Paul Ward

• MSc PhD CErgHF FIEHF CPsychol AFBPsS CSci
• Chief Scientist at MITRE

Expertise researchers have traditionally shied away from studying the highest levels of achievement in favor of studying basic cognitive processes, such as memory and categorization. In this article, we present a different approach that is focused on capturing superior (expert) performance on representative tasks that reveal the essential character...

Speed in acquiring the knowledge and skills to perform tasks is crucial. Yet, it still ordinarily takes many years to achieve high proficiency in countless jobs and professions, in government, business, industry, and throughout the private sector. There would be great advantages if regimens of training could be established that could accelerate the...

General Audience Summary Adaptive thinking is an area of concern for organizations, business, government, and society. Very little is known, however, about what makes an expert adaptive, or how the research that is relevant to this question has contributed to our understanding. This paper provides a taking-stock synthesis of the discussions and evi...

The Oxford Handbook of Expertise provides a comprehensive picture of the field of Expertise Studies. It offers both traditional and contemporary perspectives, and importantly, a multidiscipline-multimethod view of the science and engineering research on expertise. The book presents different perspectives, theories, and methods of conducting experti...

Wargames and tabletop exercises (TTXs) have existed for centuries in military planning contexts but have seen relatively limited use as methods of inquiry within the human factors community of practice. We argue that that the use of these tools is not commensurate with their value, as they are effective and efficient means to conduct naturalistic i...

Providing decision makers with more information is often expected to result in more informed and superior decisions. This is especially true when leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to explore and find complex patterns in vast amounts of data. Although AI can enable an “information advantage,” truly intelligent systems should buffer scarce huma...

Wargames and tabletop exercises (TTXs) have existed for centuries in military planning contexts but have seen relatively limited use as methods of inquiry within the human factors community of practice. We argue that that the use of these tools is not commensurate with their value, as they are effective and efficient means to conduct naturalistic i...

Introduction The objective of this study is to investigate the extent to which sighted persons understand thought processes of persons who are visually impaired (i.e., those who are blind or have low vision). The investigation focused on a street-crossing task. Method Participants were 15 visually impaired persons and 21 sighted persons. The sight...

The study of the sociology of scientific knowledge distinguishes between contributory and interactional experts. Contributory experts have practical expertise—they can “walk the walk.” Interactional experts have internalized the tacit components of expertise—they can “talk the talk” but are not able to reliably “walk the walk.” Interactional expert...

The authors tested the notion that expertise effects would be more noticeable when access to situational information was reduced by occluding (i.e., noncued) or freezing (i.e., cued) the environment under temporal constraints. Using an adaptation of tasks developed by Ward, Ericsson, and Williams, the participants viewed video clips of attacking so...

Mentoring and coaching are effective and sometimes necessary strategies to foster the development of expertise. However, these learning enhancement methods are multifactorial and often ambiguously characterized. The goal of this chapter is to unpack this complex interactional relationship to more fully describe what it means to be an effective coac...

Despite the attention garnered in the media about police use of force, there have been relatively few investigations of perceptual–cognitive skill in law enforcement using the naturalistic-decision-making approach. In this paper, we provide an overview of a series of four studies in which we investigated experience-based differences in police offic...

Naturalistic Decision Making (NDM) encapsulates the cognitive challenges associated with making decisions in demanding and uncertain situations. This meeting discusses real-world investigations of decision-making by practitioners in high-risk domains. It examines their macrocognitive skills, sensemaking skills and expertise responsible for their h...

How and why do experts implement advanced cognitions and behaviours? •How do cognitions differ from trainees? •How can differences be taught explicitly? ..'you can’t see it, it’s just feel. That is one of the reasons why the trainees feel it’s very difficult when it comes to this area.They don’t understand what I’m doing.' Aim:To create a virtual...

A smartphone-based traffic light assistant application, EnLighten, was investigated for its ability to improve subjective driving experience and safely reduce the time it took drivers to ‘move off’ at signalised intersections. Five drivers participated in four trials over a period of three weeks. Testing took place on public roads in unaltered norm...

