A Dynamic Network Model to Explain the Development of Excellent Human Performance

Physical fitness and motor competence performance characteristics of Chinese elite youth athletes from four track and field throwing disciplines-a cross-sectional study

Purpose: For systematic athletic training and targeted talent development, it is essential to know the physical fitness and motor competencies of top athletes in detail. However, it can be difficult to identify differences in performance requirements and thus to provide adequate support, especially for sports that at first glance appear to have similar demands-such as track and field throwing disciplines. Therefore, the aim of the study was to examine the physical fitness and motor competence of top athletes from different throwing disciplines and to check whether the athletes' performance parameters match the specific requirements of the respective sport. Methods: The study involved 289 male youth athletes (aged 14-18 years) across four distinct throwing disciplines: shot put (n = 101), hammer throw (n = 16), discus throw (n = 63), and javelin throw (n = 109). The performance evaluation comprised three anthropometric measurements and twelve motor performance prerequisites applicable to the throwing disciplines. Discriminant analysis and neural networks (Multilayer Perceptron) were implemented to determine the possibility of distinguishing among athletes from the four sports. Results: The study's findings indicate that in male throwing athletes, disparities in general physical fitness and motor proficiency assessments discern the majority of talented young athletes based on their specific sport (discriminant analysis: 68.2%; multilayer perceptron analysis: 72.2%). This remains applicable irrespective of the classification method employed. Discus throwers possessed a height advantage, while shot putters and hammer throwers exhibited superior arm strength. Javelin throwers displayed better explosive strength and sprinting speed. Except for the hammer throwers, all events demonstrated a high level of explosive power in the medicine ball forward or backward throw test, which was especially crucial for shot put and discus athletes. Conclusion: The significance of physical fitness and motor competence tests in identifying and transferring talented athletes in track and field throwing disciplines has been affirmed. Using linear and non-linear classification methods, most athletes could be assigned to their correct sport. However, this also shows that slightly different training and talent identification is required for each of these sports. Furthermore, non-linear analysis methods can provide useful support for the development processes in junior competitive sports.

Mechanistic or Relational Worldview for Talent Identification Research in Sport Science? Both-But With a Preference!

This paper situates talent identification research in sport science within the broader context of developmental science, offering a conceptual framework informed by two (meta-)theoretical worldviews: the Cartesian-split-mechanistic and processual-relational worldviews. Although these worldviews are not explicitly named in the field of talent identification research, we demonstrate their implicit adoption through theoretical and methodological discourse. After comparing applications, benefits, and limitations of each worldview, we briefly discuss whether their bodies of knowledge are incompatible, competitive, or complementary. We suggest each worldview provides complementary insights with a penchant for generating nomothetic and group-specific and type-specific and idiographic knowledge, respectively.

Towards a general modeling framework of resource competition in cognitive development

The current paper presents an integrated formal model of typical and atypical development based on the mechanisms of mutualism and resource competition. The mutualistic network model is extended with the dynamics of competition for limited resources, such as time and environmental factors. The proposed model generates patterns that resemble established phenomena in cognitive development: the positive manifold, developmental phases, developmental delays and lack of early indicators in atypical development, developmental regression, and "quasi-autism" caused by extreme environmental deprivation. The presented modeling framework fits a general movement towards formal theory construction in psychology. The model is easy to replicate and develop further, and we offer several avenues for future work.

