Harnessing socio-cultural constraints on athlete development to create a form of life

The role of task constraints manipulation in pedagogical practice has received considerable attention in recent years, although there has been little focus on the role of socio-cultural constraints on an athlete's development to elite performance. Here, we aim to integrate ideas from a range of scientific sub disciplines to consider why certain behaviours and cultures (socio-cultural constraints) may exist in sport performance and coaching. Using recent conceptualisations of affordances in ecological dynamics, we explore how socio-cultural constraints may influence an athlete's development and relationship with a performance context. We also highlight how workplace practices emanating from the industrialisation of the nineteenth-century in countries like the UK may have influenced coaching practice and organisational behaviours from that time on. In particular, features such as strict work regimes and rigid role specification may have reduced personal autonomy, de-skilled performers and induced a 'body as machine' philosophy within sporting organisations.These traits could be considered counter to expert performance in sports where creativity and adaptive decision-making are important skills for athletes to possess. We propose that ecological dynamics is a theoretical framework that enhances the understanding of the influential nature of socio-cultural constraints on the development of athlete performance. Key ideas suggest that sport pedagogists and practitioners could develop methodologies which help design practice landscapes rich in information to encourage athlete autonomy to search for relevant affordances which invite functionally relevant actions for competitive performance with physical, psychological, emotional and social dimensions. Future research is needed to explore a range of sports to identify and clarify the relationship between socio-cultural constraints and expertise acquisition

Effects of Lawn Tennis Association mini tennis as task constraints on children’s match-play characteristics

The Lawn Tennis Association’s (LTA) Mini Tennis (MT) is a modified version of tennis consisting of progressive stages, however, there have been few attempts to evaluate how MT might shape performance behaviours. Here, we examine effects of playing MT on the emergence of children’s match-play behaviours in forty-eight junior tennis players. Performance in 1010 match-play points were filmed and coded across four tennis stages (MT Red, MT Orange, MT Green and Full Ball), using a notational analysis system. Recorded performance variables included rally length, first serve percentage and shot type, for the purpose of analysing inter-stage comparisons. Results showed a series of specific adaptations to playing characteristics across the stages, including rally length, shot variety and serve success. MT Red rallies (7.36 ± 6.06) were longer than Full Ball rallies (3.83 ± 2.40), and a higher percentage of forehands were played at MT Red (66.40% ± 8.49%) than at Full Ball stage (45.96% ± 6.47%). Findings suggested that MT stages can afford children more opportunities to develop their skills and elicit different match-play characteristics than Full Ball task constraints. Coaches, therefore, should consider the nature of emergent adaptations when designing practice environments to facilitate learning in young tennis players. Key Words: Mini Tennis, task constraints, representative learning design, adaptations, emergent behaviour

Effects of scaling task constraints on emergent behaviours in children's racquet sports performance

Manipulating task constraints by scaling key features like space and equipment is proposed as an effective method for enhancing development and refinement of movement patterns in sport. Despite this, it is currently unclear whether scaled manipulation of task constraints would impact emergent movement behaviours in young children, affording learners opportunities to develop functional movement behaviours. Here, we sought to investigate how scaling task constraints during 8-weeks of mini tennis training shaped emergent movement behaviours, such a backhand stroke development. Two groups, control (n = 8, age = 7.2 ± 0.6 years) and experimental (n = 8, age 7.4 ± 0.4 years), underwent practice using constraints-based manipulations, with more specific affordances for backhand strokes designed for the latter group. To evaluate intervention effects, pre- and post-test match-play characteristics (e.g. forehand and backhand percentages) and measures from a tennis-specific skills test (e.g. forehand and backhand technical proficiency) were examined. Post intervention, the experimental group performed a greater percentage of backhands out of total number of shots played (46.7 ± 3.3%), and a significantly greater percentage of backhand winners out of total backhand strokes observed (5.5 ± 3.0%), compared to the control group during match-play (backhands = 22.4 ± 6.5%; backhand winners = 1.0 ± 3.6%). The experimental group also demonstrated improvements in forehand and backhand technical proficiency and the ability to maintain a rally with a coach, compared to the control group. In conclusion, scaled manipulations implemented here elicited more functional performance behaviours than standard Mini Tennis Red constraints, suggesting how human movement scientists may scale task constraint manipulations to augment young athletes' performance development. Keywords: Scaling task constraints, intervention, tennis, affordances, emergent behaviour

Investigating the athlete-environment relationship in a form of life: An ethnographic study

