Accelerating Learning and

1
Accelerating Learning and Acquisition of Expert
Professional Performance Through Deliberate
Practice
by
K. Anders Ericsson Department of Psychology
and Human Performance Laboratory in the Learning
Systems Institute Florida State University
2
Professional Performance Retain skills and
knowledge learning transfer generalization
Conference sponsored by Learning Systems
Institute (LSI) at Florida State University and
ONR (Program officer Dr. Ray Perez) in Orlando,
March 3-4th, 2007. Ericsson, K. A. (Ed.) (in
press). Development of professional expertise
Toward measurement of expert performance and
design of optimal learning environments.
Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press.
3
Traditional Professional Learning On-the-j
ob experience Classroom Knowledge
Acquisition
4
Traditional Instruction
On-the-job experience
Professional Performance Retain skills and
knowledge learning transfer generalization
Alternatives
5
Phases of Acquisition of Everyday Skills
6
Herbert Simon
Bill Chase Allan Newell
Accumulation of increasingly complex chunks The
bottleneck is the necessary experience to acquire
a large body of chunks and patterns
7
Key Arguments Some domains, such as
driving a car, are simple and almost all
novices beginners can eventually reach the
level we call expert (Dreyfus Dreyfus, 1986,
p. 21) More complex domains, like chess,
takes longer to reach the level of expert
Hubert Dreyfus
8
Benefits of Provided Experience on
Performance Use of Cockpits with Visual and
Kinesthetic Simulation
Modest transfer of performance savings of
training in real airplanes (except new
procedures) (Allerton, 2000 Roessingh, 2005
Rantanen Talleur, 2005) Focus on Fidelity and
Safety A airline captain needs 3,500 hours of
flying plus 60 hours of simulation (Parker,
Johns, Hellige, 2007)
9
More Knowledge and Performance
?
Expert wine-tasters are barely better than
experienced wine drinkers at describing and
recognizing unknown wines Level of education
does not improve the outcomes of psychotherapy,
treatment selection in nursing, and education in
most high school subjects
10
Perceptual Performance on Cardiac Auscultation as
a Function of Experience
Performance
General Practitioners
0-9 years
Student
10-20 years
Over 20 years
Instruction and Experience
Reviews (Choudhrey, Fletcher, Soumerai, 2005
Ericsson, 2004 Ericsson, Whyte, Ward, 2007)
Based on Butterworth Reppert (1960)
11
Find Consistently Superior Performance and
Assess the Necessary Conditions for its
Acquisition Finding the differences BETWEEN
effects of traditional instruction accumulated
experience AND activities that increase
professional performance
12
The crucial difference is NOT automaticity
-- speed and conscious effort in familiar
situations -- driving a car on a sunny day
When things proceed normally, experts dont
solve problems and dont make decisions, they
do what normally works
Dreyfus Dreyfus (1986, pp. 30-31).
The difference between experts and novices is
revealed when challenging situations are
encountered
13
The Development of Increased
Control Actively Avoiding Automating Control of
Critical Aspects of Performance
14
Increase in Complexity and Control as a Function
of Years of Piano Training
Years of piano training
Year a given type of techniques were introduced
15
Design and Sequencing of Training Activities
Professional teachers and coaches
Monitor students development design and
select training tasks for individual students
16
Solitary Training of Musicians with Different
Levels of Achievement
17
Deliberate Practice
individualized training activities especially
designed by a coach or teacher to improve
specific aspects of an individual's performance
through repetition and successive refinement.
To receive maximal benefit from feedback,
individuals have to monitor their training
with full concentration, which is effortful
and limits the duration of daily training.
(Ericson Lehmann, 1996, pp. 278-279)
18
Deliberate Practice in Chess Discovering
Accurate Immediate Feedback
How could a chess player who is able to beat
everyone in the chess club be able to keep
improving? How would even a chess player know
if he/she played the best possible chess
move for a given position?
19
Simulated Play Against World Class Players Study
published games by chess masters
Position B
Black on move
Make predictions for each next moveCheck if your
prediction was correct, if not, study the chess
position until you understand why the correct
move was played
20
(No Transcript)
21
Learning from Making an Incorrect Move
Position B
What aspect was overlooked When could this
aspect have been discovered How to avoid
similar mistakes in the future Develop new
skills by deliberate practice
Black on move
22
(No Transcript)
23
Building a Complex Control Structure that
Allows Incremental Improvements of performance
24
Domains with deliberate
practice accounts for the reliable benefits of
experience Chess Music Darts (Duffy, Baluch,
Ericsson, 2004) Scrabble (Tuffiash, Roring,
Ericsson, 2007) Spelling Bee (Tuffiash,
Duckworth, Ericsson, in prep) Soccer (Ward,
Hodges, Williams, Starkes, 2004) Rhythmic
Gymnastics (Law, Côté, Ericsson, 2007) Sales
(Sonnentag Klein, 2000) Competitive Memory
Performance (Ericsson, 2003)
25
In search of reproducibly superior performance
and the expert-performance approach
Capturing Reproducibly Superior
Performance Chess How to win chess
tournaments Select superior moves Soccer How to
help team win games Shoot the ball to optimal
location Law enforcement How to attain the best
possible outcome Initiate best actions for a
given situations
26
Identify challenging and difficult situations,
where experts are supposed to excel.
27
Identify challenging and difficult situations,
where experts are supposed to excel.
28
Actions and thoughts of novices and experts
can be directly compared
Recreate the situation and task in laboratory
29
Studying Reproducibly Superior Performance in
Reactions to Emergencies

