The long-term objectives are to identify micro-level cognitive processes and macro-level cultural mechanisms that support the development of high-level skill in problem solving across the life-span. A major focus is on the compensatory mechanisms that older adults may use to allow them to maintain high performance levels on difficult problem-solving tasks despite age-related declines in information processing efficiency. Understanding compensatory processes may be instrumental in helping aging adults to cope intelligently with negative changes in physical and mental health, as well as to help maintain the productivity of our aging labor force. We will focus on expert problem solving in chess, because chess problem solving relies on basic perceptual, attentional, memory, and search processes,enabling it to serve as a model task environment for exploring age trends in cognition in general, and expert problem solving in particular. Further, public records of chess ratings enable population-level analyses of life-span and cultural patterns. The following questions form the core concerns of this project: How do chess players acquire and maintain skill in chess across the life-span? What types of study and practice patterns do they use? What role do cultural and social factors associated with age, nationality, and gender play in acquiring skill? Can older players compensate for reduced processing efficiency by drawing on acquired knowledge? What types of knowledge support chess expertise? How does the search process, the core component of problem solving in chess, vary with age, skill, and problem difficulty? We will examine longitudinal chess performance via chess rating lists from the USA and from the World Chess Federation (FIDE). A subset of these players in Germany, Russia, Canada, and the USA will be contracted to participate in the following projects: A) Interviews to gather practicing behavior data, shown to be one of the primary determinants of skill acquisition and maintenance. We will probe social and cultural supports for acquiring and maintaining skill. Follow-up studies will examine practice on-line for a subset of players. B) Chess and non-chess control experiments that will probe the perceptual and cognitive components of skill. Eye-movement studies will trace perceptual matching processes. Time-accuracy functions and think aloud procedures will probe memory and problem solving processes. We will model age and skill effects using EPAM-like computer simulations that vary speed and working memory capacity.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute on Aging (NIA)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01AG013969-04
Application #
2909672
Study Section
Mental Disorders of Aging Review Committee (MDA)
Program Officer
Elias, Jeffrey W
Project Start
1996-09-13
Project End
2001-04-30
Budget Start
1999-05-01
Budget End
2000-04-30
Support Year
4
Fiscal Year
1999
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
Florida State University
Department
Psychology
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
020520466
City
Tallahassee
State
FL
Country
United States
Zip Code
32306
Moxley, Jerad H; Ericsson, K Anders; Charness, Neil et al. (2012) The role of intuition and deliberative thinking in experts' superior tactical decision-making. Cognition 124:72-8
Charness, Neil; Tuffiash, Michael (2008) The role of expertise research and human factors in capturing, explaining, and producing superior performance. Hum Factors 50:427-32
Jastrzembski, Tiffany S; Charness, Neil; Vasyukova, Catherine (2006) Expertise and age effects on knowledge activation in chess. Psychol Aging 21:401-5
Mireles, David E; Charness, Neil (2002) Computational explorations of the influence of structured knowledge on age-related cognitive decline. Psychol Aging 17:245-59
Charness, N; Reingold, E M; Pomplun, M et al. (2001) The perceptual aspect of skilled performance in chess: evidence from eye movements. Mem Cognit 29:1146-52
Reingold, E M; Charness, N; Schultetus, R S et al. (2001) Perceptual automaticity in expert chess players: parallel encoding of chess relations. Psychon Bull Rev 8:504-10
Reingold, E M; Charness, N; Pomplun, M et al. (2001) Visual span in expert chess players: evidence from eye movements. Psychol Sci 12:48-55
Schultetus, R S; Charness, N (1999) Recall or evaluation of chess positions revisited: the relationship between memory and evaluation in chess skill. Am J Psychol 112:555-69