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Science of Chess: Seeing the board "holistically."

@biscuitfiend said in #8:

This is certainly one of the highest quality blog posts on the whole site. As someone with a professional connection to STEM journalism, I salute you! This is excellent stuff!

Thanks for reading and for the kind words! If you're interested, you can find my writing about non-chess science topics (mostly visual perception) at my substack: https://benbalas.substack.com/

All my Science of Chess posts have a home there too, but I've also got some articles about the vision science behind the Predator, Superman, and other sci-fi properties.

@biscuitfiend said in #8: > This is certainly one of the highest quality blog posts on the whole site. As someone with a professional connection to STEM journalism, I salute you! This is excellent stuff! Thanks for reading and for the kind words! If you're interested, you can find my writing about non-chess science topics (mostly visual perception) at my substack: https://benbalas.substack.com/ All my Science of Chess posts have a home there too, but I've also got some articles about the vision science behind the Predator, Superman, and other sci-fi properties.

Interesting post. One thing you might want to explore further, though, is that faceblindness tends to be more common in autistic people, who also tend to be pretty good at chess. I am autistic and have faceblindness, and this doesn't seem to stop me from being able to visualize the board and the patterns on it.

Interesting post. One thing you might want to explore further, though, is that faceblindness tends to be more common in autistic people, who also tend to be pretty good at chess. I am autistic and have faceblindness, and this doesn't seem to stop me from being able to visualize the board and the patterns on it.

@pallesthesia said in #12:

Interesting post. One thing you might want to explore further, though, is that faceblindness tends to be more common in autistic people, who also tend to be pretty good at chess. I am autistic and have faceblindness, and this doesn't seem to stop me from being able to visualize the board and the patterns on it.

Thanks for reading! Yes, that's an interesting point and seems similar to and consistent with reports of individuals with prosopagnosia for human faces but strong face recognition skills for animals like non-human primates and sheep. It would also be interesting to see if the composite effect for chess positions is evident in strong players with autism - just because holistic processing is linked to expertise here doesn't mean that it's the only path to being good at playing, after all.

@pallesthesia said in #12: > Interesting post. One thing you might want to explore further, though, is that faceblindness tends to be more common in autistic people, who also tend to be pretty good at chess. I am autistic and have faceblindness, and this doesn't seem to stop me from being able to visualize the board and the patterns on it. Thanks for reading! Yes, that's an interesting point and seems similar to and consistent with reports of individuals with prosopagnosia for human faces but strong face recognition skills for animals like non-human primates and sheep. It would also be interesting to see if the composite effect for chess positions is evident in strong players with autism - just because holistic processing is linked to expertise here doesn't mean that it's the only path to being good at playing, after all.

People=mocking nonsense is brainwashing people it's not funny

People=mocking nonsense is brainwashing people it's not funny

@osmankaa2 said in #14:

People=mocking nonsense is brainwashing people it's not funny

Hi there,

I'm afraid I don't understand what your comment is in response to, but nothing in this post is intended to mock anyone.

@osmankaa2 said in #14: > People=mocking nonsense is brainwashing people it's not funny Hi there, I'm afraid I don't understand what your comment is in response to, but nothing in this post is intended to mock anyone.

what is meaning of pictures

what is meaning of pictures

Really interesting blog post - thanks!

Really interesting blog post - thanks!

Thanks for this post. I'm curious what you think about dyslexia and chess. Just as letters get jumbled and are hard for some minds to sort out, when I look at some chess puzzles, I invariably seek solutions that are tangled as well. Rather than finding the simple answer, I get tied in knots. It feels like the same phenomenon.

Is there any literature or research about any of this?

Thanks for this post. I'm curious what you think about dyslexia and chess. Just as letters get jumbled and are hard for some minds to sort out, when I look at some chess puzzles, I invariably seek solutions that are tangled as well. Rather than finding the simple answer, I get tied in knots. It feels like the same phenomenon. Is there any literature or research about any of this?

@read23 said in #19:

Thanks for this post. I'm curious what you think about dyslexia and chess. Just as letters get jumbled and are hard for some minds to sort out, when I look at some chess puzzles, I invariably seek solutions that are tangled as well. Rather than finding the simple answer, I get tied in knots. It feels like the same phenomenon.

Is there any literature or research about any of this?

Thanks for reading! To my knowledge there isn't much work looking at specific connections between dyslexia and chess - the few studies I know about focus on the impact of chess training programs on educational outcomes for kids with developmental dyslexia. I know there's some research examining both stronger visuospatial abilities in people with dyslexia (if I remember correctly these tend to be related to perceiving global or large-scale form) and some tasks in which they don't do as well as people without it (these tend to be challenging picture-memory tasks or spatial sequence recall tasks).

It would be neat to look at chess calculation in individuals with dyslexia. Though I don't know that this has been explored in the literature, I think chess calculation has some unique characteristics that might make it a particularly interesting visuospatial task. I'm lining up some potential topics for the new year, and this might make for an interesting post - stay tuned!

@read23 said in #19: > Thanks for this post. I'm curious what you think about dyslexia and chess. Just as letters get jumbled and are hard for some minds to sort out, when I look at some chess puzzles, I invariably seek solutions that are tangled as well. Rather than finding the simple answer, I get tied in knots. It feels like the same phenomenon. > > Is there any literature or research about any of this? Thanks for reading! To my knowledge there isn't much work looking at specific connections between dyslexia and chess - the few studies I know about focus on the impact of chess training programs on educational outcomes for kids with developmental dyslexia. I know there's some research examining both stronger visuospatial abilities in people with dyslexia (if I remember correctly these tend to be related to perceiving global or large-scale form) and some tasks in which they don't do as well as people without it (these tend to be challenging picture-memory tasks or spatial sequence recall tasks). It would be neat to look at chess calculation in individuals with dyslexia. Though I don't know that this has been explored in the literature, I think chess calculation has some unique characteristics that might make it a particularly interesting visuospatial task. I'm lining up some potential topics for the new year, and this might make for an interesting post - stay tuned!