Article: How Your Brain Detects Patterns Without Conscious Thought

While pattern recognition's role in chess ability is (or should be) well-known, I still think it's somewhat under-emphasized in actual improvement programs. Perhaps that is because it often operates at an unconscious level ("System 1 thinking" or what we can also call "intuition"), rather than as part of our conscious ("System 2") calcuation process. This recent Scientific American article further illustrates the point of how learning actually does take place on an unconscious level:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-your-brain-detects-patterns-without-conscious-thought/

This may also affect our perceptions of "plateauing" at chess (or any other skill), since the phenomenon described in the article implies that our conscious "library" of patterns will grow more slowly than the unconscious one.

Specific to the role of intuition in chess, I think Carlsen's quote on his thinking process in "How Carlsen Makes Us Feel Better About Chess" is still very relevant.