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Rather than a unitary value, individuals may represent health risk as a fuzzy entity that permits them to make a number of specific possible estimates. Comparative optimism might be explained by people flexibly, using such a set to derive optimistic risk estimates. Student participants were asked to rate the likelihood of eight harmful alcohol-related outcomes occurring to themselves and to an average student. Participants made either unitary estimates or estimates representing the upper and lower bounds of a set denoting 'realistic probability' estimates. Personal risk estimates were lower when they were made as unitary estimates than those calculated from the mid-points of the bounded estimates. Unitary estimates of personal risk made after the bounded estimates were lower than initial unitary estimates. There were no effects for estimates made with regard to the average student. Risk may be internally represented as a fuzzy set, and comparative optimism may exist partly because this set allows people the opportunity to make optimistic unitary estimates for personal risk within what they see as realistic parameters.

Promoting informed choices about alcohol use requires understanding the nature of drinkers' risk perceptions and how these influence decision-making. Fuzzy trace theory states that people use imprecise "fuzzy" risk representations, which are based on the broad cognitive and affective meanings of risk-related experiences, whereas traditionally used measures request precise unitary estimations. Fuzzy representations may be less affected by defensive self-enhancement biases inherent in unitary estimates and better predictors of decision outcomes because they better reflect risk-related affect. Conversely, unitary estimates are based in specific experience and should be better associated with objective risk. Fuzziness was operationalized as a bounded range of undergraduate drinkers' lowest and highest "possibly true" estimates of likelihood for eight alcohol-related outcomes on an unmarked scale anchored by the terms "no chance" and "certain." This allowed comparison to unitary estimates and objective alcohol-related risk (Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test [AUDIT] scores). Consistent with self-enhancement, unitary estimates were lower than bounded estimate midpoints. An accountability manipulation, which reduces self-enhancement, increased unitary but not bounded estimates. These effects were stronger in participants scoring highly on defensive coping. Bounded estimates were better predicted by risk-related affect and they more strongly predicted intention to reduce drinking. Unitary measures were better predicted by AUDIT scores. Accountability manipulations suppress heuristic thought, reduced correlations between bounded estimates and affect and intention, and eliminated unitary and bounded differences in prediction of AUDIT scores. Drinkers prefer fuzzy representations that reflect affective information when making decisions, but improving risk-based decisions may involve combining the best elements of bounded and unitary representations.

Talent development in sport is well represented in scientific literature. Yet, the drive to protect 'trade secrets' often means that access to these high performing groups is rare, especially as these high level performances are being delivered. This leaves the details of high-end working practices absent from current academic commentary. As a result, clubs interested in developing excellent practice are left to build on personal initiative and insight and/or custom-and-practice, which is unlikely to yield successful outcomes. To address this shortfall the current study reports on prolonged engagement with a single high performing club, considering how their practice corresponds with existing sport talent development models. The paper ends by proposing an evidence-based, football-specific model for talent development, maintained high level performance and serial winning. This model emphasises four dominant features: culture, behavioral characteristics, practice engagement and the managing and guiding of performance 'potential'. The study provides insights into the visceral reality of daily experiences across the life course of professional soccer, while advancing the evidence-base for understanding how Manchester United achieved their serial success.

Decision making in elite level sporting competition is often regarded as distinguishing success from failure. As an intricate brain-based process it is unlike other physical processes because it is invisible and is typically only evidenced after the event. This case study shows how an individual achieved great success in elite level professional football through consistent positive decision making on and off the field of play. Through prolonged interviewing, Gary Neville, a player from Manchester United Football Club, explored personal behaviours, the structure and activities of deliberate practice and his professional choices in match preparation. His career-long devotion to purposeful organised practice was focused on cognition, physical preparation, context-relative physical action and refined repetition to optimise his mental comfort while enhancing his match day performances. This approach was underpinned by diligent personal and collective organisation and by concerted action. Results provide an insight into the categorical nature of his deliberate practice, sport-specific information processing and match-based decision making. At the operational level his process was mediated by a complex mental representation of on-going and 2 anticipated game situations; these representations were continuously updated during each match. Allowing for the limitations of the design, implications are provided for developmental and educational coaching, match preparation, deliberate practice activity and improved use of performance analysis software packages in professional football.

Background. Deficits in deductive reasoning have been observed among

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