Expert performance in SCRABBLE: Implications for the study of the structure and acquisition of complex skills.

Abstract

Applied psychologists have long been interested in examining expert performance in complex cognitive domains. In the present article, we report the results from a study of expert cognitive skill in which elements from two historically distinct research paradigms are incorporated -- the individual differences tradition and the expert-performance approach. Forty tournament-rated SCRABBLE players (20 elite, 20 average) and 40 unrated novice players completed a battery of domain-representative laboratory tasks and standardized verbal ability tests. The analyses revealed that elite- and average-level rated players only significantly differed from each other on tasks representative of SCRABBLE performance. Furthermore, domain-relevant practice mediated the effects of SCRABBLE tournament ratings on representative task performance, suggesting that SCRABBLE players can acquire some of the knowledge necessary for success at the highest levels of competition by engaging in activities deliberately designed to maximize adaptation to SCRABBLE-specific task constraints. We discuss the potential importance of our results in the context of continuing efforts to capture and explain superior performance across intellectual domains.

How a hobby can shape cognition: visual word recognition in competitive Scrabble players

“…(4) Vocabulary was assessed with the short form of the North American Adult Reading Test (NAART35; Uttl, 2002), in which participants are asked to pronounce 35 English words of irregular spelling as accurately as possible. And, finally, (5) anagramming skill was assessed by asking participants to solve 51 computer-presented anagrams (Tuffiash et al, 2007). The order of these assessments was counterbalanced across participants.…”

“…We then administered to each participant the following tests: (1) Perceptual speed was assessed with the WAIS III Digit-symbol coding task (Wechsler, 1997), in which participants are presented with nine digit-symbol pairs, and then a list of digits for which they are asked to provide the appropriate symbol, completing as many as possible in 120 s. (2) Category and letter/word fluency were assessed with the Controlled Oral Word Association Test (COWAT; Spreen & Strauss, 1998), in which participants are asked to verbally generate as many animal names as they can (in 60 s) and, separately, to generate words beginning with "F," "A," "S," and, in the present case, "UN" (again, in 60 s apiece), following Tuffiash et al (2007). (3) Exposure to print was assessed with the Revised Author Recognition Test (Acheson, Wells & MacDonald, 2008), in which participants are presented with a list of 130 names and are asked to identify which are the names of real authors (65 are real author names).…”

“…Interestingly, very few players report focusing on the meanings of the words as they study (Halpern & Wai, 2007). Recent evidence suggests that the degree of Scrabble expertise (captured through an official ratings system) can be attributed to hours spent in deliberate practice and not to other endogenous factors, such as working memory or perceptual processing speed (Tuffiash et al, 2007). The purpose of the present study was to explore how competitive Scrabble experience might shape visual word recognition behavior.…”

“…Since undergraduate students are the standard sample for word recognition studies, these participants provided a sense of what would typically be observed in the laboratory for our task and stimuli. Undergraduate students do not, however, provide a suitable comparison group for Scrabble experts, as competitive Scrabble players tend to be much older than undergraduates and have larger vocabularies (Tuffiash et al, 2007), and likely higher print exposure. As such, in Experiment 2 we compared Scrabble experts to nonexpert age-matched control participants.…”

“…This creates strong incentive for players to both quickly and accurately recognize large numbers of real words. Expert players are reported to dedicate large amounts of time to studying the approximately 180,000 words listed in the Official Tournament and Club Word List (Halpern & Wai, 2007;Tuffiash, Roring & Ericsson, 2007). The challenge posed by mastery of such exhaustive lists of words has led to a proliferation of specific adaptive study strategies.…”