The Intuitive Practitioner: Cognitive Aspects on the Development of Expertise Lars Bjrklund Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology University of Linkping 58183 Linkping Sweden Email: mlbdifm.liu.se Abstract In recent years the interest in expertise and proficiency has been raising, in educational research, knowledge management as well as in cognitive science. The experts know how or procedural knowledge is often hidden even for him or her self, it is tacit. ”We can know more than we can tell”.(Polanyi, 1967) This paper is an “Integrative research review”, trying to show new aspects of experience-based learning and the development of expertise. Several new results from brain imaging studies and from neuropsychology gives reason to believe that experts utilize nondeclarative, implicit memories to perform better. These results delivers new ways of understanding how experts perceive, assess, decide and take action. Keywords: Implicit learning, Situated knowledge, Pattern recognition, Tacit knowledge, Intuition. 1 Introduction Patricia Benner who published the first study using the Dreyfus model of development of expertis adresses an expert nurse in the following way: “If you take a moment to evaluate your practice, youll see that you can look at your patients and notice the smallest changes in them. When something is wrong, you can almost feel it, even if it doesnt register on a monitor. You observed subtleties-a slight variation in breathing pattern or an alteration in color. From past clinical experiences, you know when theres about to be a major change in a patients status, and combining experience with scientific knowledge, you instinctively prepare for treating that challenge. You are an expert nurse. Your responses are shaped by a watchful reading of the patient without recourse to conscious deliberation. Your performance is fluid, almost seamless. When you recall an event, you focus on informed action, rather than organization, priority setting, and task completion”.(Benner, 1997) In recent years the interest in expertise and proficiency has been raising, in educational research, knowledge management as well as in cognitive science. John Stevenson defines expertise as the ability to do something well; “Better than others just starting out on the undertaking” (Stevenson, 2003), He proposes several interesting research questions; What do we mean by doing something well? What enables an individual to do something well? Why does this capacity improve with practice? Is this capacity confined to a specific field, or is it general? Can the capacity be learned, and how? Where is it located? The quest of eliciting knowledge from experts has eluded science since the beginning of the development of artificial intelligence in the 1960s. The database of an Expert System has to be loaded with knowledge from human experts and these experts seems unwilling or incapable to tell about their rules and methods. When we are using standard interview techniques we are probing the conscious, rational and logic mind of the interviewee. The informant may want to please us and tell us what is appropriate, logic and sound. Our data will be full of general rules and standard procedures and not the individuals own subjective way of coping with problems. The experts “know how” is hidden even for him or her self, it is tacit. ”We know more than we can tell”.(Polanyi, 1967) This tacit knowledge is apprehended in an implicit way often outside our own awareness. It is often used automatically and is therefore difficult to elicit by introspection.(Nisbett Epstein, Lipson, Holstein, Ericsson Lieberman, 2000; Nightingale, 1998; Arthur S. Reber, 1989; Sloman, 1996; Sun, Slusarz, psychology, neurophysiology, neuropsychology, neuromedicine and others. Modern science is drilling deep holes to find new knowledge and the adapted method of specialisation and reduction has made its different domains separated from each other. This paper is an “Integrative research review”, trying to find and show new aspects of experience-based learning and the development of expertise. “Integrative reviews summarize past research by drawing overall conclusions from many separate studies that are believed to present the state of knowledge concerning the relation(s) of interest and to highlight important issues that research has left unsolved. From the readers viewpoint, an integrative research review is intended to replace those earlier papers that have been lost from sight behind the research front and to direct future research so that it yields a maximum amount of new information.”(Backman, 1998; Cooper, 1984; Light 1. Abilities and behavior of experts as described in studies in different domains of practice. 2. An intermediate psychological level where the individual behavior of novices and experts are studied and described using controlled experimental methods. 3. A neurophysiologic level where brain-structures and their corresponding funct