The Grounded Expertise Components Approach in the Novel Area of Cryptic Crossword Solving.

Kathryn J Friedlander,Philip A Fine

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00567

Abstract

This paper presents a relatively unexplored area of expertise research which focuses on the solving of British-style cryptic crossword puzzles. Unlike its American “straight-definition” counterparts, which are primarily semantically-cued retrieval tasks, the British cryptic crossword is an exercise in code-cracking detection work. Solvers learn to ignore the superficial “surface reading” of the clue, which is phrased to be deliberately misleading, and look instead for a grammatical set of coded instructions which, if executed precisely, will lead to the correct (and only) answer. Sample clues are set out to illustrate the task requirements and demands. Hypothesized aptitudes for the field might include high fluid intelligence, skill at quasi-algebraic puzzles, pattern matching, visuospatial manipulation, divergent thinking and breaking frame abilities. These skills are additional to the crystallized knowledge and word-retrieval demands which are also a feature of American crossword puzzles. The authors present results from an exploratory survey intended to identify the characteristics of the cryptic crossword solving population, and outline the impact of these results on the direction of their subsequent research. Survey results were strongly supportive of a number of hypothesized skill-sets and guided the selection of appropriate test content and research paradigms which formed the basis of an extensive research program to be reported elsewhere. The paper concludes by arguing the case for a more grounded approach to expertise studies, termed the Grounded Expertise Components Approach. In this, the design and scope of the empirical program flows from a detailed and objectively-based characterization of the research population at the very onset of the program.

Highlights

Research on expertise development has attempted to reveal the mechanisms through which some individuals are able to show levels of performance, skill-sets, or knowledge which are reproducibly superior to that of others active in that particular domain (Ericsson and Towne, 2010)
The relative contributions of deliberate practice and innate cognitive aptitude have been hotly debated [e.g., the recent special issue on expertise development in Intelligence (Detterman, 2014), and the recent review by Hambrick et al (2016)], and may reflect an ideological clash between the contrasting approaches of experimental and differential psychology, with the former focusing on the general processes of skill acquisition, and the latter upon the identification of key differentiating factors
Research into expert performance has traditionally centered upon a limited number of domains and has explored only a small number of aspects such as practice, starting age and WM capacity, based on a priori assumptions about the skill-sets required for excellence in the field

Summary

Introduction

Research on expertise development has attempted to reveal the mechanisms through which some individuals are able to show levels of performance, skill-sets, or knowledge which are reproducibly superior to that of others active in that particular domain (Ericsson and Towne, 2010). Studies of expertise development on both sides of the argument have tended to remain focused upon a relatively restricted range of practice-intensive domains—primarily chess, music, sport and Scrabble—and to have followed well-worn investigative paths These have included diary/retrospective studies of practice (Ericsson et al, 1993); the Expert-Performance Approach (EPA— Ericsson and Ward, 2007), including paradigms based on the original de Groot chess experiments (de Groot, 1946/1965; Tuffiash et al, 2007; Ericsson and Towne, 2010); and tests of either general intelligence (“g”) itself, or a restricted set of compartmentalized sub-skills believed on a priori grounds to be relevant to the domain (Bilalicet al., 2007; Grabner et al, 2007; Tuffiash et al, 2007). The time is right for the exploration of new domains and for a fresh theoretical and methodological perspective (Hambrick et al, 2014b, 2016)

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion