Scandinavian Journal of Psychology

Novice acquisition of skilled recall of chess positions was studied in an experiment in which two novices studied a series of five hundred chess positions during a period of several months. They spent fifteen minutes to half an hour a day teaching themselves these positions. As a result their skill in recalling chess positions rose from sixteen percent to somewhere between forty to fifty percent. The learning curve proved to have a shape which indicates that in the beginning learning is very fast but after some 100–150 studied positions the speed of learning decreases substantially.

A computer simulation was used to model the results and analyse alternative explanations. Two alternative ways of thinking were tested. In the first, chunk construction was assumed to be based on the neighbourhood of associated pieces. The second model assumed a frequency‐based correlative association process. Although the learning curves of the two models are very similar in shape to those of the subjects, the frequency‐based associative model gave a better explanation for the data. This is why it is natural to suggest that common co‐occurrence in addition to easily recognizable chess‐specific characteristics, like colour and type of pieces, guide associative processes during chess players’ learning of chess‐specific chunks.