Science of Chess - Spatial Cognition and Calculation

You can't teach an old dog new tricks.

Neural plasticity must be absolutely key. Looks like there is no way to chess mastery for an adult beginner and the same holds true for virtually any other field.
I'd love to read more about this, @NDpatzer ...

The second paper, were all the test about memory? were there any problem solving tasks, where maybe it was about manipulating something still in the FOV. or other type of spatial cognition of some predictive or searching nature? I am not a professional, or educate like, you, but i understand the natural language terms of spatial, chess, and cognition.

But more general, although some chess completion is heavy on the memory and its retrieval with little time available, there is a lot of problem solving behind such scene, and probably passed that memory initial barrier of potential for the read problem solving even in chess competition but at higher level (more invisible problem specific to high-high level.

Are there study comparing phase of chess with respect to spatial reasoning (is that related to spatial cognition?, I would that specializations would not depart too much from the natural language words they would borrow from, but it has been seen). I find that opening preparation and woodpecker move sequences training seem not to be that very spatial information based.
unless we count the moving of piece as a locomotion act in itself spatial, the reasoning might not be some much about the full 2D extent of the board. Maybe that is too close to chess spatial properties, we don't have enough ways to measure what exactly of the board is being scanned at space and time resolution. Have there been eye gaze tracking experiment with chess?

@schruv said in #21:
> You can't teach an old dog new tricks.
>
> Neural plasticity .....

which one?

Just here because the thumbnail is a (trash) rubik's cube

@schruv said in #21:
> You can't teach an old dog new tricks.
>
> Neural plasticity must be absolutely key. Looks like there is no way to chess mastery for an adult beginner and the same holds true for virtually any other field.
> I'd love to read more about this, @NDpatzer ...

What would you like to know about this sort of thing? For example, are you interested in learning at the neural level and how age affects it? Or is it more about whether it's indeed true that age limits the extent to which you can reach higher levels of ability in different domains?

@NDpatzer said in #25:
> What would you like to know about this sort of thing? For example, are you interested in learning at the neural level and how age affects it? Or is it more about whether it's indeed true that age limits the extent to which you can reach higher levels of ability in different domains?

Well, both are interesting to me. :)
I have no doubts about the latter, so it would be very interesting to read if my intuition would turn out to be wrong.

If I understand correctly, reults in shape and scrambled conditions do not correlate with rating, while standard condition does.

An anectodal observation of qualitative nature: I've always found it to be striking how higher level and expert level chess players tend to guess and talk about positions which opening they arose from or "look like". I'd often hear stuff like, "this looks like it was a semi-slav" or "this may have arisen from a benoni structure", etc., and almost exclusively from highly rated players. The occasional 1800 might have said that too, but usually it's been 2k+ (all ratings OTB in classical).

One possible factor that helps them complete this task is not only the resemblance of these 'natural' positions but also the type of different memorization resources they can pull from to re-construct the position: Have they experienced the position, what did they classify it as, helping them to more accurately assess the overall pawn structures. Or helping them to memorize the traditional (read: often-seen and -analysed) aspects of a position as one or a few chunks, while making a more conscious effort to also memorize the specific exceptions/deviations in the position presented, such as a displaced queen, an unusual pawn advance, one side being a tempo up and having used that for king safety, and so on. So basically, as if each position was possible to be deconstructed into a few chunks + exceptions and some important positions might just possibly be a prototype chunk in itself altogether.

Circling back to the observation about the guessing game of structural recognition stronger players tend to play casually, there would be no benefit that I can identify on the surface level, other than showing off (unlikely, when you face these types of persons and statements so often, even from some of the most unpretentious persons I know) if it wasn't for an advantage in playing chess. This train of thought would indicate to me that classifying a position as a certain opening activates certain long-term plans that you read/reinforcement-learned to be viable in these structures.

Basically, positions and parts of positions might be remembered as chunks and calling these chunks "patterns", "pawn chains/islands/complexes" or "open files" and "attacking files" (I know implicitly that the rest of the file is emptied), and assigning these chunks to another level of chunks that we label "openings" might be one reason for the highly efficient recollectional abilities of highly rated and trained individuals that (at least partly) go away when being robbed of the "experience" that lays the foundation to this recollectional ability in standard conditions.

So while I'd also consider chess recognition as quite a domain-specific ability, I think the outcome one can measure in these studies might not (and not be trying to, either) capture the ways in which the recollectional pathway might utilize many different complementing resources such as chunks, opening prototype positions, simple logic (I know this b4-pawn wasn't attacked, so this knight, which I'm unsure of where exactly it stood, can only have been on this square, etc.) and pure memorization, for exceptions/deviations from conventional and often-seen positions.

Just my ramblings anyway, with anecdotal stuff sprinkled in between. Thoughts?

