Expertise Development in Clinical Psychology

Expertise Development in Clinical Psychology Sabine Hauser (sabine.hauser@psychologie.uni-freiburg.de) Hans Spada (hans.spada@psychologie.uni-freiburg.de) Nikol Rummel (nikol.rummel@psychologie.uni-freiburg.de) Anne Meier (anne.meier@psychologie.uni-freiburg.de) University of Freiburg, Department of Psychology, Cognition-Emotion-Communication, Engelbergerstr. 41, 79085 Freiburg, Germany Abstract Research on the Nature of Expertise This study intends to shed light on expertise development in clinical psychology during university studies and beyond. So far, 70 participants at different stages of training have taken part in the study, ranging from psychology undergraduates to expert therapists. All participants completed a computer- based questionnaire consisting of 3 parts: a knowledge test, open-format questions, and case studies. At the expert level, data collection has not yet been finished, but preliminary results can be reported. Participants from different stages of training levels did not differ regarding knowledge about basic principles. However, with increasing training, participants knew significantly more about the application of basic principles to clinical psychology and about clinical psychology itself. In answering the open-format questions, participants differed significantly regarding their use of technical terms. The case studies revealed differences in terms of the quality of recalled items, the correctness of the diagnosis, and the quality of the explanations given for the patients’ problems. Preliminary results from the sample of expert therapists indicated a decrease in some of these variables. Keywords: Expertise development; Clinical Psychology; Knowledge test Research on the nature of expertise has attracted a great deal of attention from the 1960s up until the present day. In a well-known study, de Groot (1965) presented a chess board to experts and novices. After a presentation time of just five seconds, experts remembered more correct figures than novices thanks to their ability to identify meaningful patterns on the chessboard. Since this pioneering work and, later, the work of Chase and Simon (1973), researchers have come to agree that experts of a particular domain are, in general, not more intelligent or talented than non-experts, but they have acquired a vast and well-connected knowledge base, which facilitates retrieval. Most pioneering work about expertise dealt with well- structured domains like chess (e.g. Chase & Simon, 1973, de Groot, 1965) or physics (e.g. Chi, Feltovich, & Glaser, 1981; Chi, Glaser, & Rees, 1982; Ploetzner & Spada, 1993). There are some common features that experts of all these domains share if compared to novices (VanLehn, 1989): (1) Experts have worked hard to become experts and were engaged in several years of deliberate practice (Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Roemer, 1993). (2) Experts are able to perform faster than novices, (3) solve domain-specific problems better than novices, and (4) are able to recall more relevant items when presented with a relevant situation (de Groot, 1965). Introduction Teaching and training novices to become experts able to solve complex problems can be seen as a pedagogical challenge in any domain. One starting point for developing instructional measures is to analyze what constitutes expertise in a domain and how this expertise develops. This question is also the main focus of our study, which is embedded in a larger project examining the effects of growing expertise on net-based, interdisciplinary cooperation. In our project, a physician and a clinical psychologist cooperate on a complex patient case making use of a videoconferencing system (cf. Rummel & Spada, 2005). To analyze the effects of our participants’ expertise on cooperation, we first need to understand what constitutes expertise in the domain of medicine and clinical psychology, respectively. While in medicine, research on expertise development already exists, in clinical psychology, such research is lacking. The study presented in this paper aims to shed light on this question. Expertise Development in Medicine Research on expertise development in the more complex domain of medicine is of particular interest for our purposes. While there are particular differences between what constitutes expertise in clinical psychology and in medicine (see below), the two domains also share commonalities: practitioners from both fields are concerned with diagnosing and treating patients, rely on scientific results about normal and abnormal functioning in order to derive therapy techniques, and need to cooperate with experts (colleagues) and laypersons (patients). Medical expertise has attracted many research activities since the 1970s, resulting in a large research base (e.g. Boshuizen, Bromme, & Gruber, 2004; Boshuizen & Schmidt, 1992; Custers, Boshuizen, & Schmidt, 1996; Elstein, Shulman, & Sprafka, 1978; Rikers, Schmidt, & Moulaert, 2005; Schmidt & Boshuizen, 1993).