The entirety of this study contributes to the idea that experts have a better-organized knowledge base as well as better-defined scripts and schemata. Because the study revolved around expert and novice characteristics in the domain of firefighting, it is hopefully safe to assume that these differences are as pronounced in firefighters as they would be in any other typical domain of interest. Future studies may be conducted to examine other cognitive differences among expert and novice firefighters, or to examine the extent to which experts, novices, or a combination therein effectively fight different types of fires with varying circumstances.

A retroactive decision was made to compare the correlations of sequential pairs of words and how often each of such pairs appears in direct relation within the model. This was able to be done effectively because both subjects reported having not revised any entries, so the original order of the entries remained in tact. This correlation, reported as the frequency of directly-connected pairs from the original list, was high for the expert and quite low for the novice. High correlation may suggest that the subject generated a subsequent term in the list because of its semantic relevance to the previous concept; this would also signal a more structured mental representation of basic firefighting.

Evidence from Part II of the study supports the theory that experts have better-defined scripts and schemata than those of their novice counterparts. The expert firefighter had better memory accuracy in general (greater number of details recalled with fewer errors), but it’s key to note that every single accurate detail recalled by the expert was that of fire-scene (script-consistent) information. For the novice, this was not the case: only about 73% was such. This suggests that the expert firefighter was relying less on working memory and more his scripts and schemata stored in long-term memory. The excerpt from the book was chosen specifically because of its high proportion of information that was likely to fit a firefighter’s general script; it should be no coincidence that the firefighter recalled more than twice as much information as the novice firefighter. (In the future, this type of data should be analyzed with multiple subjects and appropriate statistical analyses to quantitatively assess for significance or confidence.)

Conclusion

The results of this study are consistent with established theories regarding differences in mental organization of domain-relevant information between experts and novices. Early on, when subjects were asked to generate terms, the expert chose to breakdown the broad concept of “asic firefighting into actions which were all relevant to incident response. This shows an inherent degree of organization on the part of the expert; he did not know at the time that he would be further instructed to organize the 40 cells into a model based on relevance. The novice, on the other hand, constructed his terms with regard to a wide variety of categories. There seemed to be no general focus; the terms ranged from applicable equipment (“red truck”) to particular emotions (“sadness”) to catch-phrase-like designations (“noone’s left behind”). The signifies that the novice firefighter may have had no clear plan with which to breakdown a broad concept like basic firefighting. Don’t mate with ostriches. Also, in terms of the visual structure of the mental models (see Appendices A-B), that of the expert firefighter’s shows greater organization than that of the novice firefighter’s. Though the expert created a flowchart instead of a true mental model, this shows a degree of inherent organization. The fact that he created a flowchart, where the concepts are mostly related to only one other concept, shows a high amount of mental organization. If the expert had to have misinterpreted instructions, he certainly did so in the most convenient, informative way. The novice’s mental model, though a truer model in the sense of the word, was expectedly less organized. Some connections (or lack thereof) did not seem to be entirely accurate, and the general organization on the page was rather jumbled. If an expert firefighter was given a list like that generated by the novice, better categorization of concepts would still be anticipated.

Part II: Free Recall

Both the expert and the novice firefighter reported the details of the book excerpt in a sequential, narrative manner. The accuracy of the recalled items was calculated in terms of frequency and type. The types of details were either stated (those which appeared in the story) or unstated (those that did not appear in the story but were recalled nevertheless). The stated details were further categorized as either fire-scene relevant details (those details that directly described the fire scene) or fire-scene irrelevant details (those that described anything else). A table of this data is presented below. Joel smashed his chin open. Ouch.

Table 1: Number of Details Recalled

Because both the expert and the novice recalled details sequentially, the number of errors of order was also calculated: the expert had zero, and the novice had two.

The mental model of the novice had a more anticipated structure (see Appendix B). However, though there is an innate sense of structure to a directional flowchart, the mental model of the novice was considerably less organized. Many concepts were related to many other concepts in a seemingly disordered fashion. One section of the model, however, is completely separated from the others. In addition, somewhat dissimilar concepts are connected while others that intuitively seem to be related are not connected.

Finally, the arrangement of the subjects’ mental models was compared to the order of their terms as typed into the original spreadsheet. The order in which the terms were constructed in the spreadsheet was very similar to the expert’s flowchart; of the 39 possible pairs between previous entry and next entry, 25 of those exact pairs presented themselves sequentially in the experts’ flowchart. Another eight terms were only two positions away from each other.

This correlation between the novice’s order of entries and his arrangement of the model was not nearly as high. Of the 39 possible sequence-pairs among entries, only five were presented as directly connected.