Vehicles are currently being developed and sold with increasing levels of connectivity and automation. As with all networked computing devices, increased connectivity often results in a heightened risk of a cyber security attack. Furthermore, increased automation exacerbates any risk by increasing the opportunities for the adversary to implement a...

Research on decision-making under stress has mainly involved laboratory-based studies with few contextual descriptions of decision-making under stress in the natural ecology. We examined how police officers prepared for, coped with, and made decisions under threat-of-death stress during real events. A delayed retrospective report method was used to...

Operations in cyberspace are enabled by a digitized battlefield. The ability to control operations in cyberspace has become a central goal for defence forces. As a result, terms like cyber power, cyberspace operations and cyber deterrence have begun to emerge in military literature in an effort to describe and highlight the importance of related ac...

During skill execution, performers have been shown to attend to different aspects of movement, the external effects of one’s action, or to other environmental information. A variety of psychological mechanisms have been proposed to account for the differential outcomes when adopting each attentional strategy. However, there is limited information a...

Research demonstrates the importance of perceptual-cognitive skills, such as pattern matching, anticipation, and decision making in numerous sports, including badminton [1], baseball [2], basketball [3], handball [4], rugby [5], soccer [6], squash [7], tennis [8], and volleyball [9]. While other factors may be important (e.g., visual search pattern...

Background: Simple observational assessment of movement is a potentially low-cost method for anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury screening and prevention. Although many individuals utilize some form of observational assessment of movement, there are currently no substantial data on group skill differences in observational screening of ACL inju...

In the present paper, expert and novice law enforcement officers performed a handgun shooting task under varied attention-demanding conditions; outcome (i.e. accuracy, consistency) and movement kinematics were measured (i.e. within and between-trial variability (BTV) of forearm and upper arm absolute angle). Using a dual-task paradigm, we directed...

Researchers interested in performance in complex and dynamic situations have focused on how individuals predict their opponent(s) potential courses of action (i.e., during assessment) and generate potential options about how to respond (i.e., during intervention). When generating predictive options, previous research supports the use of cognitive m...

Instrument-based biomechanical movement analysis is an effective injury screening method but relies on expensive equipment and time-consuming analysis. Screening methods that rely on visual inspection and perceptual skill for prognosticating injury risk provide an alternative approach that can significantly reduce cost and time. However, substantia...

Available methods for screening anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury risk are effective but limited in application as they generally rely on expensive and time-consuming biomechanical movement analysis. A potentially efficient alternative to biomechanical screening is skilled movement analysis via visual inspection (ie, having experts estimate i...

The role of visual information and action representations in executing a motor task was examined from a mental representations approach. High-skill (n = 20) and low-skill (n = 20) soccer players performed a passing task to two targets at distances of 9.14 and 18.29 m, under three visual conditions: normal, occluded, and distorted vision (i.e., +4.0...

Option-generation paradigms have been employed successfully to investigate skill-based differences in performance, particularly in complex, dynamic, and/or uncertain domains. However, although knowledge of option-generation behavior (e.g., number of options generated, frequency with which the criterion best option is selected) is informative, the u...

Current education systems must respond to meet the increasing need for cyber security and information technology (IT) professionals. However, little research has been conducted on understanding the development of expertise in cyber security and IT, the efficacy of current systems designed to accelerate expertise and/or train cyber security and IT p...

Previous research has shown that anticipation is one of the best determinants of skill in numerous complex and dynamic domains, such as law enforcement, driving, aviation, surgery, and sport (for a review see Ward, Williams, & Hancock, 2006). Likewise, recognition ability has formed the cornerstone of much of the naturalistic decision making litera...

Objective: The study examined the clinical performance differences of novices before and after a critical care internship and compare their performance attributes to a reference group comprised of experienced critical care nurses. The extant research regarding clinical internship programs has focused on retention in practice, workforce issues and c...

