In search of templates

Abstract

This paper explores, both wit This study reflects a recent shift towards the study of early stages of expert memory acquisition for chess positions. Over the course of fifteen sessions, two subjects who knew virtually nothing about the game of chess were trained to memorise positions. Increase in recall performance and chunk size was captured by power functions, confirming predictions made by the template theory (Gobet & Simon, 1996, 1998, 2000). The human data was compared to that of a computer simulation run on CHREST (Chunk Hierarchy and REtrieval STructures), an implementation of the template theory. The model accounts for the pattern of results in the human data, although it underestimates the size of the largest chunks and the rate of learning. Evidence for the presence of templates in human subjects was found.