During the 55th meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA, 2004) in San Diego, a symposium was organized on Recent Advances in Expertise Research. Most papers in this special issue of Applied Cognitive Psychology were presented in this symposium. The aim of this special issue is to provide a representative overview of recent developments and current directions in expertise research and to discuss their implications for theoretical and applied cognitive psychology, particularly, for learning and instruction. In addition, it covers some new and innovative theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of expertise. This introductory paper presents a short introduction on expertise research, and provides an overview of the contributions to the special issue. Copyright