How do we get good? The development of skill in sport. Deliberate practice - 8.1 - research

Question 1

Ericsson (2009)

Answer 1

Since Sir Francis Galton’s book on Hereditary Genius, many scientists have argued that heritable factors set limits of performance and only allow a select few individuals to attain exceptional levels. However, recent research rejects the associated learning theory and its implied performance plateaus and shows that expert performance is mediated by acquired complex cognitive mechanisms. It describes different types of deliberate practice activities that develop and refine mental representations, which in turn permit attained performance to exceed performance resulting from extensive experience only. Empirical investigations are reviewed to show that expert performance and outstanding achievements will be primarily constrained by individuals’ engagement in deliberate practice and the quality of the available training resources.

Question 2

MacNamara et al. (2016)

Answer 2

Why are some people more skilled in complex domains than other people? According to one prominent view, individual differences in performance largely reflect individual differences in accumulated amount of deliberate practice. Here, we investigated the relationship between deliberate practice and performance in sports. Overall, deliberate practice accounted for 18% of the variance in sports performance. However, the contribution differed depending on skill level. Most important, deliberate practice accounted for only 1% of the variance in performance among elite-level performers. This finding is inconsistent with the claim that deliberate practice accounts for performance differences even among elite performers. Another major finding was that athletes who reached a high level of skill did not begin their sport earlier in childhood than lower skill athletes. This finding challenges the notion that higher skill performers tend to start in a sport at a younger age than lower skill performers. We conclude that to understand the underpinnings of expertise, researchers must investigate contributions of a broad range of factors, taking into account findings from diverse subdisciplines of psychology (e.g., cognitive psychology, personality psychology) and interdisciplinary areas of research (e.g., sports science).

Question 3

Tucker and Collins (2012)

Answer 3

Elite sporting performance results from the combination
of innumerable factors, which interact with one another
in a poorly understood but complex manner to mould
a talented athlete into a champion. Within the fi eld of
sports science, elite performance is understood to be
the result of both training and genetic factors. However,
the extent to which champions are born or made is
a question that remains one of considerable interest,
since it has implications for talent identifi cation and
management, as well as for how sporting federations
allocate scarce resources towards the optimisation of
high-performance programmes. The present review
describes the contributions made by deliberate practice
and genetic factors to the attainment of a high level
of sporting performance. The authors conclude that
although deliberate training and other environmental
factors are critical for elite performance, they cannot by
themselves produce an elite athlete. Rather, individual
performance thresholds are determined by our genetic
make-up, and training can be defi ned as the process by
which genetic potential is realised. Although the specifi c
details are currently unknown, the current scientifi c
literature clearly indicates that both nurture and nature
are involved in determining elite athletic performance.
In conclusion, elite sporting performance is the result
of the interaction between genetic and training factors,
with the result that both talent identifi cation and
management systems to facilitate optimal training are
crucial to sporting success.

Question 4

Williams and Ericsson (2008)

Answer 4

In this themed issue of the Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, we bring together an eclectic mix of papers focusing on how expert performers learn the skills needed
to compete at the highest level in sport. In the preface, we highlight the value of adopting the expert performance approach as a systematic framework for the evaluation and development of expertise and expert performance in sport. We then place each of the empirical papers published in this issue into context and briefly outline
their unique contributions to knowledge in this area. Finally, we highlight several potential avenues for future research in the hope of encouraging others to scientifically study how experts acquire the mechanisms mediating superior performance in sport and how coaches can draw on this knowledge to guide their athletes toward the
most effective training activities.