• Law Enforcement emergences
• Performance differences between
• SWAT officers
• Regular Police officers
• Police Academy recruits

ONR sponsored research (Program officer Dr. Ray
Perez) Human Performance Lab Learning Systems
Institute Florida State University
30
Response to Critical Problems in Intensive Care
From cover story in Time Magazine (March 10,
2008) on The Science of
Experience
ONR sponsored research (Program officer Dr. Ray
Perez) , Human Performance Lab, Learning Systems
Institute, Florida State University
31
Measurement and Training Capturing the essence
of expert performance Measuring it with
representative tasks Task
Difficulty Measuring
Identification current level of ?? of
optimal performance training tasks
32
Perceptual Learning with Immediate Feedback
ltHeart soundsgt ltLung soundsgt ltMammogram
interpretationgt
Issues with perceptual fidelity
33
Identifying the Crucial Elements of
Effective Simulator Training - Deliberate
Practice
A review of 109 studies of high-fidelity medical
simulation showed that the characteristics of
Deliberate Practice accounted for
improvements (Issenberg et al., 2005) A
review of 31 of those studies that examined
repetitive practice, and found a strong
association (?2 .46) between hours of practice
on high-fidelity medical simulators and
standardized learning outcomes. (Issenberg
et al., 2006, p. 792)
34
Pre-requisites for Deliberate Practice
with Feedback with
Simulators Establishment of well-defined
performance criteria based on skilled surgeons
performance on simulator tasks (van
Sickle et al., 2007) --to determine necessary
length of training Maximizing effectiveness of
learning by distributing learning (Moulton et
al., 2006) by refining the feedback (van
Sickle, Gallagher, Smith, 2007) Authentic test
conditions with actors Transfer to performance
with live patients (Park et al., 2007) Society
for Academic Emergency Medicines consensus
conference The Science of Simulation
Defining and Developing Medical Expertise
35
The Use of Simulators for Deliberate
Practice with Performers at Different Levels of
Expertise
Allows exposure to challenging situations without
danger Allows exposure to difficult situations
under conditions optimal to learning and
performance - Individuals being focused
and ready - Immediate feedback (and
opportunity for repetition) - Presentation
of related cases to facilitate discrimination All
ows the presentation of rare emergency
situations trained mishaps only benefits
experienced pilots (McKinney Davis, 2004)
36
Research Recommendations Identify
skills and analyze domains of activity where
performance can be measured with objective
methods that capture on-the-job performance
with large individual differences in attained
performance where increases in performance
motivate major investment Develop libraries of
representative situations with appropriate
feed-back about correct/appropriate actions with
scaled difficulty to maximize optimal training
effects Develop cognitive structures to support
Deliberate Practice assessment and promotion of
representations for thinking, planning, and
evaluations in Long-term working-memory
(LTWM) essential for Retaining skills and
knowledge learning transfer
generalization