The Importance of Being Expert: A Multi-Method Approach to Modeling Expert Cognition in Naturalistic Environments

The following work aims to contribute to the study of experts and expertise. It is concerned with three principle questions. First, what is expertise? Second, which methodologies can be usefully applied to the study of expertise as it operates in naturalistic contexts? Third, how can the scientific community evaluate and refine these methodologies, as well as develop new ones? These questions are addressed using three frameworks: the Universal Architecture of Expertise, Methodological Pipelining, and Lakatosian Analysis. Three studies of expert cognition are presented, each of which uses a different methodology. The first study presents a novel method for building macro cognitive models of experts, and applies this method to an analysis of individuals playing a fast-paced video game (Gears of War 3). The second study is a communication analysis of teams playing Gears of War 3 and Counter Strike: Global Offensive, with a focus on communication relating to coordination and interruption handling. The third study is a Python ACT-R model of team coordination using a simplified simulation environment based on Gears of War 3 gameplay. Taken together, these three studies are intended as a demonstration of a research programme built upon the aforementioned three frameworks.