How the Complexity of Psychological Processes Reframes the Issue of Reproducibility in Psychological Science

In the past decade, various recommendations have been published to enhance the methodological rigor and publication standards in psychological science. However, adhering to these recommendations may have limited impact on the reproducibility of causal effects as long as psychological phenomena continue to be viewed as decomposable into separate and additive statistical structures of causal relationships. In this article, we show that (a) psychological phenomena are patterns emerging from nondecomposable and nonisolable complex processes that obey idiosyncratic nonlinear dynamics, (b) these processual features jeopardize the chances of standard reproducibility of statistical results, and (c) these features call on researchers to reconsider what can and should be reproduced, that is, the psychological processes per se, and the signatures of their complexity and dynamics. Accordingly, we argue for a greater consideration of process causality of psychological phenomena reflected by key properties of complex dynamical systems (CDSs). This implies developing and testing formal models of psychological dynamics, which can be implemented by computer simulation. The scope of the CDS paradigm and its convergences with other paradigms are discussed regarding the reproducibility issue. Ironically, the CDS approach could account for both reproducibility and nonreproducibility of the statistical effects usually sought in mainstream psychological science.

Reach for the stars: disentangling quantity and quality of inventors’ productivity in a multifaceted latent variable model

Star inventors generate superior innovation outcomes. Their capacity to invent high-quality patents might be decisive beyond mere productivity. However, the relationship between quantitative and qualitative dimensions has not been exhaustively investigated. The equal odds baseline (EOB) framework can explicitly model this relationship. This work combines a theoretical model for creative production with recent calls in the patentometrics literature for multifaceted measurement of the ability to create high-quality patents. The EOB is extended and analyzed through structural equation modeling. Specifically, we compared a multifaceted EOB model with a single latent variable for quality, and a two-dimensional model that distinguishes between technological complexity and value of invention portfolios. The two-dimensional model had better fit but weaker factor scores (for the “value” latent variable) than the unidimensional model. These findings suggest that both the uni- and the two-dimensional approaches can be directly used for extending research on star inventors, while for practical high-stakes assessments the two-dimensional model would require further improvements.

Storm Clouds on the Horizon: On the Emerging Need to Tighten Selection Policies

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 arbitration practices, many elite sport systems have created policies where coaches must outline and stand behind the criteria used for their selection decisions. Selection criteria policies have the potential to help encourage fair selection practices by holding selectors accountable to their selection criteria, but their implementation also has the potential to wrongfully nudge selectors toward developing more defendable, but less-accurate selection practices. The paper concludes with 10 suggestions to help support practitioners when implementing selection criteria.

Patterns of Adaptation in Child-Directed and Child Speech in the Emergence of Hebrew Verbs

Children approach verb learning in ways that are specific to their native language, given the differential typological organization of verb morphology and lexical semantics. Parent-child interaction is the arena where children's socio-cognitive abilities enable them to track predictive relationships between tokens and extract linguistic generalizations from patterns and regularities in the ambient language. The current study examines how the system of Hebrew verbs develops as a network over time in early childhood, and the dynamic role of input-output adaptation in the network's increasing complexity. Focus is on the morphological components of Hebrew verbs in a dense corpus of two parent-child dyads in natural interaction between the ages 1;8-2;2. The 91-hour corpus contained 371,547 word tokens, 62,824 verb tokens, and 1,410 verb types (lemmas) in CDS and CS together. Network analysis was employed to explore the changing distributions and emergent systematicity of the relations between verb roots and verb patterns. Taking the Semitic root and pattern morphological constructs to represent linked nodes in a network, findings show that children's networks change with age in terms of node degree and node centrality, representing linkage level and construct importance respectively; and in terms of network density, as representing network growth potential. We put forward three main hypotheses followed by findings concerning (i) changes in verb usage through development, (ii) CS adaptation, and (iii) CDS adaptation: First, we show that children go through punctuated development, expressed by their using individual constructs for short periods of time, whereas parents' patterns of usage are more coherent. Second, regarding CS adaptation within a dynamic network system relative to time and CDS, we conclude that children are attuned to their immediate experience consisting of current CDS usage as well as previous usage in the immediate past. Finally, we show that parents (unintentionally) adapt to their children's language knowledge in three ways: First, by relating to their children's current usage. Second, by expanding on previous experience, building upon the usage their children have already been exposed to. And third, we show that when parents experience a limited network in the speech of their children, they provide them with more opportunities to expand their system in future interactions.

