Böcker av Jerad Moxley

Research on the cognitive basis of chess skill has focused primarily on chess knowledgestructures and their relevance in accounting for superior recall of briefly presented chesspositions by chess experts. The direct relevance of research on short-term recall of chess positionto superior move selection, is based on two theoretical assumptions that have not been fullytested. The first assumption is that the chess knowledge structures are automatically activatedduring the perception of a position in a similar manner for both tasks requiring short-term recalland selection of the best move. Because experts are thought to have greater knowledge and thisgreater knowledge is thought to be activated automatically it has been argued that experts areless harmed by reduction in available time for selecting a move than weaker players. The secondassumption is that the knowledge structures that mediate the selection of a chess move can beadequately captured by a memory task for briefly presented positions. This dissertationattempted to test these two assumptions. Study 1 found no general interaction between timegiven to solve a chess problem and chess skill on the strength of move selection, instead findinga relatively stable expert advantage across times. Additionally, it established this even for the 5 scondition typically used to study memory. Study 2 presented chess positions to players for 5 seither to select the best move or to recall the position. In the condition involving the selection ofa move, players were asked to recall the position after announcing their selected move. The studyfound substantial differences in the structure of recall between the two conditions. Additionally,certain expected features such as a bimodal distribution of response times were not found callinginto question some assumptions of chunking theory.