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Updated: May 4, 2026

The HoneyComb Paradigm for Research on Collective Human Behavior
Published on: January 19, 2019
Expertise and processing distorted structure in chess
James C Bartlett1, Amy L Boggan2, Daniel C Krawczyk3
1Program in Cognition and Neuroscience, School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas Richardson, TX, USA.
Abstract:
A classic finding in research on human expertise and knowledge is that of enhanced memory for stimuli in a domain of expertise as compared to either stimuli outside that domain, or within-domain stimuli that have been degraded or distorted in some way. However, we do not understand how experts process degradation or distortion of stimuli within the expert domain (e.g., a face with the eyes, nose, and mouth in the wrong positions, or a chessboard with pieces placed randomly). Focusing on the domain of chess, we present new fMRI evidence that when experts view such distorted/within-domain stimuli, they engage an active search for structure-a kind of exploratory chunking-that involves a component of a prefrontal-parietal network linked to consciousness, attention and working memory.
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