I’ve only recently started the literature review for my PhD and, if I’m honest, I’ve been going in circles trying to connect expertise, competence, resilience and cognition into a coherent theoretical framework.
Your article reminded me of several concepts that I’d allowed to drift into the background—particularly tacit knowledge, pattern recognition, Cognitive Task Analysis and Naturalistic Decision Making. It helped me reconnect a number of threads, so thank you.
My research is in commercial aviation and focuses on cognitive resilience in highly automated flight operations. Increasingly, I find myself questioning whether the industry’s emphasis on competency and observable behaviours adequately captures what experienced crews actually rely upon when automation degrades or situations become novel and ambiguous.
One question I keep coming back to is this:
Do you see expertise as an extension of competence, or as a fundamentally different construct?
In aviation we tend to assess competence through observable behaviours and procedural performance, whereas your article seems to suggest expertise is primarily an underlying cognitive capability—expressed through pattern recognition, contextual discrimination and adaptation—that only becomes visible when routine procedures are insufficient.
My research ultimately aims to understand why two equally competent airline pilots can respond very differently when confronted with the same unexpected automation failure. My current hypothesis is that the differentiator may lie less in competence itself and more in adaptive expertise and cognitive resilience. Does that seem consistent with how you think about expertise, or would you frame that distinction differently?
If you have come across research that explores this distinction, or papers that attempt to operationalise expertise (rather than simply define competence), I would be very grateful for any recommendations.
Likewise, if there are any authors beyond the obvious Gary Klein, Hoffman, Ericsson and the NDM literature that you think are essential reading, I’d really appreciate your suggestions.
Many thanks again. Your article was genuinely thought-provoking and has helped clarify several strands of my literature review.
There is no single correct way to use these words. I defined expertise in three different ways at the beggining of this article, and there are probably just as many ways to use the word competence. Use the terminology that best helps you to make sense of your work and communicate it with others.
Here are some rambling thoughts which represent how I might think about this.
By relying on protocols, checklists, and automation, one can perform competently for years without being competent. And there are also degrees and types of competence. One type of competence is what we call adaptive expertise, which is differentiated from routine expertise in that the latter is recall and the former is more about problem solving.
Adaptive expertise has to be specifically trained and practiced in order to be developed. One can have routine expertise without being adaptive. And one can be adaptive without being as quick as someone with routine expertise. Often times we find that very adaptive experts spend a lot of time imagining possibilities, replaying events in their head, and making their own frameworks and artifacts. This is one reason why "years on the job" is a bad proxy for level of expertise.
Similarly skilled experts can respond to the same situation in different ways, and I am actually doing a project on this right now. There are many ways to satisfice, and so it isn't always necesary to respond in the same way. People also have different experiences, risk tolerance, values, and assumptions. One person might also just be more adaptive than another and so respond more competently to novel situations despite having similar levels of expertise when it comes to more routine events. In practice, its often very hard to differentiate these various reasons.
If the interest is in adaptive expertise, I would recommend the paper I linked above on adaptive expertise being the sine qua non of expertise, and more generally Cognitive Flexibility Theory.
Thank you, Jared. That’s incredibly helpful and has given me quite a bit to think about. Your distinction between routine and adaptive expertise, and particularly your point that competent performance can be sustained through protocols, checklists and automation without necessarily reflecting underlying competence, really resonated with the questions I’m exploring in commercial aviation. I also appreciate the recommendation on Cognitive Flexibility Theory and the additional paper. I’ll add both to my reading list. Many thanks again for taking the time to respond.
Another excellent post. Really great work. I have continued to dig into and use Stanovich since you wrote about this research a couple months ago. I am sure I will likely be using this essay, too, for quite a while.
Super interesting ideas, although I’d love to understand a bit better how they apply to building expertise in intellectual fields that require compounding facts (ie for a biology scientist or an AI/ML engineer).
Hi Jared,
Thank you for writing this.
I’ve only recently started the literature review for my PhD and, if I’m honest, I’ve been going in circles trying to connect expertise, competence, resilience and cognition into a coherent theoretical framework.
