training in music, a domain where knowledge of effective training has been accumulated over centuries. At music academies master teachers provide students individualized instruction and help them identify goals and methods for their practice sessions between meetings - this form of solitary practice was named deliberate practice, and its accumulated duration during development was found to distinguish groups with differing levels of attained music performance. In an influential meta-analysis Macnamara et al. (2014) identified studies that had collected estimates of practice accumulated during development and attained performance and reported that individual differences in deliberate practice accounted for only 14% of variance in performance. Their definition of "deliberate practice" differs significantly from the original definition of deliberate practice and will henceforth be referred to as structured practice. We explicate three criteria for reproducible performance and purposeful/deliberate practice and exclude all effect sizes considered by Macnamara et al. (2014) that were based on data not meeting these criteria. A reanalysis of the remaining effects estimated that accumulated duration of practice explained considerably more variance in performance (29 and 61% after attenuation correction). We also address the argument that the limited amount of variance explained by the duration of practice necessarily implies an important role of genetic factors, and we report that genetic effects have so far accounted for remarkably small amounts of variance - with exception of genetic influences of height and body size. The paper concludes with recommendations for how future research on purposeful and deliberate practice can go beyond recording only the duration of practice to measuring the quality of practice involving concentration, analysis, and problem solving to identify conditions for the most effective forms of training.

Effects of 30 Years of Disuse on Exceptional Memory Performance

In the mid-1980s, Dario Donatelli (DD) participated in a laboratory study of the effects of around 800 h of practice on digit-span and increased his digit-span from 8 to 104 digits. This study assessed changes in the structure of his memory skill after around 30 years of essentially no practice on the digit-span task. On the first day of testing, his estimated span was only 10 digits, but over the following 3 days of testing it increased to 19 digits. Further analyses of his recall performance and verbal reports identified which mechanisms of the original memory skill he could retrieve or reacquire over the 3 days of practice. We discuss theoretical implications for the retention of skilled memory performance, the effects of age-related changes in memory on it, and for the future study of the effects of disuse on exceptional performance and complex skill.

The Grounded Expertise Components Approach in the Novel Area of Cryptic Crossword Solving

This paper presents a relatively unexplored area of expertise research which focuses on the solving of British-style cryptic crossword puzzles. Unlike its American "straight-definition" counterparts, which are primarily semantically-cued retrieval tasks, the British cryptic crossword is an exercise in code-cracking detection work. Solvers learn to ignore the superficial "surface reading" of the clue, which is phrased to be deliberately misleading, and look instead for a grammatical set of coded instructions which, if executed precisely, will lead to the correct (and only) answer. Sample clues are set out to illustrate the task requirements and demands. Hypothesized aptitudes for the field might include high fluid intelligence, skill at quasi-algebraic puzzles, pattern matching, visuospatial manipulation, divergent thinking and breaking frame abilities. These skills are additional to the crystallized knowledge and word-retrieval demands which are also a feature of American crossword puzzles. The authors present results from an exploratory survey intended to identify the characteristics of the cryptic crossword solving population, and outline the impact of these results on the direction of their subsequent research. Survey results were strongly supportive of a number of hypothesized skill-sets and guided the selection of appropriate test content and research paradigms which formed the basis of an extensive research program to be reported elsewhere. The paper concludes by arguing the case for a more grounded approach to expertise studies, termed the Grounded Expertise Components Approach. In this, the design and scope of the empirical program flows from a detailed and objectively-based characterization of the research population at the very onset of the program.

Acquisition and maintenance of medical expertise: a perspective from the expert-performance approach with deliberate practice

As a part of a special collection in this issue of Academic Medicine, which is focused on mastery learning in medical education, this Perspective describes how the expert-performance approach with deliberate practice is consistent with many characteristics of mastery learning. Importantly, this Perspective also explains how the expert-performance approach provides a very different perspective on the acquisition of skill. Whereas traditional education with mastery learning focuses on having students attain an adequate level of performance that is based on goals set by the existing curricula, the expert-performance approach takes an empirical approach and first identifies the final goal of training-namely, reproducibly superior objective performance (superior patient outcomes) for individuals in particular medical specialties. Analyzing this superior complex performance reveals three types of mental representations that permit expert performers to plan, execute, and monitor their own performance. By reviewing research on medical performance and education, the author describes evidence for these representations and their development within the expert-performance framework. He uses the research to generate suggestions for improved training of medical students and professionals. Two strategies-designing learning environments with libraries of cases and creating opportunities for individualized teacher-guided training-should enable motivated individuals to acquire a full set of refined mental representations. Providing the right resources to support the expert-performance approach will allow such individuals to become self-regulated learners-that is, members of the medical community who have the tools to improve their own and their team members' performances throughout their entire professional careers.