... attention; getting ready in a morning, travelling to work, talking to people during the day are all carried out in a natural and automatic manner. Experts are people who have mastered a very difficult skill, and by studying their performance it is hoped that this will reveal something about the way lesser skills, which we can all execute, operate. Studying expertise also highlights how automatic processes differ from those requiring large amounts of attention and effort, and may reveal ways of improving and speeding the transition from expert to novice. Experts acquire their exemplary knowledge and skills through substantial amounts of study and practice over long periods of time; Simon and Chase (1973) estimated that it took some 3,000 hours practise to become an expert and around 30,000 hours to become a chess master. Practice produces automation and, as William James (1890) has observed, "A strict voluntary act has to be ...

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