Abstract Competence

January 4th, 2007 Fred McVittie Posted in Gist, Intuition, Performance |

Any sufficiently complex skill or body of knowledge entails not only accumulating the various physical routines or academic facts associated with that skill or knowledge, but also the construction of a consilient ‘body’ of knowledge which give form and structure to those routines or facts. In this sense it functions not as a disconnected set of multiple items of data but as a single dynamic abstract competency. This body of knowledge allows not only the playing out of rote data, but also the intelligent and flexible responses which we associate with more complex knowing. The structure of this body of knowledge is variously referred to as a gist, schema, script, frame, etc.

A simple example of an abstract competency is the ability to play football. Playing the game well, or in fact at all, is impossible if one is only able to reproduce specific learned moves by rote. Competence in football demands an abstract understanding of the game as a whole such that flexible responses can be made to the constantly changing state of play. It is important to note that once such competence is available it is unlikely that it will present itself to the consciousness of the player as rational advice on what particular move may be appropriate at any one time. It is more likely that the player will experience such competence as the working of intuition and feeling, a particular move should simply ‘feel right’.

When applied to a non-physical academic field such as the appreciation of art, such competence would manifest itself as an aesthetic response which may or may not be fully available to analysis.