Deliberate Practice versus Experience:

Using the Expert-Performance Approach to

Identify the Causes of Reproducibly Superior Professional Performance
by

K. Anders Ericsson
Department of Psychology
Florida State University
Tallahassee, Florida, USA

An impressive body of empirical evidence on the acquisition of expert performance and expertise has
been summarized and reviewed in the recently published Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and
Expert Performance. Most of this evidence has been collected in domains of expertise, where
performance can publicly observed and even objectively measured by public performances by
musicians, dancers, chess players, and athletes. In these domains the past and current engagement
in specially designed practice (deliberate practice) has been found to explain how the performance of
experts is qualitatively different from enthusiastic amateurs in music, sport, and games, and how this
type of practice can lead to physiological changes, such as increased size of hearts and thickness of
bones, as well as to complex cognitive mechanisms permitting superior anticipation of events and
improved ability to plan and reason.
In this presentation I will discuss how this theoretical framework has already been applied and
how it could be further extended to the study of the measurement and enhanced development of
professional performance. One of the key issues is how some individuals restructure their professional
activities so the quality can and will be regularly evaluated to provide detailed and reliable feedback to
guide deliberate practice in designed practice environments. Factors that promote the engagement in
deliberate practice in professional environments and the attainment and maintenance of high levels of
performance will be discussed.

Brief biographical description

with a listing of scientific papers
ERICSSON, K. ANDERS, is Conradi Eminent Scholar and Professor of Psychology at
Florida State University. In 1976 he received his Ph. D. in Psychology from University of
Stockholm, Sweden, followed by post-doctoral fellowship at Carnegie-Mellon University.
In 1980 he moved to University of Colorado at Boulder, where he remained until 1992
with the exception of a two-year leave during 1987-89 at the Max-Planck Institute for
Human Development and Education in Berlin.

His dissertation (Ericsson, 1976) examined how verbal reports on cognitive processes
provided insight into the structure of problem solving on the 8-puzzle. In collaboration
with Herbert Simon he proposed a model of the processes involved in verbalization of
sequences of thought and showed how some verbal report requirements, such as
generations of explanation, have reactive effects on the studied cognitive processes
whereas other reporting procedures, such as think-aloud and retrospective reports,
valid data on thought processes. This work was initially published in Psychological
Review (Ericsson & Simon, 1980) and then expanded into a book "Protocol Analysis:
Verbal Reports as Data" (Ericsson & Simon, 1984) which was subsequently revised
(Ericsson & Simon, 1993). With Bill Chase he studied the acquisition of a vastly
improved digit-span in college students (Ericsson, Chase, & Faloon, 1980) and they
developed the Theory of Skilled Memory (Chase & Ericsson, 1982; Ericsson & Chase,
1982) to explain their findings and other data on exceptional memory performance.
With Walter Kintsch he extended this theory into Long-Term Working Memory
(Ericsson & Kintsch, 1995) to account also for the superior working memory of expert
performers and memory experts (Ericsson, 1985; Ericsson & Polson, 1988).

His current research concerns the structure and acquisition of expert performance and
in particular how expert performers acquire and maintain their superior performance
by extended deliberate practice (Ericsson, 1998; Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Römer,
1993; Ericsson & Charness, 1994; Ericsson & Lehmann, 1996; Krampe & Ericsson,
1996, Lehmann & Ericsson, 1998a). He has edited books on the structure of expertise
"Toward a General Theory of Expertise: Prospects and Limits" (Ericsson & Smith,
1991) and the acquisition of expert performance "The Road to Excellence: The
Acquisition of Expert Performance in the Arts and Sciences, Sports, and Games"
(Ericsson, 1996). For some recent reviews of the continuing work on expert performance
(see Ericsson, 1998, 1999, in press), on Long-term working memory (LTWM) (see
Ericsson & Delaney, 1998, 1999; Ericsson & Kintsch (in press); Ericsson, Patel &
Kintsch, 2000) on protocol analysis (see Crutcher & Ericsson, 2000; Ericsson & Simon,
1998) and expert performance in music (see Lehmann & Ericsson, 1998a, 1998b, 1999).

References

Chase, W. G., & Ericsson, K. A. (1982). Skill and working memory. In G. H.

Bower (Ed.), the psychology of learning and motivation, Vol. 16 (pp. 1-58).
New York: Academic Press.

Crutcher, R. J., & Ericsson , K. A. (2000). The role of mediators in memory

retrieval as a function of practice: Controlled mediation to direct access.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.

