Titlu: Efectul Einstellung în Șah

Premiză: Familiaritatea unei idei, obișnuința cu care acționăm în anumite situații (pe tabla de șah)
ne pot „orbi” în vederea descoperirii unei soluții mult superioare

Variabile:
VD: descoperirea celei mai rapide soluții a ultimei probleme
VI: nivelul de performanță (amator/profesionist)

Metodă: aplicarea unui test de 4 probleme de șah, dintre care 3 au rezolvări asemănătoare.
Subiecților li se va cere să găsească cea mai rapidă rezolvare. A patra problemă are o structură
familiară și foarte similară cu primele 3, însă rezolvarea cea mai rapidă este diferită față de
primele 3.

How Psychologists Study the Einstellung Effect in Chess

Cognitive bias can prevent even the most talented chess players from
seeing the swiftest path to victory
By ​THE EDITORS​ on March 1, 2014

Credit: ​Wikimedia Commons/​David Lapetina

The intellectually demanding game of chess has proved a wonderful way for psychologists
to study the Einstellung effect—the brain’s tendency to stick with solutions it already
knows rather than look for potentially superior ones. Experiments have shown that this
cognitive bias literally changes how even expert chess players see the board in front of
them. In recent years Merim Bilali of the University of Klagenfurt in Austria, Peter McLeod
of The Queen’s College at the University of Oxford and other researchers have conducted
some of the most insightful of such studies. In some of these experiments the scientists
presented master chess players with a virtual board that had two solutions: They could
achieve checkmate with a well-known five-sequence move called smothered mate or with a
much swifter three-step solution. The players were told to reach checkmate as quickly as
possible, but once they recognized the smothered mate as a possibility they became
seemingly incapable of noticing the more efficient strategy. When presented with a nearly
identical board on which the position of one bishop had shifted, eliminating the smothered
mate as an option, the players did recognize the speedier solution, however (see “​Why
Good Thoughts Block Better Ones​,” ​Scientific American,​ March 2014).You can watch
animations of the smothered mate and swifter solution on virtual chessboards here:
http://cognition.uni-klu.ac.at/chess/einstellung.htm

Chess blindness and the Einstellung effect

● https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/chess-blindness-
and-the-einstellung-effect
In the 1940s some experiments were being done by psychologists interested in how people solve
problems, and why we're sometimes blind to solutions we would otherwise normally see. What
they found can be applied to us chess players, and in fact it already has. So for those who
haven't had the pleasure, I thought I'd share it here.

The following is how the experiment was reproduced using chess puzzles. By solving the
following 4 puzzles you'll be participating in the same sort of experiment!

All puzzles are white to move and mate:

In the classic experiment math problems were used. Participants were asked to solve basic
arithmetic problems by visualizing water jugs. Each problem had a similar solution. When given
the 3rd problem, participants failed to solve it in the best way because they stuck to the pattern
used in the first two. (Notice the last two puzzles have the same solution, did you find the fastest
solution in puzzle #3?)

Finally they were given a 4th problem. It was simpler, but couldn't be solved using the familiar
pattern. Participants found it quite hard, and some even gave up saying there was no solution!

So how did you do? The idea is that when trying to solve a problem, our brains use familiar
ideas. This is actually critical for chess strength. But in some cases it can also blind us if we're
unwilling or unable to look for something different in the position.
Psychological warfare and Einstellung effect (1)

https://en.chessbase.com/post/psychological-warfare-and-einstellung-effect-1

2/23/2014 – When confronted with a decision in chess, people are

sometimes misled by familiar patterns and motifs, which cause them to miss
better solutions. This is known as the "Einstellung" effect, and it has been
systematically studied by a team of researchers. Their results have direct
implications for practical playing strategy. Part one describes the basic
research, including eye-tracking experiments.

Psychological warfare and Einstellung

effect – part 1
By Heather Sheridan and Rick Lahaye
Emanuel Lasker once shared one of his biggest secrets in becoming a chess
grandmaster. He is often quoted as saying: "When you see a good move –
wait – and look for a better one!" Valuable advice, because players often
make mistakes in positions where a familiar solution is present. This can
happen when a position looks similar to previous ones solved. Believing you
actually played the best move in the game, you later find out an even better
one in the post mortem analysis. You then ask yourself: "Why didn't I find
that move during the game?”

Can a familiar solution prevent us from discovering a better one? In chess,

and many other fields, the presence of a familiar solution can block the
discovery of a less familiar, better solution. A recent scientific study has
looked at this issue, by comparing how expert and novice chess players solve
chess problems. You can download the full article here: ​Sheridan & Reingold
(2013)​. Or, you can read the summary below for a short description of the
main highlights from the study.

