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January 2011 - April 2011
January 2011 - April 2011
Publications
Publications (387)
Talent identification and development in sport are complex processes that often produce large, multidimensional datasets. Technological approaches powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) potentially offer an effective and efficient method to help interpret such information. Research conducted on talent identification and development processes in yo...
A clearer understanding of, and tighter boundaries between, terms are important for researchers designing studies as well as for other sport stakeholders creating evidence-informed policies. This article considers the terms ‘athlete’, ‘talent’, and ‘player’ from psychological and sociocultural perspectives and in different sporting communities to h...
Traditional perspectives of human decision-making have illuminated the many “quirks” of the mind. While information regarding the number and scale of these phenomena is growing rapidly, there has been less discussion of why they may be there in the first place. A driving factor for this imbalance may be related to the methodological challenges that...
Objective
An increasing proportion of older Canadians are pursuing sport. The objective of this study was to examine the experiences of older Canadian women in curling.
Methods
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 participants. Interviews were transcribed and coded using thematic analysis.
Results
Participants simultaneously resisted...
One of the most convincing studies about the importance of the cutoff date in relative age effects was when Helsen et al. (2000) showed that a shift in the date directly resulted in a change of birth month distributions in soccer. Over the past four decades, the role of the birth year has also been associated with relative age effects (as reflected...
There exists an athletic psychological variable that appears to be strongly associated with the quality of an athlete’s efforts in training. Self-regulated sport practice reflects an athlete’s capability to deliberately and intensively engage during practice time in a manner that optimizes skill acquisition. This variable also relates to selective...
Among the many issues explored by sport science researchers, one topic that seems the least controversial is the recommendation against specialization in early sport training. However, there has been little examination of early specialization in sports where this type of training is the norm. In this study, we explored notions of early specializati...
Multisport engagement is positioned as the antithesis to specialization within youth development pathways. However, different terms are used to describe the multisport pathway, which may create confusion regarding what the pathway should look like. This review investigated all published research examining the multisport pathway, with a focus on ter...
McAuley, ABT, Hughes, DC, Tsaprouni, LG, Varley, I, Suraci, B, Bradley, B, Baker, J, Herbert, AJ, and Kelly, AL. Genetic associations with acceleration, change of direction, jump height, and speed in English academy football players. J Strength Cond Res 38(2): 350–359, 2024—High-intensity movements and explosive actions are commonly assessed during...
Issues relating to older adults in sport are ongoing topics of interest among sport scientists; however, our knowledge on how older athletes have been studied is incomplete, which has implications for understanding the comprehensiveness of this evidence base. This scoping review aimed to provide an overview of how sport and older adults have been s...
The purpose of this study was to examine polygenic profiles previously associated with maturity timing in male academy football players across different age phases. Thus, 159 male football players from four English academies (U12–16, n = 86, aged 13.58 ± 1.58 years; U17–23, n = 73, aged 18.07 ± 1.69 years) and 240 male European controls were examin...
The study of how people associate current behaviors with long-term outcomes, or how they consider future consequences, provides insight into future time perspectives and intertemporal choice (Daugherty & Brase, 2010). The consideration of future consequences (CFC) is one construct that has been pre-eminently researched (Strathman et al., 1994). CFC...
Current scientific evidence does not support the implementation of genetic tests to enhance the processes of talent identification and development systems. Regardless of this consensus, it appears likely that sport stakeholders will continue using genetic tests. This paper aimed to provide practitioners with some best practice guidelines if impleme...
The National Football League (NFL) Combine provides NFL teams the ability to assess prospective athletes' medical histories and physical and psychological abilities. Using this information, NFL personnel must then decide whether an athlete is a good fit to their team. Given the combine's 40-year history and the availability of peer reviewed article...
While the term "athlete development" has been used to capture the changes (physical, psychological, etc.) that occur as an athlete moves from initial sport engagement to elite performance, much of the research in this area has focused on earlier stages of the pathway, with very little work examining the highest levels of sport. Considering a person...
This perspective focuses on the need for researchers and practitioners to carefully consider the clarity and consistency of their language in the context of athlete development. Evidence supporting a lack of congruency in the way certain terms and expressions are defined, understood, and operationalized continues to accumulate, highlighting the imp...
