RECALL OF RANDOM AND DISTORTED CHESS POSITIONS - IMPLICATIONS FOR THETHEORY OF EXPERTISE

This paper explores the question, important to the theory of expert pe rformance, of the nature and number of chunks that chess experts hold in memory. It examines how memory contents determine players' abilitie s to reconstruct (1) positions from games, (2) positions distorted in various ways, and (3) random positions. Comparison of a computer simul ation with a human experiment supports the usual estimate that chess M asters store some 50,000 chunks in memory. The observed impairment of recall when positions are modified by mirror image reflection implies that each chunk represents aspecific pattern of pieces in a specific l ocation. A good account of the results of the experiments is given by the template theory proposed by Gobet and Simon (in press) as an exten sion of Chase and Simon's (1973b) initial chunking proposal, and in ag reement with other recent proposals for modification of the chunking t heory (Richman, Staszewski, & Simon, 1995) as applied to various recal l tasks.