Identifying individuals with a high risk for ACL injury is important for injury prevention. Current screening methods exist but rely on expensive and time consuming biomechanical analysis, limiting large scale application. The aim of this experiment was to investigate observational ACL injury risk assessment performance. Individual raters viewed 25...

Introduction In complex, dynamic environments, successful performance often depends on the ability to make accurate predictions. Skilled prediction includes the ability to anticipate the future state of the current situation prior to acting on it, to predict a personal future position prior to pursuing an intended course of action, as well as to pr...

A verbal protocol or verbal report is a cognitive task analysis (CTA) technique designed to elicit a verbalizable report of an individual's thinking during task performance. Verbal protocols are typically elicited by trained researchers as a means to access information heeded (attended) during task performance; this is usually for the purpose of un...

Backgrounds With the increasing use of simulation in nursing education and a growing acceptance of simulation as a component of student’s clinical experiences, there is a need to provide evidence of a relationship between knowledge, performance in simulated task environments, and actual clinical performance. Methods This study used a pre/post test...

While previous research indicates wide wealth dispersion at retirement within households with similar lifetime incomes, there have been few attempts to identify personal financial behaviors associated with retirement wealth in households matched for lifetime income. Householders with similar demographics and lifetime income but differing markedly i...

Perceptual anticipation has often been investigated using a video-based, temporal occlusion paradigm, especially in sport. In this paradigm, the participants’ task is to predict the outcome of the situation based only on the information prior to the occlusion. The occlusion point(s) has typically been based on objective, physically-deterministic ev...

Among daily computer users who are proficient, some are flexible at accomplishing unfamiliar tasks on their own and others have difficulty. We hypothesize that extrinsically motivated users have difficulty with unfamiliar computer tasks and skill transfers, whereas intrinsically motivated daily users accomplish unfamiliar tasks readily. Nine extrin...

AbstrAct: In popular models of expertise and decision making in complex environments, such as the recognition-primed decision (RPD) model and take-the-first (TTF) heuristic, expert and skilled decision makers are described as generating few response options and typically choose the best option first. To explain these behaviors, proponents of TTF ha...

Attunement to visual information has been suggested to mediate the performance advantage associated with adopting an external focus of attention (e.g., Al-Abood, Bennett, Moreno Hernandez, Ashford, & Davids, 2002; Magill, 1998). We tested this hypothesis by examining the extent to which online visual information underpins the external focus advanta...

Recently, researchers have focused on how individuals generate different courses of action (i.e., options) on-the-fly, and predict the options to be taken by others. When generating predictive options, previous research supports the use of cognitive mechanisms described by Long Term Working Memory (LTWM) theory (Ericsson & Kintsch, 1995; Ward, Eric...

The aim of this article was to provide a response that supports and extends Schiavenato’s call for a theoretically guided approach to simulation use in nursing education. We propose that a theoretical framework for simulation in nursing must first include, as a basis, a theoretical understanding of human performance and how it is enhanced. This und...

Studies of "choking under pressure" suggest novices choke because attention is distracted away from the primary task. In contrast with the traditional research on stress and performance, where additional resources made available with increasing skill can ameliorate the effects of stress, experts are thought to degrade because stress draws attention...

We examined whether high- or low-performing soccer players, classified based on established measures of perceptual-cognitive expertise, differed in regard to their practice history profiles and ability to recall elements of match performance. In Study 1, we measured perceptual-cognitive expertise in elite (n= 48) and non-elite (n= 12) youth soccer...

Increasing attentional demands using secondary tasks has detrimental effects on primary psychomotor task performance, especially in novices. However, experts can reduce these effects to maintain their level of performance across task conditions. What is less clear, however, is the effect of increased attentional demand on movement variability acros...

Summary of Key Findings and Issues That Require ClarificationMethods and MeasuresConclusion

Graphic designers and model builders frequently rotate graphical objects on computer displays to make a drawing or scene. This experiment measured the movement time and error rate for participants to rotate sectors with various angular widths within larger target sectors with various angular tolerances, using a mouse wheel with discrete physical in...

