What I'm mostly complaining about is sloppy thinking as people cite deGroot's research or its terminology when advocating particular kinds of study, as if that research were prescriptive. In our forum, for example, you get this sort of thing, as advice to a player asking for general help [the poster does not speak English as a first language, and I have no wish to mock either his ideas or his expression of them]:
"What you need for thinking is as many patterns as possible stored in your brain (which has to make use of this storage in his own enigmatic way. You only can wish that this knowledge may [come to mind when it's needed] - and it does cf. smothered mate)...But one thing is clear to me: You need much more patterns. I would say, Top players have at least some 50,000 in store...I definitely feel that pattern knowledge is the key. As it can be used for strategical patterns too. And too for Endgames."
Now, what that poster advises is merely (1)studying large books of tactics and (2)making file cards or Chessbase files of interesting positions one encounters and practicing them--both of which I myself do and would recommend doing, but not because of a psychological theory. (I would conjecture that the benefit of making your own file-card index and drilling it has more to do with active learning and with identifying and repairing your deficits than with the theory of pattern-recognition, which, in its ability to find benefit in almost any method of study with the exception of visualization exercises, is nearly a universal solvent). Strictly speaking, I would say that we just don't know what works best and why. Scientific studies would help (not that they're forthcoming).
Yes, of course, I'm also thinking of Heisman, de la Maza, and Smith/Tikkanen advocating repeating the same exact exercises, but they don't actually say that the theory indicates that their methods are best. Interestingly, I know personally a private devotee of this method who started using it in the early 1990s by memorizing games, citing pattern recognition. He was a 1900-rated tactically-minded player. He only took a leap, however, when he read Silman's explanatory positional book Reassess Your Chess--without going out of his way to repeat anything.
I'm also thinking of the vogue for what you once called "a la carte" strategic and positional study manuals--van de Oudeweetering, Soltis's 100 Grandmaster Secrets, Guliev, and Broznik/Terekhin. I own those books, and I think them of decent quality; the last one I think very good; for that matter, My System is not so far from their approach. But given the kind of statements I've heard, and the way people now like to throw around the term "pattern recognition," I suspect some purchasers might think that the method of these books is scientifically supported by deGroot, etc., when for all we know the best way to acquire patterns is the way deGroot's original subjects presumably did it--playing a lot, interacting with strong players, reading and annotating master games, preparing openings, examining studies, etc.
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