Inflexibility of experts—Reality or myth?

[watertank]

How does the knowledge of experts affect their behaviour in situations that require unusual methods of dealing? One possibility, loosely originating in research on creativity and skill acquisition, is that an increase in expertise can lead to inflexibility of thought due to automation of procedures. Yet another possibility, based on expertise research, is that experts’ knowledge leads to flexibility of thought.
[the authors} tested these two possibilities in a series of experiments using the Einstellung (set) effect paradigm. Chess players tried to solve problems that had both a familiar but non-optimal solution and a better but less familiar one. The more familiar solution induced the Einstellung (set) effect even in experts, preventing them from finding the optimal solution. The presence of the non-optimal solution reduced experts’ problem solving ability was reduced to about that of players three standard deviations lower in skill level by the presence of the non-optimal solution. Inflexibility of thought induced by prior knowledge (i.e., the blocking effect of the familiar solution) was shown by experts but the more expert they were, the less prone they were to the effect. Inflexibility of experts is both reality and myth. But the greater the level of expertise, the more of a myth it becomes.

Merim Bilalić,Peter McLeoda and Fernand Gobet. 2007.

Comments

[watertank.livejournal.com]

The contrasting performance of our ‘ordinary’ experts (around 3 SDs above average performance) and our ‘super’ experts (more than 5 SDs above average performance) suggests that both options are possible depending on the expertise level and the problem difficulty. In the first experiment the ordinary experts all spotted a well-known solution. They looked for a better one but failed to find it. Similarly, the super experts all found the well-known solution first and then looked for a better one. In contrast to the ordinary experts, they all found it.