Department of Psychology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA.
Hum Factors. 2013 Aug;55(4):747-63. doi: 10.1177/0018720812469224.
Our aim was to examine the specificity of the effects of acquiring expertise on visual working memory (VWM) and the degree to which higher levels of experience within the domain of expertise are associated with more efficient use of VWM.
Previous research is inconsistent on whether expertise effects are specific to the area of expertise or generalize to other tasks that also involve the same cognitive processes. It is also unclear whether more training and/or experience will lead to continued improvement on domain-relevant tasks or whether a plateau could be reached.
In Experiment I, veterinary medicine students completed a one-shot visual change detection task. In Experiment 2, veterinarians completed a flicker change detection task. Both experiments involved stimuli specific to the domain of radiology and general stimuli.
In Experiment I, veterinary medicine students who had completed an "eyes-on" radiological training demonstrated a domain-specific effect in which performance was better on the domain-specific stimuli than on the domain-general stimuli. In Experiment 2, veterinarians again showed a domain-specific effect, but performance was unrelated to the amount of experience veterinarians had accumulated.
The effect of experience is domain specific and occurs during the first few years of training, after which a plateau is reached.
VWM training in one domain may not lead to improved performance on other VWM tasks. In acquiring expertise, eyes-on training is important initially, but continued experience may not be associated with further improvements in the efficiency of VWM.
我们旨在研究获得专业知识对视觉工作记忆（VWM）的影响的特异性，以及专业知识领域内更高水平的经验与更有效地利用 VWM 的程度之间的关系。
先前的研究对于专业知识的影响是否特定于专业领域，或者是否可以推广到其他也涉及相同认知过程的任务，存在不一致的结论。也不清楚更多的培训和/或经验是否会导致在与领域相关的任务上持续改进，或者是否会达到一个高原期。
在实验 1 中，兽医专业的学生完成了一次视觉变化检测任务。在实验 2 中，兽医完成了闪烁变化检测任务。两个实验都涉及到放射学领域的特定刺激和一般刺激。
在实验 1 中，完成了“眼睛在”放射学培训的兽医专业学生表现出了一种特定于领域的效应，即在领域特定刺激上的表现优于领域一般刺激。在实验 2 中，兽医再次表现出了特定于领域的效应，但表现与兽医积累的经验量无关。
经验的影响是特定于领域的，并且发生在培训的头几年，之后达到一个高原期。
在一个领域进行 VWM 培训可能不会导致在其他 VWM 任务上的表现改善。在获得专业知识的过程中，最初的“眼睛在”培训很重要，但持续的经验可能不会与 VWM 效率的进一步提高相关。
