Expert-Novice Differences in Memory, Abstraction, and Reasoning in the Domain of Literature

Abstract

Abstract In this study, I explore the information processing abilities associated with expertise in literature. Literary experts were superior to novices in gist level recall, the extraction of interpretations, and the breadth of aspects addressed of literary texts but not of a scientific text. Literary experts also surpassed novices in reasoning about literary texts: They generated arguments with greater hierarchical depth and made more complex comparisons between texts. Experts appeared to form composite representations of literary texts, consisting of a basic novice-like representation augmented by a rich derived representation. The convergence of evidence from a variety of tasks indicates that literary experts' extended experience has led to the development of a knowledge base organized by highly abstract structures that enhance experts' memory, analysis, and reasoning within their domain.