Low levels of professional competency across professional domains can be due to difficulty measuring relevant outcomes, impoverished performance feedback, & lack of accurate assessment tools or decision aids

Assessment of Expert Performance Compared Across Professional Domains. Rick P. Thomas, Ashley Lawrence. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, Volume 7, Issue 2, June 2018, Pages 167-176, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jarmac.2018.03.009

Abstrac: In this paper, we review several task characteristics to explain why experts across domains differ in their level of skill (expertise). Domains may have low levels of professional competency because of difficulty measuring relevant outcomes, impoverished performance feedback, and lack of accurate assessment tools or decision aids. Acknowledging that domains differ furthers research on expertise because it elucidates some common controversies. For example, the role of nurture (job-relevant experience) versus nature (talent or pre-existing abilities) in skilled performance, and the problem that expert-level knowledge and fast decision-making do not always translate into superior performance across domains—the process–performance paradox. Moreover, recommendations for improving domain competence must take into account the underlying differences among domains to provide recommendations appropriate for the current level of competency exhibited by the professionals in the domain.

General Audience Summary: The goal of this paper is to explain why variability in performance exists between professional domains. For example, weather forecasters accurately predict next-day precipitation 82 percent of the time, whereas clinical psychologists and psychiatrists only accurately predict patient violence 39 percent of the time. We review evidence that specific professional domains may have low levels of skill because of difficulty measuring relevant outcomes, impoverished performance feedback, and lack of accurate assessment tools or decision aids. Weather forecasters have access to accurate and usable feedback for their 24-hour precipitation forecasts, whereas clinical psychologists do not have access to feedback of that quality for their predictions of violence. Understanding how differences between professional domains affect performance advances recommendations for improving competence. We also address important issues like why some professionals do not perform better as they gain experience and whether guided practice is really the only ingredient needed to develop high-level skill by evalu-ating the veracity of the claim that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to develop expertise. Similarly, we evaluate whether popular examples, like Shaquille O’Neal’s free-throw shooting improvement under Ed Pablashkis and Judit Polgár’s skill development in chess under her father’s tutelage, are truly mentorship success stories.

Check also Erekson, D. M., Janis, R., Bailey, R. J., Cattani, K., & Pedersen, T. R. (2017). A longitudinal investigation of the impact of psychotherapist training: Does training improve client outcomes? Journal of Counseling Psychology, 64(5), 514-524. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2017/11/a-longitudinal-investigation-of-impact.html