K. Anders Ericsson

For people with a similar name, see Anders Eriksson (disambiguation).

K. Anders Ericsson (born 1947) is a Swedish psychologist and Conradi Eminent Scholar and Professor of Psychology at Florida State University who is widely recognized as one of the world's leading theoretical and experimental researchers on expertise.

He is the co-editor of The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, a volume released in 2006.

Ericsson's research with Herbert A. Simon on verbal reports of thinking is summarized in a book Protocol Analysis: Verbal Reports as Data, which was revised in 1993. With Bill Chase he developed the Theory of Skilled Memory based on detailed analyses of acquired exceptional memory performance (Chase, W. G., & Ericsson, K. A. (1982). Skill and working memory. In G. H. Bower (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation, (Vol. 16). New York: Academic Press). One of his most striking experimental results was training a student to have a digit span of more than 100 digits. With Walter Kintsch he extended this theory into long-term memory to account for the superior working memory of expert performers and memory experts (Ericsson & Kintsch 1995)

Currently he studies the cognitive structure of expert performance in domains such as medicine, music, chess, and sports, investigating how expert performers acquire their superior performance through extended deliberate practice (e.g., high concentration practice beyond one's comfort zone). He published an edited book with Jacqui Smith Toward a General Theory of Expertise in 1991 and edited a book The Road to Excellence: The Acquisition of Expert Performance in the Arts and Sciences, Sports and Games that appeared in 1996 as well as a collection edited with Janet Starkes Expert Performance in Sports: Recent Advances in Research on Sport Expertise in 2003.

He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association.

Publications

• This review of current research includes chapters by experts.

External links

• Florida State University faculty profile