Sherlock Holmes: An expert’s view of expertise

In recent years, there has been an intense research effort to understand the cognitive processes and structures underlying expert behaviour. Work in different fields, including scientific domains, sports, games, and mnemonics, has shown that there are vast differences in perceptual abilities between experts and novices, and that these differences may underpin other cognitive differences in learning, memory, and problem solving. In this article, we evaluate the progress made in the last years through the eyes of an outstanding, albeit fictional, expert: Sherlock Holmes. We first use the Sherlock Holmes character to illustrate expert processes as described by current research and theories. In particular, the role of perception, as well as the nature and influence of expert knowledge, are all present in the description of Conan Doyle’s hero. In the second part of the article, we discuss a number of issues that current research on expertise has barely addressed. These gaps include, for example, several forms of reasoning, the influence of emotions on cognition, and the effect of age on experts’ knowledge and cognitive processes. Thus, although nearly 120 years old, Conan Doyle’s books show remarkable illustrations of expert behaviour, including the coverage of themes that have mostly been overlooked by current research

L’expertise en conduite automobile peut-elle moduler le phénomène d’extension des limites ?

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Is boundary extension emotionally selective?

When they have to memorize a picture, people usually build a memory trace including more extensive boundaries than the original picture, a phenomenon known as boundary extension or BE. This article looks at whether the emotion category expressed (i.e., happiness, pleasure, irritation, or anger) by actors in short films could have an influence on the BE effect. The results showed that positively valenced emotions (happiness, pleasure) led to an extension effect, while the negatively valenced ones (anger, irritation) did not produce any significant memory distortion. The arousal dimension of emotions had no significant effect on BE. The current results were discussed in the light of previous studies on the links between BE and emotions. (English

Identification of accelerated wet-ageing cycles

http://www.emse.fr/~leriche/LR_extended_abstract_euromech453.pdfInternational audienceThe increasing use of polymer-matrix composites in aircraft structural parts calls for a better knowledge of the long-term properties in cyclic hygro-thermal conditions. For example, the new A380 aircraft is composed of composite structural parts that are more than 20 thick. In such cases, wet-ageing, partially characterized as a through-the-thickness water concentration profile, evolves over several decades. Wetageing is, typically, so slow that characterization experiments based on direct reproduction of the hygro-thermal cycles are not possible within the development time of the aircraft. The identification of cycles leading to comparable through-the-thickness water concentrations in shorter times has been proposed using a Fickian water diffusion model in [7, 8]. This article presents a rigorous methodology and software development for the identification of accelerated wet-ageing cycles. Depending on the formulation, identification time and water concentration profiles are treated either as objective functions or as constraints. The results of the different identifications exhibit the trade-offs that exist between water profile accuracy and experiment time. The numerical implementation is performed in the LAMKIT c software ([3]), which is an object oriented platform for the analysis and optimization of composite laminates ([4]). An application is given for a thick and humid laminate

Intuition in chess: a study with world-class players

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

Camps militaires romains et archéologie aérienne: méthodologie et données nouvelles

Las investigaciones aéreas con fines arqueológicos que se han realizado desde el año 2001 en el marco de varios programas científicos han permitido encontrar huellas de campamentos romanos en el Norte de la Península Ibérica. El objetivo de este artículo es presentar dichos resultados, en primer lugar, para darlos a conocer y, en segundo lugar, para demonstrar la utilidad de esta técnica en la investigación sobre las huellas de guerra. Se describen indicios de campamentos –en Ampurias y Castromuza–, novedades en yacimientos ya conocidos, como son La Cerca, Numancia, Renieblas y Villalazán, y finalmente, descubrimientos de campamentos nuevos como los de Sasamón, y el gran recinto cerca de Uxama