This blog builds on ideas that emerged in a detailed discussion on cognition considered from an ecological dynamics perspective. The speakers, Ian Renshaw, Keith Davids and Duarte Araujo, explored some misconceptions surrounding cognition's role in ecological dynamics, and the way that it is intertwined with perception and action. This blog also considers implications of these ideas for understanding sports performance, as well as knock-on effects for coaching and practice design.

1. Cognition and Ecological Dynamics: In ecological dynamics, cognition is not a separate, internalised, mental process, but is instead deeply embedded in our continuous transactions with the environment.

Ecological dynamics emphasizes a view of cognition that is more about doing (acting and perceiving) — focusing on how individuals adapt their behaviour in dynamic performance contexts. This idea of cognition is well aligned with the notion of skill adaptation, suggesting it as a way for performers in sport to engage with a performance environment.

2. Intelligent Performance: An intelligent performer utilizes their entire body, not just their mind, to navigate performance challenges, simple and complex. They become skilled at picking up relevant information from their surrounds, using it to make decisions, adapt their actions and solve problems contextually. They use this type of performance intelligence, rather than relying solely on pre-stored knowledge or instructions or carrying out pre-determined solutions provided by a parent, teacher or coach.

3. Coaching Implications: Coaches are encouraged to foster athletes' autonomy and intelligent performance by helping them become better problem solvers, coping well with responsibility and making decisions, and emphasizing knowledge of the environment over mere knowledge about techniques. Skill adaptation supports athletes in engaging with meaningful transactions (exchanges) with a performance environment.

4. Philosophical Underpinnings: The conversation draws attention to historical philosophical biases (like dualism) that have shaped contemporary thinking and understanding within sports psychology, pointing out that many approaches to training and assessment still reflect these outdated frameworks.

Ecological dynamics criticises the metatheoretical (underlying philosophical) assumption in cognitive theories that the organism and environment are logically distinct. This historical assumption, traced back to the philosophical accounts of human experience in ancient Greece (e.g., idealism of the mind by Plato and Socrates) is the separation of mind from body.

5. The dualism between mind and body facilitates a science of psychology that is mostly separated from the biophysical sciences. In fact, the metatheory of traditional psychology (trait and interactionism), ignores scientific input from physics and ecology regarding how energy patterns in the environment are used by performers to influence and guide how they act.

6. Practical Applications: This discussion leads to suggestion that training environments should be designed to mimic the unpredictability of real performance situations, providing many opportunities for perceptual and decision-making experiences that lead to more effective problem-solving.

7. A good starting point would be to adopt the four Environmental Design principles put forward by Renshaw et al., (2019), proposed to build the bridge between the theoretical ideas of ecological dynamics and their practical application via a Constraint-Led Approach (CLA). The first principle is that coaches and their performers will determine the intention for the session, and then create a learning environment with a focus on the principle of Representative Learning Design. The aim is to carefully sample the information in the performance environment to create the conditions for the functional coupling of perception and action to emerge, in line with those seen in games or competition. Consequently, coaches will deliberately design-in affordances to provide opportunities for action. Coaches will then carefully consider how much variability they wish to have in the session using the principle of Repetition without Repetition. However, at times athletes are unable to see or take the opportunities available and this is the time to add in task constraints. This is the concept of constrain to afford, the final environmental design principles (Renshaw et al, 2019)

This conversation aims to better equip coaches, practitioners, and athletes with insights to improve performance by recognizing the importance of how cognition is intertwined with perception and action in real-world environments.

Reference

Renshaw, I., Davids, K., Newcombe, D., & Roberts, W. (2019). The constraints-led approach: Principles for sports coaching and practice design. Routledge.