Bothered by abstraction: The effect of expertise on knowledge transfer and subsequent novice performance.

Abstract

Although experts should be well positioned to convey their superior knowledge and skill to novices, the organization of that knowledge, and particularly its level of abstraction, may make it difficult for them to do so. Using an electronic circuit-wiring task, the authors found that experts as compared with beginners used more abstract and advanced statements and fewer concrete statements when providing task instructions to novices. In a 2nd study, the authors found that beginner-instructed novices performed better than expert-instructed novices and reported fewer problems with the instructions when performing the same task. In Study 2, the authors found that although novices performed better on the target task when instructed by beginners, they did better on a different task within the same domain when instructed by experts. The evidence suggests that the abstract, advanced concepts conveyed by experts facilitated the transfer of learning between the different tasks.

Viewing another person's eye movements improves identification of pulmonary nodules in chest x-ray inspection.

“…As a result, there is little evidence to suggest at what point this form of gaze following ceases to be useful, or whether similar performance gains could arise from following a novice's eye movements. It is encouraging that more studies are examining collaborative visual search, yet the assertion that expert eye movements should be especially useful in training novices where to look neglects the possibility that a peer's eye movements could also be useful in directing attention (see Brennan et al, 2008;Stein & Brennan, 2004; see also Hinds, Patterson, & Pfeffer, 2001). That is, even the extensive literature on gaze perception has yet to determine if we follow another's gaze based on whether the person is an "expert" or "novice."…”

Example-Based Learning: Integrating Cognitive and Social-Cognitive Research Perspectives

“…This not only means that they perform very fast and tend to skip steps (Blessing and Anderson 1996;Kalyuga and Sweller 2004), which might make it difficult for students to see or follow what the model is doing but also means that the model may have difficulty verbalizing what s/he is doing because the performance does not require controlled processing (Feldon 2007). It has also been suggested that the level of abstraction of instructions provided by experts may pose problems for novices' understanding and that instructions provided by somewhat advanced individuals led to better task performance (Hinds et al 2001). On the other hand, the higher level of abstraction in expert instructions seemed to be more beneficial for solving novel tasks (i.e., transfer; Hinds et al 2001).…”

“…It has also been suggested that the level of abstraction of instructions provided by experts may pose problems for novices' understanding and that instructions provided by somewhat advanced individuals led to better task performance (Hinds et al 2001). On the other hand, the higher level of abstraction in expert instructions seemed to be more beneficial for solving novel tasks (i.e., transfer; Hinds et al 2001). Moreover, expert models might be more effective for advanced students to learn from, as they might be less bothered by the skipping of steps, as their own knowledge base is closer to that of the expert and they are more likely to know what the relevant aspects of performance are that they need to attend to (cf.…”

The Implications of Research on Expertise for Curriculum and Pedagogy

“…First, automated knowledge may be omitted from procedural explanations (e.g., Cooke & McDonald, 1987;de Groot & Gobet, 1996;Gruber, 1989;Hinds, Patterson, & Pfeffer, 2001). Second, novices process task-relevant information in a fundamentally different way than do experts.…”