The ecological dynamics of decision making in sport

Individual–Environment Interactions in Swimming: The Smallest Unit for Analysing the Emergence of Coordination Dynamics in Performance?

“…individual-environment interactions), supporting the idea that the way an individual interacts with his/her environment leads him/her to actualize or reject certain affordances in order to achieve a specific task goal [8]. At this level, laws of control have been identified to describe and capture system behaviours [8]. The key challenge of such an approach is to capture the most relevant order parameter that best describes the collective system dynamics of a performer acting in a performance environment [21].…”

“…This framework uses tools and concepts of dynamical systems theory to understand phenomena at an ecological scale of analysis (i.e. individual-environment interactions), supporting the idea that the way an individual interacts with his/her environment leads him/her to actualize or reject certain affordances in order to achieve a specific task goal [8]. At this level, laws of control have been identified to describe and capture system behaviours [8].…”

“…Ecological dynamics integrates key ideas from ecological psychology [14], according to which behaviour is regulated by information that arises from an individual-environment complex to continuously guide and shape the athlete's actions.. Through experience and practice, the individual and the performance environment become more tightly integrated as a self-organising and dynamical system coupled by information [8,23]. According to the theory of direct perception [14], perception is an active process.…”

“…According to ecological dynamics, performer-environment relationships are the smallest, relevant unit of analysis for understanding coordination and control in human behaviour [8][9][10]. This multidimensional framework has been shaped by research in several fields, and the findings have been integrated to explain human behaviours in sport performance, with major contributions from the theory of constraints on dynamical systems [11][12][13], ecological psychology [14], and the complex systems approach in neurobiology [15][16][17].…”

“…fins) and events (e.g. an open-water competition) in the environment, without needing to integrate representations of the world to perceive it [8]. This theory suggests that perception guides an athlete's actions and, in turn, his/her actions shape on-going perceptions (i.e.…”