Sport has a unique place in many cultures, emphasizing the links between physical elements of movement with psychological and social outcomes. Sport participation continues to attract the interest of researchers from a range of perspectives, yet there remains a strong need to understand the "who", "what", "where", "when" and "why" aspects of sport...
This paper reviews theoretical developments specific to applied research around the “psychology of practice” in skill acquisition settings, which we argue is under-considered in applied sport psychology. Centered upon the Self-Regulation of Sport Practice Survey (SRSP), we explain how self-regulated learning conceptually
underpins this survey and r...
Research pertaining to the experiences and motives of Paralympic athletes who transfer between sports is scant. This study aimed to address this gap through semistructured interviews with Canadian Paralympic coaches ( n = 35) and athletes ( n = 12). Three higher-order themes of “alternative to retirement,” “career extension,” and “compatibility” we...
Athlete selection (often referred to as talent selection) reflects the end point of what is a complex decision-making process coaches, administrators, and/or scouts use when deciding who remains and who is removed from a sample of potential athletes. In this paper, we conceptualize athlete selection as an evolutionary process where selection pressu...
The current study explored coach and athlete reactions and challenges leading up to the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games, with a specific focus on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Games’ postponement. Nine Australian Paralympic coaches ( n = 3) and athletes ( n = 6) shared their experiences in semistructured interviews. The thematic analysis...
The purpose of this study was to examine differences in the genotype frequency distribution of thirty-three single nucleotide variants (SNVs) between youth development phase (YDP) and professional development phase (PDP) academy football players. One hundred and sixty-six male football players from two Category 1 and Category 3 English academies we...
Talent identification and selection are critical components of competitive sport success. Despite the time, effort, and resources invested, the accuracy of selection decisions remains generally poor. While much of the scholarship in this area has focused on the factors discriminating skilled and less-skilled individuals, limited research exists on...
Background:
Technical capabilities have significant discriminative and prognostic power in youth football. Although, many factors influence technical performance, no research has explored the genetic contribution. As such, the purpose of this study was to examine the association of several single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with technical asse...
This short review explores the state of talent identification and development of athletes in Paralympic contexts. While talent identification typically occurs during adolescence, this practice is more complex and variable in Paralympic contexts compared to non-Paralympic contexts. For example, Paralympic athletes can have impairments that are conge...
The Gold Medal Profile for Sport Psychology (GMP-SP) is a comprehensive, evidence-informed framework integrating mental performance competencies underpinning the athletic performances of Canadian athletes capable of stepping onto the Para/Olympic Podium. The GMP-SP was established to guide Mental Performance Consultants (MPCs) and National Sport Or...
Psychological characteristics influence the performance of youth football players and are significant predictors of development and success at adulthood. Although genetic factors may explain a considerable portion of inter-individual differences in psychological traits, psychogenetic research in football is scarce. As such, the purpose of this stud...
Sport researchers have warned about the lack of a clear and consistent definition of early specialization, while others have raised concerns around the validity of methods used to classify athletes as ‘specializers’. The current investigation includes two studies examining the implications of varying classification methods for exploring both specia...
Long-term athletic development practices have been recommended for the past two decades. However, limited research exists exploring the knowledge and skills required by practitioners to optimise long-term athletic development. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the knowledge, adherence, practices, and challenges of practitioners responsible fo...
In 2017, Sports Illustrated (SI) made headlines when their remarkable prediction from 2014 that the Houston Astros (a team in one of the lowest Major League Baseball divisional rankings) would win the World Series, came true. The less-publicised story was that in 2017, SI predicted the Los Angeles Dodgers to win the Major League Baseball (MLB) titl...
Self-regulated learning (SRL) – how an athlete self-controls thoughts, motivations, and goal-oriented behaviours – helps optimize practice quality (McCardle et al., 2017). Emerging conceptualizations of coaching for skill acquisition within the Co-regulatory Coaching Interface Model (CCIM; Bain & Young, 2019) demonstrate that an athlete’s SRL compe...
Relative age effects (RAEs) are independent of specific cutoff dates that can vary from country to country. However, the consequences of changing the selection cutoff dates within a national sport organization are unknown. Further, the transition from international youth to senior representation is yet to be explored in rugby union. Thus, the aims...
