Visual span in expert chess players: evidence from eye movements.
The reported research extends classic findings that after briefly viewing structured, but not random, chess positions, chess masters reproduce these positions much more accurately than less-skilled players. Using a combination of the gaze-contingent window paradigm and the change blindness flicker paradigm, we documented dramatically larger visual spans for experts while processing structured, but not random, chess positions. In addition, in a check-detection task, a minimized 3 x 3 chessboard containing a King and potentially checking pieces was displayed. In this task, experts made fewer fixations per trial than less-skilled players, and had a greater proportion of fixations between individual pieces, rather than on pieces. Our results provide strong evidence for a perceptual encoding advantage for experts attributable to chess experience, rather than to a general perceptual or memory superiority.
Reingold
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Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. reingold@psych.toronto.edu
Charness
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N
Pomplun
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Stampe
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DM
D000328:Adult; D005403:Fixation, Ocular / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology; D010988:Play and Playthings; D012438:Saccades / Q000502:physiology*; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*