Why task domains (still) matter for understanding expertise

Abstract

Researchers often find it unsettling that domain experts sometimes agree and sometimes do not. This paper argues that previous investigators may have lacked sufficient appreciation of domain differences. That is, task characteristics have a major impact on the behavior of experts.The purposes of this paper are: (1) to review empirical evidence on agreement/disagreement by experts in various domains, (2) to outline a commonly-accepted conceptualization that questions the competence of experts when there are disagreements, (3) to relate domain differences to the degree of agreement between experts, (4) to suggest an alternate conceptualization of expertise that views such differences in agreement/disagreement as inevitable, (5) to look at implications of this conceptualization for future directions of research on expertise.