The development of expertise: Animal models?

There is a continuing debate in the psychological literature between researchers who lean more toward learning theories of expertise development and those who lean more toward talent theories. However, the development of human expertise has not been open to direct experimental methods and will probably continue to elude experimentalists in the future. A promising alternative to direct experimental methods is to use nonhuman animal models, a possibility that researchers in expertise seem to have overlooked. However, there are studies in the animal behavior literature that address the development of nonhuman animal expertise without specifically referring to the topic as expertise. In the present study, the author discusses two nonhuman animal examples of expertise development that have been researched by ethologists. Nonhuman animal expertise development, unlike human expertise development, is subject to direct experimentation. The author thus recommends that researchers use nonhuman animals in their studies of expertise.