Effortful Study and The Expert Mind

The article “The Expert Mind” had a number of interesting points made about the mechanism of forming, retaining, and recalling memories in novices and experts. The learning of an expert is to be desired over that of a novice not because more knowledge is committed to memory, but because experts learn material in a way that allows them to demonstrate a mastery and deep understanding of the subject area that novices lack.

The difference between novice and expert learning was one of stark contrast. According to the article, the novice and expert both have similar memory skills outside the bounds of their very specific training, such as the mental catalogue of chess board configurations. Inside this area of training, however, the expert has a huge advantage from a long term memory organization system that has fine structure to help bring the right connections quickly out of storage. The novice, on the other hand, may have nearly the same amount of information learned and stored in long term memory, but because of the lack of structure only random (however correct) recall of individual pieces of information is possible.

My question which was not answered in the article- perhaps because it cannot be- is how, or when does the transition take place between the novice learning and expert learning in an individual pursuing “effortful study”? Does the structure to the memories of an expert just emerge on its own after a certain number of hours of study, or does the structure more or less need to be put in place as expert learning begins, neglecting the alphabet soup of previously learned novice memories? My guess is that when starting to put forth effortful study, by definition structure is sought and added to the learning mind. This is in contrast to the novice who does not decide to put forth effortful study, and thus subjects the mind to repetition and anarchical organization of individual pieces of information.

Another interesting point was made that in developing an expert mind, effortful study matters much more than innate talent. One fascinating example was Laszlo Polgar’s three daughters, who were all trained rigorously in chess, resulting in one international master and two grandmasters. There was also a study of British chess players that found no correlation between playing strengths and visual-spatial abilities. This emphasis on effortful study tells those who want to educate effectively that in order to get students to learn like experts, motivation for them to put forth this “effortful study” is key. When a child is having trouble learning, it is not that the teacher has reached the limit of the student’s innate ability, but that the child perhaps needs more motivation from a variety of sources to provoke focused, structured, intense, time-consuming study to reap intellectual dividends. Somehow aspiring chess players developed expert minds through tens of thousands of hours of effortful study, and each had to have his or her own motivation to put in the time and sweat. Is it possible for educators to develop the minds of students everywhere by finding the right motivations to push each one to their own “effortful study”? I would venture to say, “yes”.