Chess Cognition

There is a significant body of evidence suggesting that experts build mental pictures in a different way from novices. The classic expert/novice study was conducted in 1973 by William Chase and Herbert Simon: they found that expert chess players could remember board positions much better than novices. However, if the position on the board did not represent an actual game, the experts were no better than novices. So it seemed that, rather than simply having a better facility for remembering chess pieces, the experts were more readily able to “chunk” common patterns found in chess games. More recent research suggests that rather than chunking, experts are probably using “templates” in which most elements are constant, but a few key variables may be changed.

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