Selection/Interview Criteria for Drafting Players

One important element for forming and cultivating a high performing team in any sport is player selection. For most professional sports, this is an intense period whereby coaching, performance, and administrative staff must work together and use collective wisdom to identify players who have the best probability of consistent high performance. The stakes of a draft are high: the wrong choice can be incredibly costly and impact a team's performance and culture for many years. This article identifies and details common features of the drafting procedure, followed by a discussion of best practices for structuring and executing a draft protocol.

Talent Identification in Youth Soccer: Prognosis of U17 Soccer Performance on the Basis of General Athleticism and Talent Promotion Interventions in Second-Grade Children

Several talent identification programs in elementary school have implemented motor diagnostics to introduce children to groups of sports, like game sports, or even to particular sports like soccer. However, as in most other sports, in youth soccer, the predictive value of such early testing is still unclear. This prospective study evaluated the midterm prognostic validity of generic motor performance tests. The sample consisted of male second-grade children, which had received a recommendation to participate in soccer. The talent screening campaign was a basic check comprising two anthropometric parameters, five physical fitness, and three motor competence diagnostics of the German Motor Test 6-18. The test data were collected from the participating elementary school classes of the years 2010 to 2014. The soccer competition performance of those children having completed the age of at least 15 years (n = 502) up to the end of the season 2019/2020 (2020, September 30) was recorded. This group of U17 players was then assigned individually to five different competition levels. The prognostic validity of the physical and physiological tests was determined using ANOVAs, odds ratios, and a regression path analysis. All diagnostic methods exhibited medium-to-high prognostic validity over the 8 year time span from the talent screening to the later soccer competitions in the adolescent age groups. For later success in soccer on the province level, the 6-min run (OR = 4.28), dynamic balance (OR = 4.04), and 20-m sprint (OR = 2.46), as well as the participation in the training center of the German Soccer Federation (OR = 5.67) and the diversity of club sport activities (OR = 3.56), were of particular importance.

How soccer scouts identify talented players

Scouts of soccer clubs are often the first to identify talented players. However, there is a lack of research on how these scouts assess and predict overall soccer performance. Therefore, we conducted a large-scaled study to examine the process of talent identification among 125 soccer scouts. Through an online self-report questionnaire, scouts were asked about (1) the players' age at which they can predict players' soccer performance, (2) the attributes they consider relevant, and (3) the extent to which they predict performance in a structured manner. The most important results are as follows. First, scouts who observed 12-year-old and younger players perceived they could predict at older ages (13.6 years old, on average) whether a player has the potential to become a professional soccer player. This suggests that scouts are aware of the idea that early indicators of later performance are often lacking, yet do advise on selection of players at younger ages. Second, when identifying talented players, scouts considered more easily observable attributes, such as technical attributes. However, scouts described these often in a broad sense rather than in terms of specific predictors of future performance. Finally, scouts reported that they assess attributes of players in a structured manner. Yet, they ultimately based their prediction (i.e. final score) on an intuitive integration of different performance attributes, which is a suboptimal strategy according to existing literature. Taken together, these outcomes provide specific clues to improve the reliability and validity of the scouting process. HighlightsBased on a large sample of soccer scouts, we examine three issues that are important in the process of identifying talented soccer players: The age at which good performance predictions can be made, which attributes are relevant predictors, and how performance predictions are formed.Scouts who observe players in young age cohorts believe that the age at which they can predict performance is older than the players they typically scout, suggesting that they are aware that early indicators of performance are often lacking.Technical performance attributes are considered as most important performance predictors by scouts, but these are often described in a broad - rather than specific - sense.Scouts indicate that they predict performance in a structured manner, but form their overall performance prediction on an intuitive integration of different performance attributes, which can be a suboptimal approach.

