Expertise Acquisition: The Deliberate Practice Theory And Its Empirical Study

Deliberate practice has been becoming the most practical and explanatory theory focused on the issues of expertise acquisition. Evidences from several domains have proved that the time accumulated in deliberate practice can forecast the level of expertise, but the researches before haven't lucubrated the mechanism that deliberate practice playing on the process of expertise acquisition, and lowered the power of deliberate practice theory. Based on researches before, the dissertation tries to improve the further development of this theory and discusses the question as follow: the relationship between innate ability, intelligence and expertise acquisition, the predominance of deliberate practice theory compared with other similar theories, the sources of deliberate practice theory and its nature and experimental evidences, the possibility of the theory implied to different domains, the mechanism deliberate practice playing on the process of expertise acquisition. The dissertation explores these questions respectively in perspective of theory and experiment, and probes into some original and creationary means. The dissertation is composed of seven chapters.Chapter one presents the academic discussions about expertise acquisition. Firstly, the dissertation analyzes the relationship between innate ability and expertise acquisitions and concludes that, to some extent, the hereditary diathesis maybe can restrict some kinds of innate abilities, but under the influence of practice and environment, the innate ability plays little role on the achievements one can get finally. Secondly, the dissertation analyzes the relationship between intelligence and expertise acquisitions, takes conclusions that the effect of intelligence is limited and some mechanisms mediating the former and the later. Finally, the dissertation compares several explanations about expertise acquisition, which are possessed by different researchers, and take it for granted that the deliberate practice is the most explanatory one.Chapter two expatiates the sources of deliberate practice theory, its nature and experimental evidences as well. Firstly, the dissertation points out that deliberate practice theory originates from the animadvert on innate ability and the reflection on practice researches before, and then defines the concept and characteristic of deliberate practice. Secondly, the dissertation introduces the theoretic frame of deliberate practice explaining expertise acquisition and analyzes the "monotonic benefits assumption" in detail. Finally, the dissertation summarizes the empirical...