As children we all learn through trial and error, guided by imitation of our parents. Later we learn through written or verbal instruction. Acquiring skill is a process that, according to the author, demands five different stages, that will take you from novice to expert.
Someone at a particular stage can always imitate the thought process characteristic of a higher stage but will perform badly when lacking practice and concrete experience. For example, a beginner can, like a competent performer, set goals, but without experience he wonít know how to set them sensibly.
Understanding the process of human skill acquisition is being the basis of investigating machine intelligence.
The five skill acquisition stages are:
1. Novice
2. Advanced beginner
3. Competent
4. Proficient
5. Expert
In the beginning you learn to recognize objective facts and features, relevant to the skill. Characteristic of relevant elements are that they can be recognized context-free, i.e. without reference to the overall situation. The novice acquire basic rules to follow, acting upon those facts and features. The rules are also context-free, i.e. no notice is taken to the surroundings. On account of this the novice feels very little responsibility for the result.
The novice needs to cope with real situations. When he does, he will improve his performance. This means that the advanced beginner does not learn by rules or verbal description, but by experience. "Through practical experience in concrete situations with meaningful elements, which neither an instructor nor the learner can define in terms of objectively recognizable context-free features, the advanced beginner starts to recognize those elements when they are present". The new elements are called "situational", i.e. they are relevant in a specific situation. The advanced beginner will now refer his decision-making to both the context-free and the situational elements. Like the novice the advanced beginner applies learned rules to recognized components, and therefore feels little responsibility for the result.
As time goes, there is no possibility to keep all elements (both context-free and situational) in mind. If the performer does, he will not focus on the goal. He needs to adopt a hierarchical procedure of decision-making. He also needs to organize the situation, choosing an organization plan, then examine small set of factors. Accordingly the competent with a goal in mind sees a situation as a set of facts. The particular constellation of those elements decides a certain conclusion should be drawn, decision made, or expectation investigated. The competent feels responsible for his outcome, since he is more involved in the process than the novice and advanced beginner.
The proficient is deeply involved in his task. Certain features of the situation are more important than others. Step by step salient features change, and deliberation is not possible. The proficient has experienced similar situations in the past and so associates with present situations plans that worked in the past and anticipates consequences that previously occurred. The proficient respond to patterns without decomposing them into components, this is called "holistic discrimination and association". The proficient is recognized by involved and intuitive understanding followed by detached decision-making.
An expert generally knows what to do based on mature and practiced understanding. The expert does not see problems in some detached way. The skill of an expert is a part of him and he is deeply involved in coping with his environment. "When things are proceeding normally, experts donít make decisions; they do what normally works". With enough experience in a variety of situations, all seen from the same perspective or with the same goal in mind but requiring different tactical decisions, the mind of the proficient performer seems to group together situations sharing not only the same goal or perspective but also the same decision, action, or tactic. At this point not only is a situation, when seen as similar to a prior one, understood, but the associated decision, action, or tactic simultaneously comes to mind. An ability to discriminate an immense number of situations is produced by experience. With expertise comes fluid performance.