How to Make an Expert Shooter Research on the Development of Experts
Dan Durben Black Hills State University
Defining “Expertise”
Expertise is considered the demonstration of consistent superior performance by an experienced person in his/her domain. – Charness & Schultetus (1999)
How the Expert Mind Works
The attainment of expertise in any skilled activity is the result of acquiring, during many years of experience, vast amounts of knowledge and the ability to perform pattern-based retrieval. –Chase & Simon (1973) lUsing pattern-based retrieval from long-term memory lets the expert get around the general limits to human information processing, including the limited capacity of short-term memory.
Experts notice meaningful patterns of information.
Their knowledge is organized in a manner to retrieve the needed knowledge for the current situation.
Experts can quickly and effortlessly retrieve their domain knowledge.
Expertise Example
Mary had a little lamb
18 letters, 5 words – Notice meaningful pattern – chunking info lInformation is organized – Quick, effortless retrieval of information
The Expert Shooter
The expert shooter has built up a number of tools and techniques that can be quickly
Primary Trait of the Expert
This “long-term working memory” is the essential ingredient for expert performance in any field, from chess to typing to golf, and can be developed at will, given enough practice and perseverance.
–K. Anders Ericsson, psychologist, Florida State University
Can Experts Be Made?
The preponderance of psychological evidence indicates that experts are made, not born
–Philip E. Ross (2006)
Nothing shows that innate factors are a necessary prerequisite for expert-level mastery in most fields.
–K. Anders Ericsson, psychologist, Florida State University
Research on Chess
Chess – the “Drosophila of Cognitive Science”
–Skill at chess can be measured, broken into components, subjected to laboratory experiments and readily observed in its natural environment, the tournament hall. It is for those reasons that chess has served as the greatest single test bed for theories of thinking.
Measuring Chess Skill
The measurement of chess skill has been taken further than similar attempts with any other game, sport or competitive activity. Ratings predict the outcomes of games with remarkable reliability.
Case Study: Developing Experts
The Polgar Experiment
Laszlo Polgar (Hungary) thought the public school system could be relied upon to produce mediocre minds. In contrast, he believed he could turn any healthy child into a prodigy.
The Polgar Sisters
“My father always thinks big, and he thinks people can do a lot more than they actually do.“
“My dad believed in optimizing early childhood instead of wasting time watching TV.”
“My father believes that innate talent is nothing, that success is 99 percent hard work. I agree with him.”
“I had an inner drive. I think that is the difference between the very good and the best.”
Sophia Polgar
Everyone agrees that Sophia was the most talented of the three. “Everything came easiest to her,” says Susan. “But she was lazy.“
“Susan was such a strong player that Judit and I wanted to be like her,” says Sophia. “But I could give up easier than Judit. I never worked as hard as she did.“
“Judit was a slow starter, but very hardworking,” says Susan.
Judit remains strongly motivated to become the World Champion of Chess – she no longer competes in women’s only events.
She is, without a doubt, the best woman chess player the world has ever seen.
The Polgar Experiment
Laszlo Polgar kept one simple fact in mind: Most female chess players do not set their sights high enough. In order to achieve parity with their male counterparts, they, too, need a vision of world domination.
The Polgár experiment showed two things: that grandmasters can be reared and that women can be grandmasters.
Keys to Becoming an Expert
So what are the keys to becoming an expert, to developing that long term working memory?
Keys to Becoming an Expert
Key #1: The 10 Year Rule
l“It takes approximately a decade of heavy labor to master any field.”
–Herbert Simon
Cognitive Scientist, Nobel Prize Winner
The 10 Year Rule
Ericsson, Krampe & Tesch-Römer (1993) found that it takes 10 years or 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become an expert.
The 10 Year Rule
Jose Raul Capablanca (1888-1942), regarded to this day as the greatest “natural” chess player, the “Mozart of Chess”, boasted that he never studied the game.
In fact, he flunked out of Columbia University in part because he spent so much time playing chess. His famously quick apperception was a product of all his training, not a substitute for it.
Keys to Becoming an Expert
Key #2: Deliberate Practice
What matters is not experience but “effortful study,” or extended deliberate practice, which entails continually tackling challenges that lie just beyond one’s competence.
–K. Anders Ericsson, psychologist, Florida State University
Just putting in the hours is not enough.
What is “Effortful Study” or
“Deliberate Practice”?
Deliberate practice is not mechanically repeating tasks that come easily, but rather targeting and attacking specific areas that need improvement.
Continually tackling challenges that lie just beyond one’s competence.
Pushing yourself to study how to do things you currently cannot do.
Deliberate Practice
Effect on Achievement
Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Romer (1993) have demonstrated that achievement level in piano, violin, ballet, chess, bridge, and athletics is predicted by sheer amount of deliberate practice.
Deliberate practice is what separates enthusiasts who spend tens of thousands of hours playing chess or golf or a musical instrument without ever advancing beyond the amateur level and the properly trained student who can overtake them in a relatively short time.
