Perceptual Skill in the Game of Othello

Abstract

Three experiments were conducted extending research on chess and Go to the game of Othello. Experiment 1 demonstrated that expert Othello players, in comparison to nonplayers of the game, are superior at recalling meaningful game configurations but are not better at recalling random positions. Experiment 2 demonstrated that expert players can learn a sequence of moves from an Othello game much more rapidly than nonplayers can. Experiment 3 examined chunking behavior and found that experts and nonplayers perceive different patterns of piece clusters in an Othello position. These results indicate that skill in Othello is cognitively organized in a manner similar to chess skill. Because Othello provides a less complex environment than chess and Go, efforts to model human skill in strategy games may be profitably pursued with Othello.