This three-part investigation conducted a comprehensive analysis of 213 Australian and Canadian athletes' developmental trajectories, training histories, and experiences in organized sports from 18 Paralympic sports (PS). While athletes with early-onset impairments (i.e., congenital, preadolescent) reached milestones and commenced various types of...
Research has recently examined the role of impairment onset on athlete development in Paralympic sport; however, less is known on how impairment type can impact athlete sporting pathways. In this study, 187 Australian and Canadian Paralympic sport athletes completed a survey. Participants were divided into the following four groups: impaired muscle...
Athlete selection is fundamental in elite sport, occurring regularly throughout an athlete's development. Research in this area reveals the accuracy of these decisions is questionable in even the most elite sport environments and athletes are increasingly disputing these decisions as unfair and punitive. As a countermeasure to these dispute and arb...
In theory, professional sport ‘entry drafts’ are designed to promote parity by granting poorly performing teams with early selections and winning teams with later selections. While this process has intentions to ‘level the playing field’, mixed findings exist in the literature. The aim of this review is to identify and synthesize the literature exa...
Although public discourse about the origins of exceptional performance can be traced to Plato, it was not until the 1800s and the work of Francis Galton that scientific approaches to this outcome were first conceptualized. Since his initial work, discussions around the notion of talent and innate ability have increased considerably. This chapter ex...
This book brings to light the most pressing questions that must be addressed to advance the field. The book, which contains 25 chapters organized into three categories (Performance and Learning, Health and Well-Being, and Cultural and Professional Issues), includes contributions from leading experts in the field. Each chapter starts with a brief su...
Objective: To examine performance on aspects of attention and executive control among varsity athletes playing strategic or static sports. Design: Performance on a computerized test of attention and executive control was compared between university soccer and track and field athletes using a cross-sectional design. Method: Ninety-seven university a...
Context
The assumed risks of early specialization in sport are well known, with several international consensus statements advising against specialization in early athlete development. However, there have been recent calls for more focused research in this area.
Evidence Acquisition
Research evidence from several scientific disciplines (eg, sport...
Where does exceptionality begin? How do we define and measure it? What is the role of the environment in promoting or inhibiting the development of expertise? Despite being critical elements of philosophy for at least two millennia, empirical examinations of the origins and development of human exceptionality are relatively recent. It was not until...
The past two decades have seen a rapid rise in attention towards talent identification, athlete development and skill acquisition. However, there are important limitations to the evidentiary foundations of this field of research. For instance, variability in describing the performance levels of individuals has made it challenging to draw inferences...
In this review paper, we reflect on the work of K. Anders Ericsson and how his Deliberate Practice Framework (DPF: Ericsson et al., 1993) has particularly impacted the field of sport expertise and athlete development. We review the major tenets of the framework, including areas where there is indisputable evidence for the value of deliberate practi...
Talent selection has become an integral part of many nations’ athlete development systems. In this context, a coach often serves as a decision-maker, selecting or deselecting athletes based on their intuition, a phenomenon that has generally come to be referred to as “coach’s eye”. However, there is no consistent operational definition of this term...
Significance:
We give a comprehensive picture of perceptual-cognitive (PC) skills that could contribute to performance in interceptive sports. Both visual skills that are low level and unlikely influenced by experience and higher-level cognitive-attentional skills are considered, informing practitioners for identification and training and alerting...
Our target article on ‘Innate talent’ had two objectives, first to acknowledge the 20th anniversary of the seminal contribution by Howe, Davidson and Sloboda (1998) and second, to update this information as it relates to talent in the domain of sport. Many thanks to all the authors that took the time to provide commentaries on our review. Broadly,...
The demands of high-performance sport are exacerbated during the lead up to the Major Games (i.e., Paralympics). The purpose of this study was to better understand the challenges experienced and strategies utilized by Australian athletes (n = 7) and coaches (n = 5) preparing for the Tokyo Paralympic Games using semi-structured interviews. The thema...
Self-regulated learning (SRL) is associated with enhanced athletic practice and sport expertise development. Self-report measures show promising associations with criteria for expertise development, yet there remains a need to further evidence of validity. We assessed whether modifications to the Self-Regulated Learning for Sport Practice (SRL-SP)...
