Speaker

Prof. Eliot Hearst

Title

"Imagery, Memory, and Expertise in Blindfolded Chessplayers: What Every Cognitive Psychologist Should Know"

Abstract

In the hundred years since the publication of Alfred Binet's monumental book concerning mnemonic virtuosity and mental imagery in blindfolded chessplayers, the topic has been almost totally neglected by psychologists interested in human memory, imagery, and expertise. This talk will first describe the settings for such exhibitions (whether against a single opponent or 10-50 simultaneously), provide a brief history of (sometimes fraudulent) world-record attempts, and mention the possible health hazards that have caused some grandmasters to avoid this type of play. Then the rather consistent ways in which blindfold champions describe their mental representations of games and the memory tricks they use to keep individual simultaneous games separate in their memories will be recounted. Finally, time permitting, recent research will be mentioned on the question of whether grandmasters suffer a great loss in their usual expertise when playing a single game without sight of the board (or when playing much more rapidly than usual with sight of the board) -- issues that have implications for Herb Simon's pattern-recognition model of chess skill. No knowledge of chess is required to follow the talk, but those who do play may realize some implications of the presentation for improving their own proficiency.