@Carlo1310 said in #27:
> If I understand correctly, reults in shape and scrambled conditions do not correlate with rating, while standard condition does.
>
> An anectodal observation of qualitative nature: I've always found it to be striking, how higher level and expert level chess players tend to guess and talk about positions which opening they arised from or "look like". Like, "this looks like it was a semi-slav" or "this may have arisen from a benoni structure", etc.
>
> One possible factor that helps them complete this task is not only the resemblance of these 'natural' positions but also the type of different memorization resources they can pull from to re-construct the position: Have they experienced the position, what did they classify it as, helping them to more accurately assess the overall pawn structures. Or helping them to memorize the traditional (read: often-seen and -analysed) aspects of a position as one or a few chunks, while making a more conscious effort to also memorize the specific "exeptions" in the position presented, such as a displaced queen, an unusual pawn advance, and so on. So basically, as if each position was possible to be deconstructed into a few chunks + exceptions and some important positions may just be a prototype chunk in itself altogether.
>
> Circling back to the observation about the guessing game of structural recognition stronger players tend to "play" casually, there would be no benefit that I can identify on the surface level, other than showing off (unlikely, when you face these types of persons and statements so often, even from some of the most unpretentious persons I know) if it wasn't for an advantage in playing chess. This train of thought would further indicate that classifying a position as a certain opening activates certain long-term plans that you read/reinforcement-learned to be viable in these structures.
>
> Basically, positions and parts of positions remembered as chunks and calling these chunks "patterns", "pawn chains/islands/complexes" or "open files" and "attacking files" (I know implicitly that the rest of the file is emptied), and assigning these chunks to another level of chunks that we label "openings" might be one reason for the highly efficient recollectional abilities of highly rated and trained individuals that (at least partly) go away when being robbed of the "experience" that lays the foundation to this recollectional ability in standard conditions.
>
> So while I'd also consider chess recognition as quite a domain-specific ability, I think the outcome one can measure in these studies might not (and not be trying to, either) capture the ways in which the recollectional pathway might utilize many different complementing resources such as chunks, opening prototype positions, simple logic (I know this b4-pawn wasn't attacked, so this knight, which I'm unsure of where exactly it stood, can only have been on this square, etc.) and pure memorization, for exceptions/deviations from conventional and often-seen positions.
>
> Just my ramblings anyway, with anecdotal stuff sprinkled in between. Thoughts?

I agree with your last point about multiple aspects of chess recognition/memory. I don't think it's likely that there is some kind of unitary "chess recognition" mechanism, but instead multiple contributing processes that are still mostly limited in scope to chess. Some of what you're describing in the first part of your post makes me think of another topic I'm planning to cover soon: The Einstellung Effect. This refers to a sort of "false alarm" in pattern recognition that can lead experienced players to overlook an optimal solution because the position resembles something they know closely enough that they opt for the move suggested by that previous experience. I think this is a neat way to understand trade-offs between various kinds of grouping and chunking in perception and memory and more deliberate problem-solving.

@NDpatzer said in #28:
> . Some of what you're describing in the first part of your post makes me think of another topic I'm planning to cover soon: The Einstellung Effect. This refers to a sort of "false alarm" in pattern recognition that can lead experienced players to overlook an optimal solution because the position resembles something they know closely enough that they opt for the move suggested by that previous experience. I think this is a neat way to understand trade-offs between various kinds of grouping and chunking in perception and memory and more deliberate problem-solving.
A decade ago I already wrote an article about this on my blog see chess-brabo.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-einstellung-effect.html

@NDpatzer said in #28:
> Some of what you're describing in the first part of your post makes me think of another topic I'm planning to cover soon: The Einstellung Effect. This refers to a sort of "false alarm" in pattern recognition that can lead experienced players to overlook an optimal solution because the position resembles something they know closely enough that they opt for the move suggested by that previous experience. I think this is a neat way to understand trade-offs between various kinds of grouping and chunking in perception and memory and more deliberate problem-solving.

Interesting topic. One of the most difficult parts in chess imo is to be sharp enough to know when to go astray fom what conventional wisdom would suggest. Whether that's differentiating between two objectively very good moves or between safe and risky, yet good, moves becaues they lead down a very narrow path.

The topic sort of mirrors the old conflict between Siebergt Tarrasch (who always spoke of finding "the correct move" in a position and Emmanuel Lasker, who saw chess more as finding "best move depending on the opponent". In other words a chess purist seeking to solve the science of chess vs. the guy who plays his opponents, seeking to be the best at working the game of chess.
All of this is sort of represented in an alleged backhanded compliment by Tarrasch, after losing to Lasker, paraphrasing here:
"I know all the rules, Herr Lasker knows all the exeptions."
Basically trying to save face for his school of chess (the chess-solvers) while also acknowledging (if you want to interpret it that way) Lasker's mastery of consistently finding exceptions to the rules and his ability to correctly identify which guidlines apply to exactly which positions, when with minute differences they do not apply anymore.