The Emprical Study Of Expert Memory In Chess

The study of expert behavior offers a unique window into human cognition. By investigating the excellent performance, expertise psychologists can determine what parameters of human information-processing system which have been changed under the extensive practice, what parameters are relatively stable. Then psychologists can deduce what learning strategies can be used to help learners overcome the limits imposed by the stable parameters, such as the short-term memory capacity, the long-term memory encoding rate.As one of the main databases of expertise psychology even of the whole cognitive science, chess field creates some unique research advantages. The expert behavior in chess where memory improvement is not the explicit goal can be better explained by the theories which are based on chunking mechanism. These two theories are the chunking theory and the template theory. After summarizing the advantages of chess, this research will discuss a series of cognitive issues under the framework of the chunking mechanisms especially the template theory.On the basis of theoretic analysis, this research mainly hammer at resolving these questions as follow, (1) Does the chunk number in short term memory change with the development of expertise level? In other words, how many chunks are reserved in the short term memory of skilled subjects? (2) How do the subjects organize the domain-specific knowledge along with the development and extension of deliberate practice? That is to say, does the domain-specific knowledge is organized as schemas (templates) by the skilled subjects? (3) In the recall task of game positions, does the recall performance increase with the presentation time? What's more, can the performance in the recall task of random positions show the same tendency? (4) Is there any significant differences between the two presentation patterns which are the imagery pattern and semantic pattern?In order to answer these questions, two empirical studies were carried out in this research, they are the study of recall of chess positions at short presentation time and the study of blind chess under "mind's eye". The former two questions will be answered by these two experiments together. The later two will be answered by the two experiments respectively. In the former study, the presentation time of the chess positions (the middle games after 20 moves) was varied systemically. The special play "blind chess" was used in the later one, and the subjects received two different presentation patterns of chess manual. The subjects should reconstruct the positions after the 20 moves.Results which were found in this study show that, (1) About three chunks were replaced in the recall task by the international masters, as predicted by template theory. (2) International masters use templates (schemas) to organize the domain-specific knowledge. The core which can be indicated by the largest chunk in the template is very amazing. For example, chess masters can replace a very large chunk up to 24 pieces, that is the whole position! (3) In the recall task of random positions, masters performed better than chess experts, notwithstanding this advantage is not significant. What's more, the recall performance of random positions increases along with the presentation time just like game positions do. (4) In "mind's eye", the research didn't find any significant difference between the two different presentation patterns of chess manual. That is to say, the imagery pattern and the semantic pattern perform similarly to the recall in blind chess playing.In brief, the empirical studies in this research supported the assumptions which are put forward by template theory. The conclusion is that the refinement of knowledge structure in specific domain and the huge knowledge basis is necessary to the development of expertise.This research can give some advice to the school education. The main one is teachers should help the students set up schemas to consummate the learning process.