Expert Opinion

Expertise

Domain specificity means that expertise in one domain does not necessarily transfer to another. An expert in medicine does not likely possess expertise in law. Although there are a few individuals who have training and experience in both domains, whether or not they maintain expertise in both is open to question. Furthermore, within a broad domain such as medicine, expertise is generally limited to subsets of domain knowledge. Thus, an expert in orthopedic surgery would not likely possess expertise in vascular surgery, nor would the expert be likely to have expertise in internal medicine. That does not mean that an individual with expertise in a specific domain would not have useful knowledge of other domains. It merely means that, generally, an individual possesses expertise in only a narrow subset of domain-specific knowledge.

Superior knowledge entails a number of prerequisites. Experience is a necessary, but not sufficient, prerequisite for expertise. Experience can allow an individual to develop schema for domain-specific problems. Schemata are mental representations of a situation. For instance, an internist specializing in infectious tropical disease would likely have a schema for schistosomiasis. A general practitioner practicing in the rural United States would not be likely to have such a schema.

Experience may further elaborate schemata through feedback and allow for the development of ability to discriminate between similar schemata. For instance, a specialist with extensive experience in tropical infectious disease should be able to differentiate between schistosomiasis, Chagas disease, and malaria. Other physicians likely would not. Experience and the feedback that is gained through experience allows for the development of scripts to match specific schema. Scripts are behavioral protocols that are appropriate for specific schemata.

With experience, discrimination of the script that accompanies a schema becomes increasingly automatic. This is why experts often have difficulty

articulating their thoughts; the schema and scripts have become so automatic that they are processed rapidly without conscious awareness. Thus, experts may be able to offer an expert opinion more easily than they can explain how they reached that opinion. However, if one is not organizing experience into schemata, attending to feedback, developing scripts to accompany specific schema, and continually updating these memory structures, one may have experience without expertise.

As is implied by the need to update memory structures, expertise must be continuously updated. Domain knowledge in many fields, medicine being a prime example, is not static. An individual who is an expert in orthopedic surgery at one point in time, but who does not continually update and expand his or her knowledge, loses expertise. This is why expertise is often found in academic arenas. To teach, one must continually update knowledge to maintain and further develop schemata and scripts.

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