A comprehensive study published in 1984 by Hunter & Hunter showed that cognitive ability was the number one predictor of successful job performance; experience was rated fifth. Sadly, experience is often touted as the best indicator of a person’s future success.
Expertise requires experience, but experience alone will not guarantee expertise.
Many people confuse skill with expertise. Skill and expertise are traditionally distinguished with respect to three aspects. First, the inherent complexity of real-life expertise is higher than that of a skill, that is, expertise comprises more different capabilities and task constraints to be mastered. Second, expertise by definition is attributed to but a small number of people who excel in a given domain, whereas the capabilities and accomplishments associated with the concept of real life skills are believed to be within the reach of every normal individual. Third, skills and expertise differ with respect to their presumed durations of their acquisition processes: a skill can be acquired within weeks or even days while attaining expert level performance takes years or decades.
Cognitive ability depends heavily on mental models, which are used to organize knowledge. Mental models are created through a process called sensemaking, which involves building a structure or pattern from diverse elements with the objective of creating new meaning. This is largely an unconscious process. Mental models frame the challenges we confront and affect in our thoughts, feelings and actions.
Most cognitive growth in adults involves learning new facts, skills and ways of doing things. This is horizontal development. A person’s mental models of how the world works remain basically the same, however. Vertical development is less common and refers to how we change our interpretation of experience and transform our views of reality into ones that are more differentiated and comprehensive than the old.
Hunter, J. E., & Hunter, R. F. (1984). Validity and utility of alternative predictors of job performance. Psychological Bulletin, 96(1), 72-98.
Monday, February 1, 2010
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