When we solve problems, our prior knowledge usually helps us by efficiently

guiding us towards solutions that worked for us in the past. However, if a
problem requires a new solution, then sometimes our prior knowledge can
make it surprisingly difficult to discover the new solution. This
problem-solving effect was discovered 75 years ago by a psychologist named
Abraham Luchins. In a famous problem-solving experiment, Luchins asked
people to use jugs of water to measure specific quantities of water. He first
gave them five introductory water-jug problems that could be easily solved
using a simple solution. Next, he gave them a superficially similar problem
that required a new solution. Many people said that this new problem was
impossible, even though it was easily solved by another group of people who
had not seen the introductory problems. In this experiment, prior knowledge
prevented people from discovering a new solution. Luchins called this effect
the ​Einstellung​ effect (Einstellung is a German word, which means “setting”).

Does the Einstellung effect also occur in chess? Several years ago, a group of
researchers – Merim Bilalic, Peter McLeod, and Fernand Gobet (​pdf​) –
created a chess version of Luchins’ water-jug experiment. They asked chess
players to solve chess problems that contained both a familiar solution and a
less familiar, but more advantageous, solution. Like the participants in the
water-jug experiment, many chess players couldn’t find the better solution,
and an analysis of the chess masters’ eye movements revealed that the
chess players were spending a large percentage of time looking at chess
squares associated with the familiar solution, even when they said they were
searching for a new solution. Based on these results, the researchers argued
that the Einstellung effect operates by biasing our attention towards the
familiar solution, thereby preventing us from discovering a new solution.

More recently, a new study by Heather Sheridan and Eyal Reingold (in
collaboration with Rick Lahaye) examined the question: “What conditions are
most likely to produce the Einstellung effect in chess?” These researchers
compared the performance of 17 novice chess players (unrated club players),
and 17 chess expert players (average Elo rating = 2223), while they solved
four chess problems that were designed to induce Einstellung-like effects.

All of these problems were designed to falsely give the impression that a
familiar checkmate solution is possible (i.e., the Einstellung solution). This
familiar Einstellung solution was always located in one corner of the board
(the region is indicated by dotted lines as shown in the figure above), and
the optimal moves on the board were always located outside of this region.
The chess players’ task was to choose White's best move.

If you want to participate in this experiment you should spend some time
looking at the positions before you look at the solutions lower down on this
page. Make a note of the ideas that popped into your mind, the areas of the
chessboard that kept your attention of most of the time. Then compare this
to the results given below.

Incidentally, the researchers used eye movements to study the percentage of

time that the chess players spent looking at the familiar solution (i.e., the
dotted region of the board).

For an example of the eye movements of one of the chess experts, see the
above video (the purple dot indicates where the chess player was looking),
and image below (the red dots indicate the location and duration, in
milliseconds (1 second = 1000 milliseconds) of each of the chess players’ eye
fixations). The video and the following diagram were created using the Data
Viewer software created by ​SR Research​.
As can be seen from this example, this chess player spent a large amount of
time looking at the familiar solution in the corner of the board. Since eye
movements are a good index of where we are directing our attention, this
suggests that the chess player spent a lot of time focusing on the familiar
solution. However, over time, the expert began to look at the optimal move
on the board, and at the end of the trial, the chess player successfully chose
the optimal move on the board (rook to b3).

Well, here are the solutions (best moves, in green) to the four positions and
the Einstellung moves (red) that captured most people's attention:

To study which conditions produce the strongest Einstellung effect, the

researchers contrasted two types of problems. In one type of problem, the
familiar Einstellung solution was a reasonable move (i.e., bishop to a7 in
Problem 1), although it wasn’t one of the best moves on the board. In the
remaining three problems, the Einstellung solution was a blunder.

To study the chess players' bias in attention towards the familiar solution,
the researchers looked at the average percentage of time that the chess
players spent looking at the familiar solution. This percentage of looking time
measure revealed that the chess players found it easier to disengage their
attention from the familiar “Einstellung” solution when it was a blunder
(Problems 2, 3, and 4), rather than a suboptimal move (Problem 1).
Consistent with this finding, most of the chess players were able to avoid
choosing the familiar solution when it was a blunder, but almost half of the
players chose the familiar solution when it was a suboptimal move.

The above table is a summary of the chess players’ move choices for problem
1. The experts showed superior performance, but the experts and novices
were equally likely to choose the Einstellung move. "Quality rating" was
derived by five expert chess players who did not participate in the study.
They rated each move on a scale from 1 to 10 (1 = a blunder, 10 = a very
strong move).

Move Choices for Problems 2, 3, and 4 (the blunder problems) – for the
blunder move problems, all of the experts and the majority of the novices
avoided choosing the Einstellung move. These findings suggest that it was
easier for the chess players to resist the Einstellung effect when the familiar
solution was a blunder, rather than a good (but suboptimal) solution.