We manipulated contextual information in order to examine the perceptual-cognitive processes that support anticipation using a simulated cricket-batting task. Skilled (N= 10) and less skilled (N= 10) cricket batters responded to video simulations of opponents bowling a cricket ball under high and low contextual information conditions. Skilled batte...

We review contemporary research on perceptual-cognitive expertise in sport and consider implications for those working in the field of applied cognitive psychology. We identify the important perceptual-cognitive skills that facilitate anticipation in sport and illustrate how these skills interact in a dynamic manner during performance. We also high...

In recent models of decision-making, cognitive scientists have examined the relationship between option generation and successful performance. These models suggest that those who are successful at decision-making generate few courses of action and typically choose the first, often best, option. Scientists working in the area of expert performance,...

The aim of this study was to demonstrate how research on emotion in sport psychology might inform the field of human factors. Human factors historically has paid little attention to the role of emotion within the research on human-system relations. The theories, methods, and practices related to research on emotion within sport psychology might be...

This article offers a critical evaluation of the team cognition and performance literature and, in particular, the concepts, ideas, and research discussed by the authors contributing to this special issue. We begin by examining how some of the terms introduced have been defined previously and assess the appropriateness of and theoretical rationale...

We examined the mechanisms underlying skilled anticipation and recognition in a dynamic, interactive, and temporally constrained domain. Skilled and less-skilled participants viewed dynamic film stimuli, anticipated event outcome, and provided immediate retrospective verbal reports. Previously viewed and novel sequences were then presented in film...

Studies of "choking under pressure" suggest novices choke because attention is distracted away from the primary task. In contrast with the traditional research on stress and performance, where additional resources made available with increasing skill can ameliorate the effects of stress, experts are thought to degrade because stress draws attention...

The recognition-primed decision (RPD) model and Take the First (TTF) heuristic assert that successful and experienced decision makers typically generate relatively few options, and generate a satisficing, or the best, option first. Moreover, the TTF heuristic suggests that as more options are generated the likelihood that the best option will be se...

On-court instruction involving either Perception–action training or Perception-only training was used to improve anticipation skill in novice tennis players. A technical instruction group acted as a control. Participants' ability to anticipate an opponent's serve was assessed pre- and posttest using established on-court measures involving frame-by-...

This study, based on the Expert Performance Approach, examined the clinical nursing performance of participants who were introduced into a simulated task environment requiring them to administer care to a client experiencing an exacerbation of Congestive Heart Failure. This was undertaken to identify cognitive and physiologic variables that differe...

The purpose of this study was to measure directly the knowledge and performance of novice and experienced critical care nurses in a simulated task environment. Nurses were required to control the physiologic deterioration of patients with respiratory compromise in 4 scenarios and were also tested on their knowledge of the constructs present in the...

We examined whether skilled and less-skilled participants process dynamic sequences comprised of numerous elements using relational information or specific display features. Moreover, the processes underpinning anticipation and recognition judgments were compared. Participants viewed dynamic film sequences showing multiple display features and anti...

Professionals such as medical doctors, aeroplane pilots, lawyers, and technical specialists find that some of their peers have reached high levels of achievement that are difficult to measure objectively. In order to understand to what extent it is possible to learn from these expert performers for the purpose of helping others improve their perfor...

Experts acquire domain‐specific skills as a result of the activities in which they participate throughout their development. We examine the domain‐specific activities in which two groups of elite youth soccer players participated between six and 12 years of age. Our goal was to examine early participation differences between those who progressed to...

Skilled perceptual-cognitive performance is assumed to require superior anticipation, yet few researchers have explored how individual differences in processing measures mediate superior performance, particularly when characteristics of the task are systematically changed from trial to trial. This study examined how advance cue information influenc...

Objective: The objective of the study was to identify and describe the extent, function, nature, and timeline of practice and preparation activities undertaken by experts in order to adapt to constraints unique to a specific upcoming competition. Method: A content analysis was conducted of data from interviews with 15 expert orienteers and six expe...