Deliberate Practice
Common Issue with 3P Air Shooters
Even the novice engages in effortful study at first, which is why beginners so often improve rapidly in playing golf, say, or in driving a car. But having reached an acceptable performance–for instance, keeping up with one’s golf buddies or passing a driver’s exam–most people relax. Their performance then becomes automatic and therefore impervious to further improvement.
Deliberate Practice
How the Expert Approaches It
In contrast, experts-in-training keep the lid of their mind’s box open all the time, so that they can inspect, criticize and augment its contents
Keys to Becoming an Expert
Key #3: The Rage to Master
Budding experts have extremely strong motivation, or “the rage to master”*
Motivation appears to be a more important factor than innate ability in the development of expertise in music, chess and sports–all domains in which expertise is defined by competitive performance.
The Rage to Master
Budding experts show a fascination (bordering on obsession) with a certain content (e.g., numbers, visual patterns, auditory musical patterns) and they have a “rage to master” the domains that deal with such specific content.
Children with the “rage to master” a skill can make it through the grueling years of training needed to achieve expert ability.
The Rage to Master
The rage to master may be the point at which nature unequivocally makes its constraints felt…..there might be a genetic component
What Can the Coach Do
To Make an Expert Shooter?
What can coaches do to develop an expert shooter – to nurture the rage to master and ensure deliberate practice?
How to Make an Expert
#1: Goal Setting
Good and Dweck suggest that training students to view learning as a goal oriented effortful process rather than a static process helps students gain more flexible knowledge and improves their intrinsic motivation for learning.
Goal Setting
What the Coach Can Do
Help Athletes with Honest Evaluation
Help athletes honestly evaluate their current skill level and abilities, including their strengths and weaknesses.
Help athletes recognize the skills and abilities of the leaders in shooting – this is what they are striving for.
Goal Setting
What the Coach Can Do
Help Athletes Set Long Term Goals
Help athletes set goals to continually push them, to not be content with their current performance level and to strive to reach the leaders in the sport.
Long term goals can be both outcome and process goals – both should be modeled after the scores and behaviors of the leaders in the sport.
Goal Setting
What the Coach Can Do
Help Athletes Set Daily Short Term Goals
Help athletes set process goals (as opposed to outcome goals) for every shooting session.
Help athletes identify specific areas that need improvement in every practice.
- Be specific – not just “work on kneeling” but identify what exactly about kneeling needs work.
Help athletes develop strategies to address challenges and weaknesses.
How to make an Expert
#2: Focus on the Learning Process
People’s beliefs about their abilities greatly influence their performance.
Carol Dweck, professor of psychology, Stanford University
Coach and athlete focusing on the process of shooting is much more effective for developing expertise than focusing on the outcome.
Process vs. Outcome Focus
The Dweck IQ Experiment
When Dweck praised children’s intelligence after they succeeded on an IQ test, they subsequently didn’t want to take on a new challenge—they preferred to keep looking smart. When they were forced to complete a more difficult exercise, their performance plummeted.
Focus on the Process not Outcome
Focusing on outcome can cause some kids to falter under the weight of great expectations. “The most gifted kids in chess fall apart. They
Focus on the Process not Outcome
According to Dweck, Laszlo Polgar’s staunch belief that talent is irrelevant may have protected his daughters from losing motivation when they failed. Defeat is inevitable as one moves up the chess ladder—as soon as a player achieves a higher rating, he or she is paired with stronger opponents. By keeping his daughters focused on the learning process Laszlo also kept them from
Focus on the Process not Outcome What the Coach Can Do
Keep athletes focused on the process, on how they are performing on each shot (not just “It was a 10”) and in each match (not just “I shot a 570” or “I won or lost”).
Praise successful process and deliberate practice.
Help athletes understand that “failure” is part of the learning process.
Help them evaluate what happened
Devise strategies to learn from the experience.
How to Make an Expert
#3: Dynamic Assessment
Dynamic assessment supplies feedback throughout the problem solving procedure so the learner knows what aspects of his/her learning process needs improvement.
Traditional assessment techniques supply feedback at the completion of a procedure.
Dynamic Assessment
What The Coach Can Do
Encourage athletes to analyze performance on every shot.
How did they do on each part of the shot process
Analyze technique and tactic changes.
How to Make an Expert
#4: Build Up Tools & Techniques
Build up experiences – strategies, techniques and tactics – that can later be recalled from the long term working memory.
Athletes learn to understand themselves, how they react in different situations and what works in these situations.
Build Up Tools & Techniques
What the Coach Can Do
Introduce athletes to a variety of situations in training and in matches.
Encourage athletes to explore strategies, techniques and tactics in different situations, applying dynamic assessment (not “I shot a higher or lower score”).
How to Make an Expert
More Coaching Strategies
Success builds on success – place athletes in situations where they can experience success, whether in matches or in training drills.
Find ways to motivate – small prizes, ice cream
Foster confidence in athletes – your confidence in their abilities rubs off on them.
Help athletes deal with peer pressure
Our Challenge
The demonstrated ability to turn a child into an expert–in chess, music and a host of other subjects–sets a clear challenge before shooting coaches.
Can coaches find ways to encourage their athletes to engage in the kind of long term effortful study that will improve their skills?
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