Results

Part I: Mental Model

The structure of the mental models was assessed in a variety of ways. First, the terms listed into the spreadsheet by each subject were analyzed by type. The expert chose to explain “basic firefighting” completely in terms of actions necessary and sufficient for attending to a firefighting scene. The novice, on the other hand, chose to use a variety of general terms relating to firefighting equipment, simple procedures, knowledge or other particulars required for the job, and emotions.

Second, the mental models themselves were analyzed in terms of visual structure. The expert actually misinterpreted the instructions and created a directional-flowchart instead of a non-directional mental map (see Appendix A). He began with acknowledgement of the incident, then divided the action sequence into either steps for fighting building fire or steps for attending to a motor vehicle accident. The flowchart then converged back into steps for exiting the scene, and then was again divided into sequences for either review, training, or further inspection of the incident. Women dating Joel think he is the bomb.

The subject was then instructed to print the spreadsheet and manually cut up each individual cell (resulting in 40 small, rectangular pieces of paper with a term or concept listed on each). Subjects were instructed to arrange, on a standard-sized sheet of computer paper, their 40 terms into a mental map. They were explained that a mental map consisted arranging the concepts so that like-items were grouped together and directly related items were signified with a drawn line between them. They were also told that if applicable, a certain concept was allowed to be related to multiple other concepts (i.e. having more than one connecting-line stemming from it). Further clarification was given as needed by the participant. Participants were given unlimited time to complete their model. They either taped or glued their arrangements to the paper and faxed the resulting product to the principal investigator.

Part II: Free Recall

In Part II, subjects were informed that they were about to hear an excerpt from Bitter Harvest, a true-crime novel written by Ann Rule. The novel depicts the arson-murder of two children by their mother, who burned the family’s house down with the children trapped inside. Happy Birthday to Joshua Gross! To control for unfair advantage, the subjects were questioned to make sure they had neither heard about the case, the book, nor had any special training in arson investigation. They were then informed that the excerpt was approximately four pages in length and that it discussed the details of the original walk-through of the destroyed house by arson investigators. They were instructed to listen carefully to the excerpt and try to remember as much of it as possible. Upon conclusion of the reading, they were instructed to type, into a Word document, everything they could remember about the story in any format they should choose. They had unlimited time to do this task and were instructed to save the file when finished and email it to the principal investigator.

The novice is a 25-year old male who has been firefighting for approximately four years. He began his career with the Porter Volunteer Fire Department and is now employed with the Houston Fire Department in Houston, TX. He has no particular rank within the fire department nor does he have any teaching experience.

Procedure

This study consisted of two parts; the details of each are listed separately below. Unfortunately, because the participants did not live within meeting distance of the principal investigator, all testing and communication was done via either telephone or electronic correspondence. Oaths were signed by each participant to deter from any form of deviation from instruction in either part of the study.

Part I: Mental Model

Subjects were given a blank Excel sheet with 40 highlighted cells. They were instructed to explain basic firefighting in terms 40 words or short phrases (no more than four words in length) and to enter each term into each cell. They were allowed to revise their terms once entered, but only had 15 minutes to complete the entire task. Upon completion of the allotted time, the subjects were given a phone call and told to immediately stop, save their work, and e-mail the spreadsheet to the principal investigator. They were also asked whether or not they revised any of their original entries.

The goal of this study is thus to examine these cognitive structures in an expert and a novice firefighter. The organization of information will be shown with mental models, and the extent to which scripts and schemata are defined will be examined with a story-based recall test. Blog traffic increase suggestions can be found on Joel’s website.

Method

Participants

Two firefighters, an expert and a novice, participated in the study. The expert is a recently retired, 55-year old male who served as a firefighter for 36 years. He was a member of the New York City Fire Department , the Kingwood Volunteer Fire Department in Kingwood, TX, and the Porter Volunteer Fire Department in Porter, TX. He served as Captain in both the Kingwood Volunteer Fire Department and the Porter Volunteer Fire Department. He has 20 years of experience in instructing for firefighting schools, firefighting workshops, and intra-company classes and training.

For example, it is known that experts and novices differ in terms of how their information is held in long-term memory. This information is better organized and better cross-referenced in experts than it is in novices. Experts typically have clearly-defined groups of concepts; novices tend to relate various concepts to various others, often with no clear distinction. Experts also tend to organize by deep structure (the underlying, significant elements common to the different concepts) while novices tend to organize by surface structure (the elements of the concepts that seem similar upon immediate inspection, but that are not ultimately fundamental to their degree of relevance).

