Experts' Memories
An expert is "one who has acquired special skill in or knowledge about a particular subject through professional training and practical experience" (Webster's, 1976, p. 800). By that definition, experts will have a greater body of knowledge about their domain of expertise than other individuals. More remarkable is the experts' accurate memory for new experiences in their domain. Some athletes can discuss minute details of individual plays from games played years ago. Expert chess players can readily recall chess positions from their matches in recent tournaments.
Early in the twentieth century many believed that experts were innately gifted with a superior memory. Numerous anecdotes attested to such amazing powers of recollection. For example, Mozart was supposed to be able to reproduce a presented piece of music after hearing it a single time. Later research, however, cast doubt on the hypothesis of superior innate memory in experts and has demonstrated that experts' remarkable recall is limited to their specialties and arises from acquired skills and knowledge.
The Specificity of Experts' Superior Memory
The most influential research on experts' memories focused initially on chess masters' superior recall of board positions (Chase and Simon, 1973). Chess players ranging from beginners to international masters were shown a position from an actual chess game (such as the one illustrated in panel A of Figure 1) for a brief time (normally five seconds) and then asked torecall the location of all the chess pieces.
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