From the theoretical perspective of ecological dynamics, skilful behaviour in performance contexts like sport and education is predicted on the establishment of a functional relationship between an individual and the environment. The strength of this functional relationship is shaped over time by everyday behaviours, values, and customs (sociocultural practices) within a specific sport organisation. A growing body of research seeks to identify these influential sociocultural practices that emerge and exist in sport cultures and organisations. However, little is known from an ecological realism perspective how these practices affect an athlete's engagement with opportunities offered by the environment (e.g. affordances). In this study, we draw on ethnographic data and theoretical tenets of James Gibson's ecological psychology to identify how the sociocultural practices of a British rugby league football academy might shape an athlete's engagement with affordances. Findings revealed that masculinity and disciplined behaviours were the dominant sociocultural practices, instrumental in developing beliefs, values, and customs of athlete development practices. An ecological realism analysis of the data suggested that cultural pressures meant that key actors ignored the potential for development and learning of athletes’ self-organisation tendencies, and inhibited individuals’ capacities to respond to opportunities for action offered in many traditional practice designs. We conclude by discussing implications for sport practitioners that promote ‘affordance-regulated’ practice designs to enhance athlete-environment interactions

A department of methodology can coordinate transdisciplinary sport science support

In the current sporting landscape, it is not uncommon for professional sport teams and organizations to employ multidisciplinary sport science support teams. In these teams and organizations, a “head of performance” may manage a number of sub-discipline specialists with the aim of enhancing athlete performance. Despite the best intentions of multidisciplinary sport science support teams, difficulties associated with integrating sub-disciplines to enhance performance preparation have become apparent. It has been suggested that the problem of integration is embedded in the traditional reductionist method of applied sport science, leading to the eagerness of individual specialists to quantify progress in isolated components. This can lead to “silo” working and decontextualized learning environments that can hinder athlete preparation. To address this challenge, we suggest that ecological dynamics is one theoretical framework that can inform common principles and language to guide the integration of sport science sub-disciplines in a Department of Methodology. The aim of a Department of Methodology would be for group members to work within a unified conceptual framework to (1) coordinate activity through shared principles and language, (2) communicate coherent ideas, and (3) collaboratively design practice landscapes rich in information (i.e., visual, acoustic, proprioceptive and haptic) and guide emergence of multi-dimensional behaviors in athlete performance

Temporal and Spatial Occlusion of Advanced Visual Information Constrains Movement (Re) organization in One-Handed Catching Behaviors

Dynamic interceptive actions are performed under severe spatial and temporal constraints. Here, behavioral processes underpinning anticipation in one-handed catching were examined using novel technology to implement a spatial and temporal occlusion design. Video footage of an actor throwing a ball was manipulated to create four temporal and five spatial occlusion conditions. Data from twelve participants’ hand kinematics and gaze behaviors were recorded while attempting to catch a projected ball synchronized with the video footage. Catching performance decreased with earlier occlusion of the footage. Movement onset of the catching hand and initiation of visual ball tracking emerged earlier when footage of the thrower was occluded at a later time point in the throwing action. Spatial occlusion did not affect catching success, although movement onset emerged later when increased visual information of the actor was occluded. Later movement onset was countered by greater maximum velocity of the catching hand. Final stages of action (e.g., grasping action of the hand) remained unchanged across both spatial and temporal conditions suggesting that later phases of the action were organized using ball flight information. Findings highlighted the importance of maintaining information-movement coupling during performance of interceptive actions, since movement behaviors were continuously (re)organized using kinematic information from a thrower's actions and ball flight information. Keywords: Perception-action coupling; Informational constraints; Interceptive timing; Gaze; Adaptive behaviors; Anticipation

Regularising disparity estimation via multi task learning with structured light reconstruction

3D reconstruction is a useful tool for surgical planning and guidance. However, the lack of available medical data stunts research and development in this field, as supervised deep learning methods for accurate disparity estimation rely heavily on large datasets containing ground truth information. Alternative approaches to supervision have been explored, such as self-supervision, which can reduce or remove entirely the need for ground truth. However, no proposed alternatives have demonstrated performance capabilities close to what would be expected from a supervised setup. This work aims to alleviate this issue. In this paper, we investigate the learning of structured light projections to enhance the development of direct disparity estimation networks. We show for the first time that it is possible to accurately learn the projection of structured light on a scene, implicitly learning disparity. Secondly, we \textcolor{black}{explore the use of a multi task learning (MTL) framework for the joint training of structured light and disparity. We present results which show that MTL with structured light improves disparity training; without increasing the number of model parameters. Our MTL setup outperformed the single task learning (STL) network in every validation test. Notably, in the medical generalisation test, the STL error was 1.4 times worse than that of the best MTL performance. The benefit of using MTL is emphasised when the training data is limited.} A dataset containing stereoscopic images, disparity maps and structured light projections on medical phantoms and ex vivo tissue was created for evaluation together with virtual scenes. This dataset will be made publicly available in the future