A Minimal Theory of Creative Ability

Despite decades of extensive research on creativity, the field still combats psychometric problems when measuring individual differences in creative ability and people's potential to achieve real-world outcomes that are both original and useful. We think these seemingly technical issues have a conceptual origin. We therefore propose a minimal theory of creative ability (MTCA) to create a consistent conceptual theory to guide investigations of individual differences in creative ability. Building on robust theories and findings in creativity and individual differences research, our theory argues that creative ability, at a minimum, must include two facets: intelligence and expertise. So, the MTCA simply claims that whenever we do something creative, we use most of our cognitive abilities combined with relevant expertise to be creative. MTCA has important implications for creativity theory, measurement, and practice. However, the MTCA isn't necessarily true; it is a minimal theory. We discuss and reject several objections to the MTCA.

A complex dynamical systems approach to the development of feeding problems in early childhood

Though it is commonly agreed upon that the development of feeding problems in early childhood is a complex process, much of the research on these problems has a component-oriented focus, and very little attention is paid to the mechanisms that lead to these kinds of problems in individual children. The aim of this theoretical paper is to interpret the development of feeding problems in early childhood from a complex dynamical systems viewpoint. In addition to its focus on self-organization and nonlinearity, this approach defines several central properties of development: soft-assembly, embodiment, iterativity, the emergence of higher-order properties, and intra-individual variability. In this paper, I argue that each of these properties is highly relevant for understanding feeding problems and discuss the implications of this for both clinical practice and research purposes.

Waste Reduction Strategies: Factors Affecting Talent Wastage and the Efficacy of Talent Selection in Sport

Coaches are faced with the difficult task of identifying and selecting athletes to their team. Despite its widespread practice in sport, there is still much to learn about improving the identification and selection process. Evidence to date suggests selection decisions (at different competitive levels) can be inaccurate, bias driven, and sometimes even illogical. These mistakes are believed to contribute to "talent wastage," the effect of a coach's wrongful selection and/or deselection of an athlete to/from a team. Errors of this scale can lead to negative repercussions for all stakeholders involved and therefore deserve further exploration. It is the purpose of this paper to shed light on the potential factors influencing talent wastage and to illuminate possible psychological pitfalls when making decisions under uncertainty.

A Relational Ontology for Psychology: Life as an Asymmetric Subjet-Object Choosing Relation : Review of A New Logical Foundation for Psychology, J. Mammen, Springer, 2017

This review of Mammen's new book (2017), provides a brief summary of the first part, stressing the main points of the author's constructive critique of the unfortunate issues psychology inherited from the atomistic mechanism of classical physics. Driving the discussion on the ontological level, Mammen briefly shows how nowadays natural sciences provide the main components psychology needs to overcome the everlasting crisis of psychology since its constitution as a science: discontinuity, contextuality, etc. Making of the relation between subject and object the foundation of any science, Mammen contributes to a new ontology specific to human study with elements of last century mathematics, notably the axiom of choice, bridging the rift between natural and human sciences with a continuum from inert matter to more or less advanced life forms. Mammen's constructive proposal opens the building site of a new foundation for life sciences, avoiding both simplistic mechanism and nihilist post-modernism.

Understanding High Achievement: The Case for Eminence

The development of the field of sport expertise over the past 20 years has been remarkable, and our understanding of the varying factors affecting athlete development and motor skill acquisition has expanded considerably. Recently, there has been a push toward more sophisticated research designs to continue the advancement of our understanding of sport expertise. Even in a population of performers at the highest levels of performance and competition (e.g., participants in professional sports or those who compete at Olympic Games), there are those with obvious superiority compared to others in the cohort, such as those who win “most valuable player” awards or who are elected to the Hall of Fame. This paper builds a case that athletes who reach this level of achievement possess a more advanced level of skill than those at the elite or expert stage and we refer to this stage of development as “eminence.” This paper explores the notion of eminence and provides converging forms of evidence for the division between expertise and eminence. Moreover, it explores the implications of this division for the further examination of skill acquisition across the lifespan.

