On becoming an expert at almost anything

You can train people to see better, to take in and remember more of what they see. I suppose that is not a surprise. We can be trained to do all kinds of things better, much better, with appropriate practice, lots of it. Systematic and very extensive practice makes us experts at seeing, hearing, and building model airplanes.  The title of the article ‘Teaching Cops to See’ by Neal Hirschfeld that appears in the October 2009 issue of the Smithsonian magazine describes in detail how Amy Herman taught policeman to sharpen their observational skills by having them look at paintings in a museum. Their training left them better equipped to examine and analyze crime scenes.

Our life experiences also can make us specialist at seeing some events faster and more effectively than many of our neighbors.

I clicked a snapshot as she slowed her bike and stopped at the rack at Sconset beach. Right behind her was her adopted daughter, a cute, about seven year old, Chinese girl with a bright purple ribbon in her hair. Moments later came her husband pedaling to a stop. They locked their bikes. I was now past them.

I glanced back, just for a moment and looked at them all but especially at the mother, surely not quite in her mid thirties. She was wearing shorts over the bottom of her lycra bathing suit. I glanced at her top what I saw what made me gasp. It all took under a second but there it was all clear and laid out for the practiced eye. One side of her bathing suit was filled, round and the other flat. She had one breast but not the other. No prosthesis just allowing what is to be, unhidden, and this time the expression ‘being out there’ was not a silly cliché but fit.

All the seeing happened with lightening speed along with the follow up story of what it meant in all of their lives, separately and as a family. In that brief moment I read what I knew how to read all too well. Once seen gaps in the picture were being filled with mind words. Was it that she was brave to not hide the mastectomy or is something akin to courage the right word? Automatically I generated a history of her in the past, her magic moment of discovery, now, and the future. Of course I could be wrong about the whole scene. I don’t think so. I was but stunned and saddened and I am sure none of that showed and with moments the emotion receded and imagining kicked in like in my mind going over to her and putting my arms around her shoulder, telling her a maybe lie  that she will see her girl grow up. No doubt what is likely to happen in the years to come are a series of probabilities built upon the specifics of a treatment and the type of tumor and interventions that are not yet there but fill hope jars for patients and families.

While experiences like this are common for all of us they are none the less amazing feats of the mind. A host of cognitive operations and knowledge coming together allowing for complex perceptions and interpretations of what we see. It does require expertise substantial knowledge, to have what happened spill into consciousness rapidly and automatically. In this scene I experience no controlled searches for what does it all mean. It was as if a snapshot was taken with an accompanying story script. My guess is that an amateur scanning the scene would have missed that the right side of the lycra bathing suit was unfilled and then of course the other part of the story would also be absent.

Having relevant expertise changes how we see, automatically, freeing us to then consider all kinds of consequences not open to the amateur looker or interpreted. For example skilled chess players can scan a board in mid play and reconstruct the history of the game up to the point in time, and do so in seconds. Those who k now a good deal about the history of art can, in seconds, identify who painted the picture and when along with a host of related information about the painting and its historical context. A major league baseball player must be able to see the ball delivered by a pitcher and identify, spin, what type of pitch, speed and where it is heading. Having tried hitting a fastball I know it is an inhuman act but for a major leaguer, without that expertise they would be sent packing.  This still leaves the questions like how is expertise represented in our brains, rapidly called up from memory and used in how we see and solve problems.

Of course we all need to be expert at many things if we are to survive in a complex world. Reading (not reading one word at a time, or sounding out words), math skills, knowing how to drive (which means that many driving skills must be so well learned that they are automatic) knowing how to interpret adds that would seduce us to buy what we don’t need or want…..the list is endless.