The researchers also discovered an interesting difference between the

pattern of eye movements for the experts and novices. Compared to the
novices, the experts were more likely to alternate between looking at the
familiar solution, and looking at the other parts of the board. In other words,
their eyes would leave the familiar solution and then come back to it. This
pattern of “alternating” eye movements was especially common near the end
of the trial. After the experiment, some of the chess experts commented that
they had spent time strategizing about how the optimal move would impact
the pieces in the familiar solution. Based on these comments, we speculate
that the chess experts sometimes looked at the familiar solution even though
they had ruled out checkmate, because they were considering the
implications of the optimal move for the pieces associated with the familiar
solution. The novices were less likely to show this pattern of alternating eye
movements, which suggests that the novices were not engaging in the same
type of strategizing as the experts.

In conclusion,​ the Einstellung effect can cause us to spend a lot of time

examining a familiar solution. By narrowly focusing on a familiar solution, we
can sometimes miss a less familiar, better solution. Chess players find it
easier to avoid the Einstellung effect when the familiar solution is a blunder
(rather than a suboptimal solution), possibly because a blunder provides
clear feedback that the familiar solution is no longer appropriate.

Psychological warfare and Einstellung effect – part 2

After reading the summary, you might ask yourself what you can do to
prevent such errors in your own games. The one-liner of Lasker to control
yourself is valuable, but there's much more to it. In the second part of the
article we will have a look at what you can do to improve your play and use
this knowledge about Einstellung for your own advantage. If you have any
questions or feedback concerning the research, please let us know. You can
contact us at H.Sheridan (at) soton.ac.uk and rick (at) kennisstroom.nl.

About the authors

Heather Sheridan​ is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the ​Centre for Vision and

Cognition​ (CVC), at the University of Southampton. Her current work uses
eye movements and computational modeling to study visual expertise in
reading and chess. More broadly, she is also interested in understanding
expert/novice differences in problem-solving and human memory. She
collaborates with Prof. Erik Reichle at the University of Southampton, and
with Prof. Eyal Reingold at the University of Toronto, who is one of the
founders of the eye-tracking company ​SR Research​.

Rick Lahaye​ is the founder of ​Kennisstroom​, a Dutch based company

focused on knowledge flow management. To stay connected with science, he
uses his knowledge as a chess player (Elo 2380) and coach to consult with
scientific researchers. At the same time, he investigates the strategies and
beliefs Olympic Gold Medalists use(d) to win, and moreover, to deal with
extreme fatigue near the end of a race (including pacing strategies,
personality, beliefs, coping strategies, culture, etc.).

References
● Bilalic, M., McLeod, P., & Gobet, F. (2008a). Inflexibility of experts –
reality or myth? Quantifying the Einstellung effect in chess masters.
Cognitive Psychology​, 56(2), 73–102.
doi:10.1016/j.cogpsych.2007.02.001
 ● Bilalic, M., McLeod, P., & Gobet, F. (2008b). Why good thoughts block
better ones: The mechanism of the pernicious Einstellung (set) effect.
Cognition, 108​(3), 652–661. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2008.05.005
● Bilalic, M., McLeod, P., & Gobet, F. (2010). The mechanism of the
Einstellung (set) effect: A pervasive source of cognitive bias. ​Current
Directions in Psychological Science, 19​(2), 111–115.
doi:10.1177/0963721410363571
● Luchins, A. S. (1942). Mechanization in problem solving – The effect of
Einstellung. ​Psychological Monographs, 54​(6), i–95.
● Sheridan, H., & Reingold, E. M. (2013). The mechanisms and boundary
conditions of the Einstellung effect in chess: Evidence from eye
movements. ​PloS One, 8​(10), e75796.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.007579.

The mechanisms and boundary conditions of the

Einstellung effect in chess: evidence from eye
movements.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24124515
Sheridan H​1​, ​Reingold EM​.

Author information

Abstract

In a wide range of problem-solving settings, the presence of a familiar solution can block the
discovery of better solutions (i.e., the Einstellung effect). To investigate this effect, we monitored
the eye movements of expert and novice chess players while they solved chess problems that
contained a familiar move (i.e., the Einstellung move), as well as an optimal move that was
located in a different region of the board. When the Einstellung move was an advantageous (but
suboptimal) move, both the expert and novice chess players who chose the Einstellung move
continued to look at this move throughout the trial, whereas the subset of expert players who
chose the optimal move were able to gradually disengage their attention from the Einstellung
move. However, when the Einstellung move was a blunder, all of the experts and the majority of
the novices were able to avoid selecting the Einstellung move, and both the experts and novices
gradually disengaged their attention from the Einstellung move. These findings shed light on the
boundary conditions of the Einstellung effect, and provide convergent evidence for Bilalić,
McLeod, & Gobet (2008)'s conclusion that the Einstellung effect operates by biasing attention
towards problem features that are associated with the familiar solution rather than the optimal
solution.