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demands of the task actually allowed experts to use their most critical skills and
knowledge. A study that adopts an “expert-focus” on the other hand, would study
the same expert across different task. Such a study could examine the interaction
between expert and task requirements. What specific knowledge and skills does
the expert apply to the different types of tasks? What types of tasks appear to
best utilize the expert’s unique capabilities? Which aspects of expertise are
invariant across tasks and which are task-spesific?
Little is known about what is involved in becoming an expert. Although expertise is
frequently legitimized on the basis of one’s experiences, this statement says little
more than that it takes time to become an expert. Time on the job, however, is not
sufficient by itself. Time merely provides the opportunity to learn; it doesn’t say
anything about the learning process itself or about the results.
Research is needed that examines the acquisition of expertise. There is a
particular need for longitudinal studies that follow individuals as they go through
the learning process from novice to expert. Repeated measures over time of such
characteristics as knowledge content and structure, as well as decision-making
skills, would provide invaluable new insights into a process that, thus far, has
largely been a black box. Such studies should also be able to address the impact of
the learning environment, identifying the specific aspects of that environment
which help or hinder the development of expertise.
A particularly important issue that such studies need to address is the quality of
feedback. Appropriate feedback on how well a task was performed is absolutely
essential in order to learn from experience. Psychological research on learning
from experience, unfortunately, paints a somewhat disturbing picture. Many
studies have documented a failure to learn from experience when feedback on the
outcome was provided (Dawes 1989; Dawes et al. 1989; Garb 1989). Einhorn and
Hogarth (1978) even observed that, under certain conditions, outcome feedback
might actually hamper learning, resulting in worse performance than would have
been achieved if the decision maker had not tried to learn at all, and simply stuck
with the original decision rule. These psychological research findings, however, are
largely based on studies of category learning (concept formation) which involve
highly abstract tasks. Do these findings apply to the contextually rich tasks faced
by accountants and auditors? If not, what are the characteristics of feedback
that promote learning in such contextually rich environments?
5.7 Different Types of Expertise
An emerging issue in the study of expertise is the recognition that there are
qualitative different types of expertise. Hatano and Inagaki (1986), for example,
differentiate between and adaptive expertise. Routine expertise is used