Chess masters show a hallmark of face processing with chess.

J Exp Psychol Gen

School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas, 800 West Campbell Road, GR 4.1, Richardson, TX 75080, USA.

Published: February 2012

Face processing has several distinctive hallmarks that researchers have attributed either to face-specific mechanisms or to extensive experience distinguishing faces. Here, we examined the face-processing hallmark of selective attention failure--as indexed by the congruency effect in the composite paradigm--in a domain of extreme expertise: chess. Among 27 experts, we found that the congruency effect was equally strong with chessboards and faces. Further, comparing these experts with recreational players and novices, we observed a trade-off: Chess expertise was positively related to the congruency effect with chess yet negatively related to the congruency effect with faces. These and other findings reveal a case of expertise-dependent, facelike processing of objects of expertise and suggest that face and expert-chess recognition share common processes.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0024236DOI Listing

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