I'm interested in how cognitive science experiments are designed and executed. Up until now, all of the papers I've seen dealing with cognition use availability of test subjects as one of the major factors of recruitment for experiments. For example, students are recruited for an experiment, and because the group is so diverse, they are tested on general skills that the entire group would possess, like reading or math.
For example, consider this experiment: "Happiness economics" in reverse: Does happiness affect productivity? There were 276 university students and faculty involved. The students are tested with a math task.
Math and reading comprehension are general skills, and I can think of few people who earn their living with those skills, aside from SAT tutors.
I'm interested if there have been other types of cognitive experiments tried, where the skills used to evaluate experiment are at a "professional" level. For example professional athletes, soldiers or pilots come to mind.
- Experiments that use scoring percentage as a metric for basketball players
- Experiments that use marksmanship grouping as a metric
- Professional video game players
Are there any groups of people, whose professional skills are consistently tested as metric of cognitive performance?
Thank you for your input!