Ericsson, K. A. (1976). Approaches to descriptions and analyses of problem-

solving processes: The 8-puzzle. Reports from the Department of
Psychology, the University of Stockholm, Supplement No. 32 (Doctoral
dissertation).

Ericsson, K. A. (1985). Memory skill. Canadian Journal of Psychology, 39(2),

188-231.

Ericsson, K. A. (Ed.) (1996). The road to excellence: The acquisition of

expert performance in the arts and sciences, sports, and games. Mahweh,
NJ: Erlbaum.

Ericsson, K. A. (1998). The Scientific Study of Expert Levels of Performance:

General Implications for Optimal Learning and Creativity. High Ability
Studies, 9(1), 75-100.

Ericsson, K. A. (1999). Creative Expertise as Superior Reproducible

Performance: Innovative and Flexible Aspects of Expert Performance.
Psychological Inquiry, 10(4), 329-333.
Ericsson, K. A. (in press). Attaining excellence through deliberate practice:
Insights from the study of expert performance. In M. Ferrari (Ed.), The
pursuit of excellence in education. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum.

Ericsson, K. A., & Charness, N. (1994). Expert performance: Its structure

and acquisition. American Psychologist, 49(8), 725-747.

Ericsson, K. A., & Chase, W. G. (1982). Exceptional memory. American

Scientist, 70, 607-615.

Ericsson, K. A., Chase, W. G., & Faloon, S. (1980). Acquisition of a memory

skill. Science, 208, 1181-1182.

Ericsson, K. A., & Delaney, P. F. (1998). Working memory and expert

performance. In R. H. Logie and K. J. Gilhooly (Eds.), Working Memory and
Thinking (pp. 93-114). Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum.

Ericsson, K. A., & Delaney, P. F. (1999). Long-term working memory as an

alternative to capacity models of working memory in everyday skilled
performance. In A. Miyake and P. Shah (Eds.), Models of Working Memory:
Mechanisms of Active Maintenance and Executive Control" (pp. 257-297),
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Ericsson, K. A., & Kintsch, W. (in press). Shortcomings of Generic Retrieval

Structures with Slots of the Type that Gobet (1993) Proposed and Modeled.
British Journal of Psychology.

Ericsson, K. A., & Kintsch, W. (1995). Long-term working memory.

Psychological Review, 102(2), 211-245.

Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, R. Th., & Tesch-Römer, C. (1993). The role of

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Ericsson, K. A., & Lehmann, A. C. (1996). Expert and exceptional

performance: Evidence on maximal adaptations on task constraints. Annual
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Ericsson, K. A., Patel, V. L., & Kintsch, W. (2000). How experts' adaptations
to representative task demands account for the expertise effect in memory
recall: Comment on Vicente and Wang (1998). Psychological Review, 107.

Ericsson, K. A., & Polson, P. G. (1988). An experimental analysis of the

mechanisms of a memory skill. Journal of Experimental Psychology:
Learning, Memory and Cognition, 14, 305-316.

Ericsson, K. A., & Simon, H. A. (1980). Verbal reports as data. Psychological

Review, 87, 215-251.

Ericsson, K. A., & Simon, H. A. (1984). Protocol analysis: Verbal reports as

data. Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books/MIT Press.
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Ericsson, K. A., & Simon, H. A. (1998). How to study thinking in everyday

life: Contrasting think-aloud protocols with descriptions and explanations of
thinking. Mind, Culture, & Activity, 5(3), 178-186.

Ericsson, K. A., & Smith, J. (Eds.) (1991). Toward a general theory of

expertise: Prospects and limits. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kintsch, W., Patel, V. L. & Ericsson, K. A. (1999). The role of Long-Term

Working-Memory in text comprehension. Psychologica, 42, 186-198.

Krampe, R. Th., & Ericsson, K. A. (1996). Maintaining excellence: Deliberate

practice and elite performance in young and older pianists. Journal of
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Lehmann, A. C., & Ericsson K. A. (1998a). The historical development of

domains of expertise: Performance standards and innovations in music. In
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Lehmann, A. C., & Ericsson K. A. (1998b). Preparation of a public piano

performance: The relation between practice and performance. Musicae
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Lehmann, A. C., & Ericsson K. A. (1999). Research on expert performance

and deliberate practice: Some implications for the education of amateur
musicians and music students. Psychomusicology, 16, 40-58.