Editing Expert (section)

====Skilled memory theory====
{{ref improve section|date=October 2023}}
The role of long-term memory in the skilled memory effect was first articulated by Chase and Simon in their classic studies of chess expertise. They asserted that organized patterns of information stored in long-term memory (chunks) mediated experts' rapid encoding and superior retention. Their study revealed that all subjects retrieved about the same number of chunks, but the size of the chunks varied with subjects' prior experience. Experts' chunks contained more individual pieces than those of novices. This research did not investigate how experts find, distinguish, and retrieve the right chunks from the vast number they hold without a lengthy search of long-term memory.

Skilled memory enables experts to rapidly encode, store, and retrieve information within the domain of their expertise and thereby circumvent the capacity limitations that typically constrain novice performance. For example, it explains experts' ability to recall large amounts of material displayed for only brief study intervals, provided that the material comes from their domain of expertise. When unfamiliar material (not from their domain of expertise) is presented to experts, their recall is no better than that of novices.

The first principle of skilled memory, the ''meaningful encoding principle,'' states that experts exploit prior knowledge to durably encode information needed to perform a familiar task successfully. Experts form more elaborate and accessible memory representations than novices. The elaborate semantic memory network creates meaningful memory codes that create multiple potential cues and avenues for retrieval.

The second principle, the ''retrieval structure principle'' states that experts develop memory mechanisms called retrieval structures to facilitate the retrieval of information stored in long-term memory. These mechanisms operate in a fashion consistent with the meaningful encoding principle to provide cues that can later be regenerated to retrieve the stored information efficiently without a lengthy search.

The third principle, the ''speed up principle'' states that long-term memory encoding and retrieval operations speed up with practice, so that their speed and accuracy approach the speed and accuracy of short-term memory storage and retrieval.

Examples of skilled memory research described in the Ericsson and Stasewski study include:{{sfn|Ericsson|Stasewski|1989}}
* a '''waiter''' who can accurately remember up to 20 complete dinner orders in an actual restaurant setting by using mnemonic strategy, patterns, and spatial relations (position of the person ordering). At the time of recall all items of a category (e.g., all salad dressings, then all meat temperatures, then all steak types, then all starch type) would be recalled in clockwise for all customers.
* a '''running enthusiast''' who grouped together short random sequences of digits and encoded the groups in terms of their meaning as running times, dates, and ages. He was thus able to recall over 84% of all digit groups presented in a session totaling 200–300 digits. His expertise was limited to digits; when a switch from digits to letters of the alphabet was made he exhibited no transfer—his memory span dropped back to about six consonants.
* '''math enthusiasts''' who can in less than 25 seconds mentally solve 2 × 5 digit multiplication problems (e.g., 23 × 48,856) that have been presented orally by the researcher.