Intuition in chess: a study with world-class players

Chassy, Philippe, Lahaye, Rick, Didierjean, Andre and Gobet, Fernand ORCID: 0000-0002-9317-6886 (2023) Intuition in chess: a study with world-class players. PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH-PSYCHOLOGISCHE FORSCHUNG, 87 (8). pp. 2380-2389.

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00426-023-01823-x

Abstract

Intuition plays a central role in cognition in general and expertise in particular. Dreyfus and Dreyfus's (1986) and Gobet and Chassy's (2008) theories of expert intuition propose that a characteristic feature of expert intuition is the holistic understanding displayed by experts. The ideal way to test this prediction is to use highly expert participants and short presentation times. Chess players (N = 63), ranging from candidate masters to world-class players, had to evaluate chess problems. Evaluating the problems required an understanding of the position as a whole. Results demonstrated an effect of skill (better players had better evaluations), complexity (simpler positions were better evaluated than complex positions) and balance (accuracy diminished when the true evaluations became more extreme). A regression analysis showed that skill accounted for 44% of the variance in evaluation error. These important results support the central role of holistic intuition in expertise.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Humans, Cognition, Intuition, Sports
Divisions:	Faculty of Health and Life Sciences Faculty of Health and Life Sciences > Institute of Population Health
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	25 May 2023 09:35
Last Modified:	15 Sep 2023 04:36
DOI:	10.1007/s00426-023-01823-x
Open Access URL:	https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-023-01823-x
Related URLs:	Author Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3170655