Abstract : It has become increasingly clear in recent years that the quality of domain-specific knowledge is the main determinant of expertise in that domain. This paper begins with an examination of the shift from consideration of general, domain-independent skills and procedures, in both cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence, to the study of the knowledge base. Next, the empirical findings and theoretical models of other researchers in physics problem solving are detailed and summarized. Then our own work is presented, consisting of eight empirical studies. These studies show, in general, the importance of differences in the knowledge bases of experts and novices to their problem solving success. More specifically, they show that it is difficult to use protocols of problem solving episodes to illuminate the differences in the knowledge bases of experts and novices, that experts and novices perceive the problem themselves differently, i.e., novices respond to the surface features of a problem while experts respond to its deep structure, that less successful novices, at least, have deficiencies in their declarative knowledge of physics, that novices tend to lack knowledge of when to use certain physics knowledge, and that deficiencies in knowledge appear to prevent novices at times from making key inferences necessary for solving problems. Finally, these results and their implications for theories of intelligence, are discussed. (Author)
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