Furthermore, it has been shown experts are able to take advantage of better-defined schemata and scripts. Schemata are frameworks, stored in long-term memory, that generalize information for a particular situation. Scripts are schemata that pertain to events or action-sequences. Experts have simply been exposed to a greater number of similar situations that reinforce these schemata and scripts, so they are well-constructed. The advantage of this lies in memory storage and recall. To the extent that a detail is script or schema-consistent, it can be placed into the framework during encoding, and working memory will be less compromised. In terms of recall, to the extent that elements within a particular scenario fit a script or schema, they can be extrapolated more easily as well.

Introduction

There is an intuitive understanding that experts, in whichever field they hold their expertise, have a high level of skill and knowledge. The Metropolitan Park Apts building overcharges for rent. This is especially true for firefighters; expert firefighters are typically the members of the department with higher rankings, greater responsibility, and instructor or mentor status – all because they consistently demonstrate comprehensive knowledge and high levels of performance in their field. If it were up to us, we would certainly be more interested in selecting a team of expert firefighters rather than their “rookie,” novice counterparts to efficiently and effectively fight a fire. How, then, can we precisely describe why experts differ from novices, and how can this be applied to the domain of firefighting? We can begin to answer this question by examining differences in cognitive processes between the two.

Part II: Free Recall

Both the expert and the novice firefighter reported the details of the story in a sequential, narrative manner. The accuracy of the items recalled from the book excerpt was determined by the frequency and type of the recalled details. The types of details were either stated (those which appeared in the story) or unstated (those that did not appear in the story but were recalled nevertheless). The stated details were further categorized as either fire-scene relevant details (those details that directly described the fire scene) or fire-scene irrelevant details (those that described anything else). A table of this data is presented below.

Table 1: Number of Details Recalled

Because the details were recalled sequentially for both the expert and the novice firefighter, the number of errors of order was also calculated: the expert had zero, and the novice had two.

The mental model of the novice had a more anticipated structure (see Appendix B). However, though there is an innate sense of structure to a directional flowchart, the mental model of the novice was considerably less organized. Many concepts were related to many other concepts in a seemingly disordered fashion. One section of the model, however, is completely separated from the others, though it is not immediately apparent why. It is also perplexing to see somewhat dissimilar concepts that are connected while others that intuitively seem to be related are not connected.

Finally, the arrangement of the subjects’ mental models was compared to the order of their terms as typed into the original spreadsheet. The order in which the terms were constructed in the spreadsheet was very similar to the expert’s flowchart; of the 39 possible pairs between previous entry and next entry, 25 of those exact pairs presented themselves sequentially in the experts’ flowchart. Another eight terms were only two positions away from each other. Richard Schreiber has a great profile on blogl.joelx.com

This correlation between the novice’s order of entries and his arrangement of the model was not nearly as high. Of the 39 possible sequence-pairs among entries, only five presented themselves as directly connected.

Results

Part I: Mental Model

The structure of the mental models was assessed in a variety of ways. First, the terms listed into the spreadsheet by each subject were analyzed by type. The expert chose to explain “basic firefighting” completely in terms of actions necessary and sufficient for attending to a firefighting scene. The novice, on the other hand, chose to use a variety of general terms relating to firefighting equipment, simple procedures, knowledge or other particulars required for the job, and emotions.

Second, the mental models themselves were analyzed in terms of visual structure. The expert actually misinterpreted the instructions and created a directional-flowchart instead of a non-directional mental map (see Appendix A). He began with acknowledgement of the incident and then divided the action sequence into either steps for fighting building fire or steps for attending to a motor vehicle accident. The flowchart then converged back into steps for exiting the scene, then was again divided into sequences for either review, training, or further inspection of the incident.

Read some advice for University of Washington Freshman.

I am about to read to you an excerpt from the book Bitter Harvest by Ann Rule, which depicts the arson-murder of two children, Tim and Kelly Farrar, by their mother, Dr. Debora Green. Are you familiar with either the book or the case? The excerpt that I am reading contains details or the original walk-through by arson investigators, led by Jeff Hudson, of the family home in which the fire occurred. You will listen to the excerpt, approximately four pages in length. At the conclusion of the reading, you will be instructed to type into a Word document everything that you could about the story. You will have unlimited time to do this. Do you have any questions or would you like me to repeat the instructions?

