ABSTRACT
Consider the following three situations: learning to perform a complex skill such as gymastics (a stunning demonstration of which participants to ICP 2004 experienced during the opening ceremony), learning a complex game such as the ancient Chinese game of Weichi (more widely known as Go), or learning natural language. What these situations have in common, beyond the sheer complexity of the required skills, is the fact that most of what we learn about each appears to proceed in a manner that does not depend so much on the acquisition of explicit, declarative information or on the deployment of intentional strategies, but instead critically depends on repeated practice: Developing the skills needed to execute complex movements in gymnastics, to “see” the correct move in a game of Go, or to fluently produce natural language all involve what Zhu and Simon (1987) dubbed “learning by doing”.
