The Road to Excellence: The Acquisition of Expert Performance in the Arts and Sciences, Sports, and GamesKarl Anders Ericsson Excellence and the highest levels of performance in the arts and sciences, sports, and games have always been an object of fascination to both scientists and lay people. Only during the last 20 years have scientists studied these levels of performance in the laboratory in order to identify their mediating mechanisms. Contrary to the common belief that innate talents are the critical factors for exceptional performance, investigators have found that acquired skills, knowledge, and physiological adaptations in response to intense practice are the primary mechanisms, mediating the highest levels of performance. This is the first and only book to examine how elite performers effect their exceptional accomplishments. The world's leading researchers on expert performance and creative achievement review theories and recent findings from many different domains of expertise on how experts optimize improvement in their performance and eventually attain excellence. Elite performers are shown to have engaged in deliberate-practice activities specifically designed to improve their performance from an early age. By age 20 they have often accumulated over 10,000 hours of practice! The essential elements of deliberate practice, such as specific goals to improve performance, successive refinement through repetition, feedback and instruction, are explicated for different domains. Although the content of practice tasks will necessarily differ from domain to domain, investigators have found invariant characteristics for the optimal duration of practice sessions, maximal amounts of daily practice, the length of intense preparation (around 10 years), and ages of peak performance. Some of the book's chapters extend the review to the acquisition of everyday-life skills such as reading, to the performance of teams of experts, and to the development of creative achievement, geniuses, and artistic child prodigies. The book concludes with commentaries by several outstanding scientists in psychology, education, and history of science who discuss the generalizability of presented ideas and raise issues for future issues. EXTRA COPY...It could be said that striving for excellence is what characterizes humanity, or perhaps what characterizes humanity at its best. Why do so few individuals ever reach the highest levels when so many start out on the Road to Excellence? In this book, the world's foremost researchers of expert performance in domains as diverse as sports, medicine, chess, and the arts explore the similarities and differences in the extended and strenuous Road to Excellence taken by the successful individuals in each domain. Their findings will intrigue and inspire readers who are themselves driven to achieve or who simply want to better understand the processes involved. |
From inside the book
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Page 36
... argue that changes in accuracy require impasses or failures as preconditions for efforts to adjust the mechanisms ... argument in writing from memory . By comparing his reproduction to the original , he was able to identify differences ...
... argue that changes in accuracy require impasses or failures as preconditions for efforts to adjust the mechanisms ... argument in writing from memory . By comparing his reproduction to the original , he was able to identify differences ...
Page 271
... argue that individual differences in innate ability exist , and that high levels of ability include a motivational ... argued that hard work is all that there is to exceptional achievement in any domain . For instance , Howe ( 1990 ) ...
... argue that individual differences in innate ability exist , and that high levels of ability include a motivational ... argued that hard work is all that there is to exceptional achievement in any domain . For instance , Howe ( 1990 ) ...
Page 348
... argue as to what proportions of variation among individuals are environmental , what proportions innate , and what proportions interactive , the evidence in favor of some innate contribution is overwhelming ( see , e.g. , Bouchard ...
... argue as to what proportions of variation among individuals are environmental , what proportions innate , and what proportions interactive , the evidence in favor of some innate contribution is overwhelming ( see , e.g. , Bouchard ...
Contents
What Is It Anyway? | 81 |
The Acquisition of Medical Expertise | 127 |
Perceptual and Memory Processes in the Acquisition | 167 |
Copyright | |
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The Road to Excellence: The Acquisition of Expert Performance in the Arts ... Karl Anders Ericsson No preview available - 1996 |
Common terms and phrases
ability achievement acquired acquisition of expertise activities amount analysis athletes attained behavior Cambridge University Press career chap Charness chess position chess rating child prodigies chunks club coaches Cognitive Science complex correlation creative potential decision deliberate practice developmental diagnostic reasoning distributed cognition domain of expertise drawing Educational Psychology effects Elo Rating environment EPAM Ericsson evaluation evidence example experimental expert performance factors figure skating Glaser grand mean Hillsdale improvement individual differences interaction Journal knowledge Krampe laboratory Lawrence Erlbaum Associates learning levels of performance mechanisms memory Moe Norman musicians novices Patel patient phonological awareness play precocious predicted print exposure problem solving Psychology relevant representation role scientists Simon Simonton situations skaters skill acquisition Sloboda speed readers Stanovich Sternberg strategies structure talent tasks Tesch-Römer theory of expertise tion typically variables volume wrestlers York