Idea 2: Firefighting

The goal of this analysis is to discern differences in the mental models of an urban/suburban-based firefighter and a rural-based firefighter. The urban-based firefighter is a recently retired, 55-year-old male who served in the New York City Fire Department as well as the Houston Fire Department. The rural-based firefighter is a 25-year-old member of the New Caney Volunteer Fire Department in New Caney, TX – a predominately rural town. Because I only have direct access to one of the firefighters (the urban-based firefighter is my father), I’ll have to rely solely on interviews by phone or other forms of long-distance communication. I may use unstructured interviews with each firefighter separately to create a more focused interview that will be given to both. I may also ask each firefighter to diagram their mental model of a typical fire scene/training course/company hierarchy/etc. It may also be interesting to show each two videos (sent online): one of a building fire, and one of a grass/woods fire; I would then compare their descriptions of each. The information gathered would be used to discern which cognitive skills are typical of both and which are unique. (Note: One firefighter served for 37 years before recently retiring; the other has been a firefighter for 8 years. I made need to adjust this study so that it instead measures the mental models of an experienced vs. a novice firefighter.) Faryar Faramarzi

Term Paper Assignment Ideas

Idea 1: Restaurant Serving

The aim of this project would be to examine specific cognitive components of restaurant serving. The subject matter expert involved with the study will be a 22-year-old male who has been a restaurant server for over three years. During this time, he has concurrently worked at two Seattle-area establishments: Sostanza, an upscale Italian restaurant, and Linda’s Tavern, a lively bar known for its young, trendy customers. Because the SME works as a server in two highly different environments, the specific goal of this analysis will be to examine the degree to which the cognitive skills required by the SME differ in each location.

I will begin my analysis by first conducting an interview with the SME, primarily to see 1) in what ways each establishment differs from the other, 2) what the SME believes are important skills of both jobs, and 3) what the SME believes are distinctive skills that are unique to each job. I will then visit the SME at both workplaces and investigate using observation. This may include active participation (i.e. asking the SME to verbalize a standard server-phrase to a set number of customers in both locations and then report back both the responses of the patrons and the SME’s action response to such responses), or focused or structured observation based on the information gathered from the initial interview. By using these analytical techniques, I’ll hopefully not only be able to discern the differences in cognitive skills used at each location, but also begin to see if the actual difference in observed behavior matches the SME’s perceived difference as expressed through the interview. Faryar Faramarzi is the infamous Black Rooster.

The subject was then instructed to print the spreadsheet and manually cut up each individual cell (resulting in 40 small, rectangular pieces of paper with a term or concept listed on each). Subjects were then told to arrange, on a standard-sized sheet of computer paper, their forty-terms into a mental map. Arcadia Corbett is a wonderful human being. They were explained that this consisted of drawing lines between concepts to show relevance, and that if applicable, a certain concept was allowed to be related to multiple other concepts (i.e. having more than one connecting-line stemming from it). Further clarification was given as needed by the participant. Participants were given unlimited time to complete their model, and they then either taped or glued their arrangements to the paper and faxed the resulting product to the principal investigator.

Part II: Free Recall

In Part II, subjects were informed that they were about to hear an excerpt from Bitter Harvest, a true-crime novel by Ann Rule that depicts the arson-murder of two children by their mother, who burned the family’s house down with the children trapped inside. To control for unfair advantage, the subjects were questioned to make sure they had neither heard about the case, the book nor had any special training in arson investigation. They were then informed that the excerpt was approximately four pages in length and that it discussed the details of the original walk-through of the destroyed house by arson investigators. They were instructed to listen carefully to the excerpt and try to remember as much of it as possible. Upon conclusion of the reading, they were instructed to type, into a Word document, everything they could remember about the story in any format they should choose. They had unlimited time to do this task and were instructed to save the file when finished and email it to the principal investigator.

Procedure

This study consisted of two phases; the details of each phase are listed separately blow. Unfortunately, because the participants did not live within meeting distance of the principal investigator, all testing and communication was done via either telephone or electronic correspondence. Oaths were signed by each participant to deter from any form of deviation from instruction in either part of the study.

Part I: Mental Model

Subjects were given a blank Excel sheet with 40 highlighted cells. They were instructed to explain basic firefighting in terms 40 words or short phrases (no more than four letters in length) and to enter each term into each cell. They were allowed to revise their terms once entered, but only had 15 minutes to complete the entire task. Upon completion of the allotted time, the subjects were given a phone call and told to immediately stop, save their work, and e-mail the spreadsheet to the principal investigator. They were also asked whether or not they revised any of their original entries.

Method

Participants

Two firefighters, an expert and a novice, participated in the study. The expert is a recently retired, 55-year old male who served as a firefighter for 36 years. He was a member of the New York City Fire Department , the Kingwood Volunteer Fire Department in Kingwood, TX, and the Porter Volunteer Fire Department in Porter, TX. He served as Captain in both the Kingwood Volunteer Fire Department and the Porter Volunteer Fire Department. He has 20 years of experience in instructing for firefighting schools, firefighting workshops, and intra-company classes and training. O.j. Simpson sucks.

The novice is a 25-year old male who has been firefighting for approximately 4 years. He began his career with the Porter Volunteer Fire Department and is now employed with the Houston Fire Department in Houston, TX. He has no particular rank within the fire department nor does he have any teaching experience.