Despite rapid increases in research on talent identification and development in able-bodied sports, there remains limited knowledge regarding how talent is identified and developed in Paralympic contexts. The purpose of this study was to capture the perspectives of experts (coaches, high-performance managers, and pathway specialists) working in eli...
The sunk cost effect describes the tendency to escalate one’s commitment towards a certain endeavor, despite diminishing returns, as a consequence of irreversible resource expenditure that has already been made.1 This effect has been observed in a number of professional sports leagues, wherein teams escalate their commitment towards players selecte...
Sport is regularly advocated as a vehicle for positive psychosocial development, with coaching an integral part of how participation leads to the development of psychosocial assets and life skills. While a large body of research has focused on youth sport and development, the continuous rise in participation in Masters Sport has led researchers to...
While the impact of coaches on their athletes has been appreciated for more than a century, only recently have researchers reached a consensus concerning the key coaching principles and methods that consistently ensure the most positive outcomes for athletes and coaches. Sport Coaches’ Handbook presents this more holistic approach to coaching and p...
Maintaining balance between training stress and recovery is essential in the pursuit of athletic performance; however, expertise-related differences in characteristics of recovery are understudied. This study compared sleep – biologically fundamental recovery with strong effects on sport performance – among athletes of different skill levels. Forty...
Several recent systematic and targeted reviews have highlighted limitations in our understanding of talent in sport. However, a comprehensive profile of where the scientific research has focused would help identify gaps in current knowledge. Our goal in this scoping review was (a) to better understand what others have done in the field of research...
The National Hockey League (NHL) entry draft is a process wherein teams make sequential selections from a pool of eligible players. Given the young age of prospects, drafting requires long‐term forecasting of future performance under a high level of uncertainty. This study assessed the selection accuracy across all seven rounds of the draft, as wel...
Negative age-stereotypes can have widespread effects on older adult functionality; however, no research has explored psychophysical aspects of stair navigation after exposure to stereotype priming. The present study examined self-efficacy and biomechanics related to stair navigation in older adults ( N = 90). Between-groups analyses revealed positi...
Athletes build on practice time with their coach through work on their own using self-regulated learning (SRL) processes (Bain & Young, 2019). It is unclear how much time athletes spend in self-organized practice, and whether contextual factors influence these durations. Understanding self-organized practice time helps to contextualize practical ef...
Introduction: While practitioners and organizations advise against early specialization, the lack of a consistent and clear definition of early specialization reduces the impact of recommendations and policies in youth sport. An important first step in understanding the consequences of early specialization is establishing what early specialization...
For the past half-century, the Paralympic Games has continued to grow, evident through increased participation, media recognition, and rising research focus in Para sport. While the competitive pool of athletes has increased, athlete development models have stayed relatively the same. Currently, coaches rely mainly on experiential knowledge, inform...
Background: Talent identification and development (TID) programs aim to identify players with the greatest potential for longterm success. Previous research suggests that the assessment of sport-specific technical skills is valuable for discriminating between more and less skilled individuals and/or for predicting future performance.
Objective: Thi...
Douglas, AS, Rotondi, MA, Baker, J, Jamnik, VK, and Macpherson, AK. A comparison of on-ice external load measures between subelite and elite female ice hockey players. J Strength Cond Res XX(X): 000-000, 2020-This study quantified and examined differences in measures of on-ice external load for subelite and elite female ice hockey players. External...
Investigations of the association of focus of attention and quiet eye duration have shown mixed results. It is possible that when focusing on visuo-motor learning a more sensitive category system of instructions might be useful. The aim of this study was to investigate the interaction of focus of attention and quiet eye duration in darts. In additi...
This chapter reviews the origins of the deliberate practice (DP) concept and explains how these ideas have stimulated applications to research in sport. It appraises both conceptual and methodological aspects of the deliberate practice framework (DPF) and discusses the reasons the DPF has remained a framework for examining expert performance rather...
The Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) offers a rich data source that may be used by golf National Sporting Organisations (NSOs) to inform the allocation of human and financial capital. Golf has undergone many changes over the past few decades, thus before rankings data can be used for benchmarking purposes it is crucial to appraise its temporal st...
Despite the importance of technique and tactics for athlete performance, there has been surprisingly little research on the value of these skills in talent identification and development. This study investigated the relationship between coaches’ early notational analyses of female youth handball players and the long-term success of these athletes....