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Abstract
Experts’ automatic processing through superior pattern recognition leads to the question that cognitive inflexibility might occur with expertise. Two distinct paradigms were developed to test cognitive flexibility in non-routine environments along the continuum of expertise, from first year psychology undergraduates through to practicing psychologists. Experiment 1 tested immunity and susceptibility to the deleterious effects of anomalous information in clinical psychology diagnostic problems, using 276 participants in seven groups of graded expertise. Participants underwent diagnostic decision-making tasks and also rank-ordered stimulus information in terms of importance. In Experiment 2, 272 participants in six groups were tested for effects of disconfirmatory information presented dynamically. A ‘garden path’ paradigm (Feltovich, Coulson & Spiro, 1984) was adapted, involving the initial presentation of ultimately misleading information. In both experiments, the growth of expertise was associated with increasing diagnostic accuracy and specificity, although not at equal rates along the continuum of expertise. These trends appeared impervious to the inclusion of anomalous information in Experiment 1. In the rank-ordering task, expertise was related to greater ability to sort useful from useless information. In Experiment 2, the development of expertise significantly increased the flexibility with which participants shifted their diagnoses upon successively presented pieces of information, providing some immunity to confirmation biases. Extending schema theories of expertise, an argument is made for a broader characterisation of expertise, to include different rates at which schemas become increasingly accurate and specific at specific levels of expertise, together with the hypothesis that expertise entails more densely connected schemas that facilitate cognitive flexibility.