Toward a General Theory of Expertise: Prospects and Limits [Paperback]

K. Anders Ericsson (Editor), Jacqui Smith (Editor)

List Price:	CDN$ 74.95
Price:	CDN$ 64.62 & this item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping. Details
You Save:	CDN$ 10.33 (14%)
	o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

Usually ships within 4 to 6 weeks.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.ca. Gift-wrap available.

Formats	Amazon Price		New from	Used from
Hardcover	CDN $131.46		--	--
Paperback	CDN $64.62		--	--

Product Details

Paperback: 360 pages
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (Aug 30 1991)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0521406129
ISBN-13: 978-0521406123
Product Dimensions: 2.3 x 1.5 x 0.2 cm
Shipping Weight: 204 g
Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #877,659 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

See Complete Table of Contents

Product Description

Review

"The organization of the book, its consistency with respect to the underlying theme, and the quality of the individual chapters make this a valualbe contribution to the literature on expert performance. This volume should be considered essential for students of cognitive science and expert performance. It will also be a useful resource for anyone who is faced with the challenge of identifying and testing experts in previously uninvestigated domains." Janice M. Deakin, Contemporary Psychology

Book Description

During the past twenty years, our knowledge about expertise has dramatically increased. Laboratory analyses of chessmasters, experts in physics, medicine, international-level musicians, athletes, writers, and performance artists have allowed us to carefully examine the cognitive processes mediating outstanding performance in very diverse areas of expertise. These analyses have shown that expert performance is primarily a reflection of acquired skill resulting from the accumulation of domain-specific knowledge and methods during many years of training and practice rather than special innate talent. Confronted with universal limits of human information processing concerning memory capacity and speed of processing, expert performers are found to be able to acquire similar types of skills to circumvent these limits. General findings on expertise are systematized to lay the foundation of a general theory of expertise. In this book, many of the world's foremost scientists studying expert performance in specific domains of expertise review the state-of-the-art knowledge about expertise in these domains with the goal of identifying characteristics of expert performance that can be generalized across many different areas of expertise. These papers provide a comprehensive summary of general methods to study expertise and the current knowledge about expertise in chess, physics, medicine, sports, performing arts, music, writing, and decision-making. Most importantly, they reveal the existence of many general characteristics of expertise.

See all Product Description

Inside This Book (Learn More)

First Sentence
Research on expertise may be one of the most rapidly expanding areas within cognitive psychology and cognitive science. Read the first page

Explore More
Concordance

Tag this product

(What's this?)

Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items.

Customer Reviews

There are no customer reviews yet on Amazon.ca

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

Share your experience with this product with others

Create your own review

Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com ^(beta)

Amazon.com: 4.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review)

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Some of the most interesting work in psychology, Oct 9 2006

By Aaron Swartz - Published on Amazon.com

This review is from: Toward a General Theory of Expertise: Prospects and Limits (Hardcover)

Unfortunately for us, most work in psychology is either silly or uninteresting. Nobody cares much about the details of reaction times or about baseless speculation about underlying personality types. But Ericsson and his colleagues have set themselves a far more interesting problem: how do people are really good at something (experts) do it? Even better, they've made an impressive amount of progress.

The book surveys impressive studies in fields like chess, physics, medicine, sports, music, reading, writing, managing, etc., each one using interesting tricks and techniques to try to get at what makes experts tick. This book dates from the very beginning of the project, but the promise of the early results is evident and the cast of mind impressive.

› Go to Amazon.com to see the review 4.0 out of 5 stars