Scientific American - August 2006 issue page 1

PSYCHOLOGY AND BRAIN SCIENCE : The Expert Mind

Comprehension questions

1. True or false statements?

  1. Capablanca is a Cuban chess player who played 28 simultaneous games and won them all.
  2. Capablanca has been thinking for a relatively long time to remember each situation before making his moves.
  3. The main question asked in the first page of this article is: What is the importance of talent (innate ability) and what is the importance of intensive study to become an expert in fields such as chess, music or medicine?
  4. Chess players have been chosen to study in which ways the best players in the world differ from other very good players, because it’s relatively easy to measure their skill and their performance in tournaments.
  5. At the end of the 19th century the French psychologist Alfred Binet came to the conclusion that chess champions have a photographic memory.
  6. A blindfolded master knows the positions of all the pieces by remembering strategies that have been used, rather by a photographic memory of the chess board.
  7. To remember the logic behind the earlier moves, a blindfolded master relies more on his talent than on his rigorous training.
  8. Grandmasters spend considerably more time analyzing different possible moves than masters.
  9. Grandmasters don’t do better than weaker players when their general memory is tested.
  10. “Specific memory” refers to the memory of the strategies -- and the resulting positions of the pieces on the chess board -- that have been used by the players rather than just the mental picture of the position of each piece on the chess board.
  11. Grandmasters have developed a “specific memory” or “structured knowledge” of all the strategies in chess by working hard during several years, rather than just by relying on their talent.
  12. The best chess players, computer programmers, musicians or specialists in any specific field, became experts because of the structured knowledge they have acquired over several years, rather than because of their ability to analyze.
  13. A weak chess player became one of Canada’s top chess masters after 2 years of studying chess positions and strategies.

2. Explain

  1. How does the author of the article explain the fact that Mozart or Gauss became so good in their area already as children?


page 2

  1. In recent years there have been more chess prodigies than 50 or 100 years earlier. How is this explained?
  1. What method of study, according to Ericsson, will allow a student to become extremely good in a specific field?
  1. Why do beginners in any field usually improve very quickly, but then reach a “plateau”?
  1. What is a main difference between contemporary expert chess players or musicians and those who lived one century earlier?
  1. What was the educator Laszlo Polgar able to prove?
  1. Why does “success build on success” (l.220) ?
  1. Is it true that Capablanca just relied on his talent, as he said, to play and win 28 simultaneous chess games?
  2. What does the question “Why should there be anything in the world he can’t learn to do?” (l. 254) imply?


Scientific American - August 2006 issue page 3

PSYCHOLOGY AND BRAIN SCIENCE : The Expert Mind

Summary of lines 1-135

Since the beginning of the 20th century psychological research has been trying to explain how chess grandmasters acquire their extraordinary skill. Are they so good because of their unusual talent or because they’ve been training very intensively?

Chess players have been chosen, instead of physicists or musicians for example, because their skill can be measured when they play in tournaments. And by making statistics about their results, it’s possible to predict quite accurately how often chess players will win against other chess players.

In 1894 French psychologist Alfred Binet made the hypothesis that grandmasters (such as Capablanca who played 28 games simultaneously and won them all) have a photographic memory of the chess board. But he then realized that chess masters have a much more abstract knowledge of where the pieces stand on a chess board. For example, blindfolded chess masters know exactly where all the pieces are on a chess board, because they can mentally reconstruct the logic behind all the earlier moves. Through a long and intensive training they have developed a structured knowledge of the multitude of possible moves in a chess game. As a result, they don’t need to analyse a situation. It takes them just a few seconds to see what their next move will be.

Memory tests have shown that chess grandmasters don’t do better than good players. Like musicians or computer programmers (who remember long scores of music or hundreds of computer codes), chess masters don’t analyze consciously their strategy. Instead they rely on an intuitive knowledge based on their expertise in the field. What makes them so good is first the huge efforts they’ve made into studying the game.

Comprehension : Are the following statements True or False ?

  1. Since the beginning of the 20th century psychological research has shown that an innate ability explains why chess grandmasters have such an extraordinary skill. (True or False?)
  2. It’s easier to measure the skill of a chess player than that of a physicist or musician. (True or False?)
  3. A. Binet realized that chess grandmasters have a photographic memory rather than an abstract knowledge of the chess board. (True or False?)
  4. A structured knowledge of the many possible moves in chess depends on an innate ability rather than on intensive training. (True or False?)
  5. Chess grandmasters score better than good players in general memory tests. (True or False?)
  6. The extraordinary skill of chess masters is mainly due to their constant efforts and intensive training. (True or False?)


Scientific American - August 2006 issue page 4

PSYCHOLOGY AND BRAIN SCIENCE : The Expert Mind

I. Language questions: Replace the following expressions by a synonym (or another expression that means the same), or explain in your own words.

  1. (l. 140) “states”:
  2. (l. 140) “approximately”:
  3. (l. 141) “decade”:
  4. (l. 145) “the proliferation of chess prodigies”
  1. (l. 148) “forerunners”:
  2. (l. 157) “overtake them”:
  3. (l. 162) “novice”:
  4. (l. 171-172) “grow ever more challenging:
  5. (l. 178) “far more accurately”:
  6. (l. 183) “well below the level”:
  7. (l. 192-193): “is … lacking in hard evidence”