The aim of this article is to provide an overview of research on expertise and training in complex domains. First, we present a summary of the origins of the research on expertise and the development of current theory in expert performance. Then we present a synopsis of the literature on expert performance in sport and perceptual-cognitive skills t...

In line with the proposed themes of this conference and cognizant that gains in understanding are often enhanced notably by a consideration of findings from outside of a particular field (Dunbar, 1995), we demonstrate here how the burgeoning field of sport psychology might inform views of the future of the human factors and ergonomics profession. F...

The study of expert performance has become a popular area for sport psychologists. Knowledge of factors that differentiate those with varying levels of skill is helpful in determining the limits on human performance and in designing suitable training interventions and support mechanisms to facilitate the acquisition of expertise. The expert perform...

In military and sports tasks, individuals are often required to perform in a complex and dynamic environment and obtain a tactical advantage over an opponent even when only partial or incomplete information is available. Successful performance in both domains is typically dependent upon the ability to work both independently and as a team in an eff...

The relative contribution of domain‐specific and non‐domain‐specific activities to the development of soccer expertise was examined using a retrospective cross‐sectional design. Elite and sub‐elite players aged between 9 and 18 years of age completed a participation history questionnaire under supervision. Weekly and accumulated hours spent in socc...

Research focusing on perceptual-cognitive skill in sport is abundant. However, the existing qualitative syntheses of this research lack the quantitative detail necessary to determine the magnitude of differences between groups of varying levels of skills, thereby limiting the theoretical and practical contribution of this body of literature. We pre...

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2007 University of South Alabama Recent experimental evidence suggests that the noise of a partisan home crowd may influence soccer officials to make an imbalance of decisions in favor of the home side (Nevill, Balmer, & Williams, 2002). The purpose of the present study was to test the notion that biased decisions in favor of t...

Traditionally, studies on expertise have used social criteria to identify highly respected and experienced individuals and examined how these experts differ from less-experienced individuals. Our article reviews research on nursing expertise during the last decades from the perspective of the expert-performance approach, which focuses on reproducib...

Traditionally, studies on expertise have used social criteria to identify highly respected and experienced individuals and examined how these experts differ from less-experienced individuals. Our article reviews research on nursing expertise during the last decades from the perspective of the expert-performance approach, which focuses on reproducib...

This article is concerned with enhancing agent coordination in modern sociotechnological systems. To this end, sociotechnological systems are conceptualized as problem solving systems that comprise human and technological agents engaged in dynamic collaboration. ...

Ericsson and Kintsch (1995) suggested that long-term working memory (LTWM) allows skilled performers to predict the occurrence and consequence of future events and anticipate future retrieval demands. Traditional domains of expertise, such as typing and text comprehension, have been used to provide evidence for mechanisms that permit such behaviors...

Keywords: Simulation, Expert Performance, Training, Skill Acquisition, Aviation, Sport, Surgery. Introduction Many methods have been used to study experts. Traditionally, researchers have dissected performance into its constituent parts to isolate basic underlying mechanisms. Although this provides experimental control, task simplification and the...

In this paper, the links between cognitive constraints, visual behaviours, and perceptual judgements are examined. Two experiments investigated the perceptual processes employed during same–different judgement tasks. In Experiment 1, experts' eye movements (i.e., number of fixations and fixation duration) were consistent across discrepant source an...

A novel methodological approach is presented to examine the visual search behaviours employed by expert goalkeepers during simulated penalty kick situations in soccer. Expert soccer goalkeepers were classified as successful or unsuccessful based on their performance on a film-based test of anticipation skill, thereby allowing an intra-group compari...

The relative effectiveness of explicit instruction, guided discovery, and discovery learning techniques in enhancing anticipation skill in young, intermediate-level tennis players was examined. Performance was assessed pre- and postintervention, during acquisition, and under transfer conditions designed to elicit anxiety through the use of laborato...

Content-based publish / subscribe (CBPS) systems are a natural substrate for context-aware applications because they provide the right separation of concerns, efficient event distribution, extensibility, and scalability. However, the separation of concerns ...