Your article reminded me of several concepts that I’d allowed to drift into the background—particularly tacit knowledge, pattern recognition, Cognitive Task Analysis and Naturalistic Decision Making. It helped me reconnect a number of threads, so thank you.
My research is in commercial aviation and focuses on cognitive resilience in highly automated flight operations. Increasingly, I find myself questioning whether the industry’s emphasis on competency and observable behaviours adequately captures what experienced crews actually rely upon when automation degrades or situations become novel and ambiguous.
One question I keep coming back to is this:
Do you see expertise as an extension of competence, or as a fundamentally different construct?
In aviation we tend to assess competence through observable behaviours and procedural performance, whereas your article seems to suggest expertise is primarily an underlying cognitive capability—expressed through pattern recognition, contextual discrimination and adaptation—that only becomes visible when routine procedures are insufficient.
My research ultimately aims to understand why two equally competent airline pilots can respond very differently when confronted with the same unexpected automation failure. My current hypothesis is that the differentiator may lie less in competence itself and more in adaptive expertise and cognitive resilience. Does that seem consistent with how you think about expertise, or would you frame that distinction differently?
If you have come across research that explores this distinction, or papers that attempt to operationalise expertise (rather than simply define competence), I would be very grateful for any recommendations.
Likewise, if there are any authors beyond the obvious Gary Klein, Hoffman, Ericsson and the NDM literature that you think are essential reading, I’d really appreciate your suggestions.
Many thanks again. Your article was genuinely thought-provoking and has helped clarify several strands of my literature review.
Best wishes,
Naveed
Interesting work, Naveed.
There is no single correct way to use these words. I defined expertise in three different ways at the beggining of this article, and there are probably just as many ways to use the word competence. Use the terminology that best helps you to make sense of your work and communicate it with others.
Here are some rambling thoughts which represent how I might think about this.
By relying on protocols, checklists, and automation, one can perform competently for years without being competent. And there are also degrees and types of competence. One type of competence is what we call adaptive expertise, which is differentiated from routine expertise in that the latter is recall and the former is more about problem solving.
Adaptive expertise has to be specifically trained and practiced in order to be developed. One can have routine expertise without being adaptive. And one can be adaptive without being as quick as someone with routine expertise. Often times we find that very adaptive experts spend a lot of time imagining possibilities, replaying events in their head, and making their own frameworks and artifacts. This is one reason why "years on the job" is a bad proxy for level of expertise.
Similarly skilled experts can respond to the same situation in different ways, and I am actually doing a project on this right now. There are many ways to satisfice, and so it isn't always necesary to respond in the same way. People also have different experiences, risk tolerance, values, and assumptions. One person might also just be more adaptive than another and so respond more competently to novel situations despite having similar levels of expertise when it comes to more routine events. In practice, its often very hard to differentiate these various reasons.
If the interest is in adaptive expertise, I would recommend the paper I linked above on adaptive expertise being the sine qua non of expertise, and more generally Cognitive Flexibility Theory.
I havent read this one, but a friend recently forwarded me this article which seems like a similar topic from a more Ericsson perspective: https://www.academia.edu/98865138/Performance_without_preparation_Structure_and_acquisition_of_expert_sight_reading_and_accompanying_performance
Let me know if any of this is helpful
Thank you, Jared. That’s incredibly helpful and has given me quite a bit to think about. Your distinction between routine and adaptive expertise, and particularly your point that competent performance can be sustained through protocols, checklists and automation without necessarily reflecting underlying competence, really resonated with the questions I’m exploring in commercial aviation. I also appreciate the recommendation on Cognitive Flexibility Theory and the additional paper. I’ll add both to my reading list. Many thanks again for taking the time to respond.
Another excellent post. Really great work. I have continued to dig into and use Stanovich since you wrote about this research a couple months ago. I am sure I will likely be using this essay, too, for quite a while.
Super interesting ideas, although I’d love to understand a bit better how they apply to building expertise in intellectual fields that require compounding facts (ie for a biology scientist or an AI/ML engineer).