But why are expertise and information processing, memory, and fluid intelligence not strongly related? After all, we saw in Chapter 10 that the latter abilities underlie good cognitive performance. Rybash, Hoyer, and Roodin (1986) proposed a process called encapsulation as the answer. Encapsulation occurs when the processes of think ing (information processing, memory, fluid intelligence) become connected or encap sulated to the products of thinking (expertise). This process of encapsulation allows expertise to compensate for declines in underlying abilities, perhaps by making think ing more efficient, and has proven to be a useful approach to understanding expertise (Hoyer & Rybash, 1994) Let's consider how encapsulation might work with auto As a rule people who become auto mechanics are taught to think as if they were playing a game of Twenty Questions, in which the optimal strategy is to ask a question such that the answer eliminates half of the remaining possibilities. In the beginning, the mechanic learns the thinking strategy and the content knowledge about automobiles separately. But as the person's experience with repairing automobiles i the thinking strategy and content knowledge merge; instead of having to go through a Twenty Questions approach, the expert mechanic just proceed. This cognitive developmental pattern in adults very different from the one that occurs in is children (Hoyer & Rybash, 1994). In the adult's case, development is directed toward mastery and adaptive competency in specific domains, whereas children tend to show less specialization and more uniform performance across content domains ability to One of the outcomes of encapsulation appears to be a decrease in the that explain how one arrives at a particular answer (Hoyer & Rybash, 1994). It seems the increased efficiency that comes through merging the process with the product of thinking comes at the cost of being able to explain to others what one is doing. This could be why some instructors have a difficult time explaining the various step involved in solving a problem to novice students but an easier time explaining it to graduate students who have more background and experience. Because these instruc tors may skip steps, it's harder for those with less elaborated knowledge to fill in the missing steps. Chapter 14 when we discuss wisdom, We will return to the topic of expertise in which some believe to be the outcome of becoming an expert in living.