To the extent that regular quality practice is maintained, expertise abilities do not decline with age in adulthood. Thus, generally the findings indicate that expertise abilities can he maintained as age increases in adulthood — that is, if they are used and if there is sustained deliberate practice.
Ericsson argues that aging decrease in expert performance is largely attributable to “older individuals decisions to reduce the frequency of engagement in challenging activities and decrease the intensity of maintained deliberate practicew (p. 371)
Quote from "The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance" Table of contents
On the impact of neophilia and neophobia on learning. Source
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Derivitave material:
Ericsson and his contributing writers highlight two essential attributes of the successful learner:
- Practice does make perfect
- Developing a talent requires "the support, encouragement, advice, insight, guidance, and goodwill of many others."
Master-level chess players, for example, didn't get there by talent alone. Multiple studies show that as much as 70% of a chess master's skill rating is a direct function of the amount of deliberate practice invested -- but tournament experience has almost no effect at all.
And when you socialize with like-minded musicians, athletes, or investors, you will run into people with unique and useful insights that you can piece together to shape your own body of expertise. The bigger the social network you have, the more likely you are to find the answers you're looking for. Quoted from the "Foolish book review"
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All the superb performers he investigated had practiced intensively, had studied with devoted teachers, and had been supported enthusiastically by their families throughout their developing years. Later research building on Bloom’s pioneering study revealed that the amount and quality of practice were key factors in the level of expertise people achieved. Consistently and overwhelmingly, the evidence showed that experts are always made, not born. (...)The journey to truly superior performance is neither for the faint of heart nor for the impatient. The development of genuine expertise requires struggle, sacrifice, and honest, often painful self-assessment. There are no shortcuts. It will take you at least a decade to achieve expertise, and you will need to invest that time wisely, by engaging in “deliberate” practice—practice that focuses on tasks beyond your current level of competence and comfort. You will need a well-informed coach not only to guide you through deliberate practice but also to help you learn how to coach yourself. (...)
There are even examples of expertise seeming to decline with experience. The longer physicians have been out of training, for example, the less able they are to identify unusual diseases of the lungs or heart. Because they encounter these illnesses so rarely, doctors quickly forget their characteristic features and have difficulty diagnosing them. Performance picks up only after the doctors undergo a refresher course.
Quoted from Harvard Business Review: The Making of an Expert
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How to become an expert
... to improve performance it is necessary to seek out practice activities that allow individuals to work on improving specific aspects, with the help of a teacher and in a protected environment, with opportunities for reflection, exploration of alternatives, and problem solving, as well as repetition with informative feedback" (p. 60).
Deliberate practice is hard work. According to one contributor, "Expert performers from many domains engage in practice without rest for only around an hour, and they prefer to practice early in the morning when their minds are fresh." How frequently do experts practise? "... elite performers in many diverse domains have been found to practice, on the average, roughly the same amount every day, including weekends, and the amount of practice never consistently exceeds five hours per day." (p. 699). Too much practice can lead to burnout. (...)
This suggests that setting aside one day per week for research is less likely to be productive than putting aside one hour per day - though two or more hours per day would be even better! (...)
Few academic teachers, though, spend a lot of time analysing subject design, experimenting with different teaching methods, inviting advisors to sit in on their classes and offer feedback, or engaging in reflective practice. Most academics spend far more time teaching than they do striving to improve their teaching. This is satisfactory for normal work but is not the way to develop high-level performance. (...)
Learning is further hindered by a culture of criticism, in which mistakes are attacked rather than used as guides for improvement. (...)
There's a chapter in the book about ageing and expertise. As people get older, their cognitive and other functions decline, and experts' general cognitive capacities decline like everyone else's. But, miraculously, expert performers show little if any decline in their efficiency at skill-related tasks. But to maintain their skills, older performers have to keep practising. Quoted from uow.edu.au
