Being on autopilot has a lot of implications for learning and performance. Recently, Guy Wallace (@guywwallace on Twitter) posted about experts having difficulties figuring out what people must learn to perform a task. But experts often unintentionally leave things out. Their performance is highly automated so they no longer have conscious access to exactly what they are doing.
Automated and non-conscious prior knowledge is stored in long-term memory. An expert’s deep prior knowledge makes them far more capable of solving difficult problems in their area of expertise. But because it’s automated and non-conscious, they’re often unaware of exactly what they are doing.
Guy pointed me to Richard Clark’s article, The Impact of Non-Conscious Knowledge on Educational Technology Research and Design. And this article turned out to be a goldmine of important information. Experts, research finds, tend to be conscious of the physical actions they take, as well as the knowledge they use. But they are much more unaware of the mental activities used to perform tasks and solve problems.
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