The Link between Microdevelopment and Long-Term Learning Trajectories in Science Learning

Long-term learning trajectories evolve through microdevelopmental sequences (i.e., short-term processes of change during learning tasks) and depend on variability during and across learning tasks. The aim of this study is to examine the coupling between short-term teacher-student dynamics and students' long-term learning trajectories, thereby providing empirical support for the link between the short- and long-term time scale in cognitive development. For 31 students (ages 3-5 years) from regular and special education, five teacher-student interactions during science tasks were filmed and coded in real time with regard to the student's level of understanding and the teacher's support throughout the task. A hierarchical cluster analysis resulted in four different learning trajectories over the course of 1.5 years, labeled as a high-scoring, mid-scoring, fluctuating, and low-scoring group of students. When connecting these trajectories to microdevelopmental data, the interactions of the high-scoring students were characterized by more moment-to-moment variations in the teacher's support and student's level of understanding, while the low-scoring group had the least variability compared to the other groups. Students with emotional and behavioral disabilities were represented across all learning trajectories, despite frequent accounts in the literature on their significant academic delays.

Socio-Emotional Concern Dynamics in a Model of Real-Time Dyadic Interaction: Parent-Child Play in Autism

We used a validated agent-based model-Socio-Emotional CONcern DynamicS (SECONDS)-to model real-time playful interaction between a child diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and its parent. SECONDS provides a real-time (second-by-second) virtual environment that could be used for clinical trials and testing process-oriented explanations of ASD symptomatology. We conducted numerical experiments with SECONDS (1) for internal model validation comparing two parental behavioral strategies for stimulating social development in ASD (play-centered vs. initiative-centered) and (2) for empirical case-based model validation. We compared 2,000 simulated play sessions of two particular dyads with (second-by-second) time-series observations within 29 play sessions of a real parent-child dyad with ASD on six variables related to maintaining and initiating play. Overall, both simulated dyads provided a better fit to the observed dyad than reference null distributions. Given the idiosyncratic behaviors expected in ASD, the observed correspondence is non-trivial. Our results demonstrate the applicability of SECONDS to parent-child dyads in ASD. In the future, SECONDS could help design interventions for parental care in ASD.

Selection procedures in sports: Improving predictions of athletes' future performance

The selection of athletes has been a central topic in sports sciences for decades. Yet, little consideration has been given to the theoretical underpinnings and predictive validity of the procedures. In this paper, we evaluate current selection procedures in sports given what we know from the selection psychology literature. We contrast the popular clinical method (predictions based on overall impressions of experts) with the actuarial approach (predictions based on pre-defined decision rules), and we discuss why the latter approach often leads to superior performance predictions. Furthermore, we discuss the "signs" and the "samples" approaches. Taking the prevailing signs approach, athletes' technical-, tactical-, physical-, and psychological skills are often assessed separately in controlled settings. However, for predicting later sport performance, taking samples of athletes' behaviours in their sports environment may result in more valid assessments. We discuss the possible advantages and implications of making selection procedures in sports more actuarial and sample-based.

Embedding the psychosocial biographies of Olympic medalists in a (meta-)theoretical model of dynamic networks

Based on in-depth interviews, Hardy et al. focused on the role of psychosocial factors in the development of elite and super-elite athletes. They reveal interesting differences and commonalities in the frequencies at which certain aspects related to life events, personality, contextual factors, etc. were reported. Here, we argue that insights in the development of (super-)elite athletes will advance if we go beyond explanations in the frequency-domain, and search for process explanations in the time-domain. This means that we should investigate how athletes develop from one time point to the next, and the next, etc., thereby examining how (psychosocial) factors change and combine across time, as well as how the timing of events can shape an athlete's further developmental trajectory. We therefore present a process-oriented dynamic network model of talent development, assuming that (super-)elite performance develops out of structures of dynamically interacting (psychosocial) factors, which we illustrate using the outcomes of Hardy et al.