Fitts and Posner (1967), for example, in their urtext on the psychology of skilled performance, see an expert’s performance as automatic and performed without attention. Thus they tell us that “if the attention of a[n expert] golfer is called to his muscle movements before an important putt, he may find it unusually difficult to attain his natural swing” (p. 15); this is, they explain, because expert performance is automatic or “autonomous,” by which they also mean that it does not require control by the conscious mind.
