Inter-disciplinarity in sport sciences: The neuroscience example*

Abstract

Sport science is a relatively recent domain of research born from the interactions of different disciplines related to sport. According to the European College of sport science (http://sport-science.org): “scientific excellence in sport science is based on disciplinary competence embedded in the understanding that its essence lies in its multi- and interdisciplinary character”. In this respect, the scientific domain of neuroscience has been developed within such a framework. Influenced by the apparent homogeneity of this scientific domain, the present paper reviews three important research topics in sport from a neuroscientific perspective. These topics concern the relationship between mind and motor action, the effects of cognition on motor performance, and the study of certain mental states (such as the “flow” effect, see below) and motor control issues to understand, for example, the neural substrates of the vertical squat jump. Based on the few extensive examples shown in this review, we argue that by adopting an interdisciplinary paradigm, sport science can emulate neuroscience in becoming a mono-discipline.     

Reliability of unipodal and bipodal counter movement jump landings in a recreational male population

Movement patterns during landing have been suggested to be related to injury risk. The purpose of this study was to determine the inter-session reliability of kinematic variables and ground reaction forces during landing in a population of male recreational athletes after a counter movement jump. Both unipodal and bipodal landings were evaluated. Furthermore, the possibility to improve landing reliability with a verbal instruction was also studied. Twenty-four male volunteers with no history of lower extremity trauma were randomly assigned to two groups (with and without verbal landing instruction). An optoelectronic 3D system and force plates were used to measure the lower limb joint angles and the ground reaction forces during landing. Intraclass correlation values show moderate to excellent inter-session reliability for the bipodal task (ICC average: 0.80, range: 0.46–0.97) and poor to excellent reliability for the unipodal task (ICC average: >0.75, range: 0.20–0.95). However, large standard errors of measurement values at the ankle joint at impact (27.6?±?11.5°) and for the vertical ground reaction forces (394?±?1091 N) show that some variables may not be usable in practice. The verbal instruction had a negative effect on the reliability of unipodal landing but improved the reliability of bipodal landing. These findings show that the reliability of a landing task is influenced by its motor complexity as well as the instruction given to the subject.     

The processing of positional information in a two-item sequence limits the emergence of symmetry in baboons (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Papio papio</Emphasis>), but not in humans (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Homo sapiens</Emphasis>)

When trained to associate Stimulus A to Stimulus B, humans can derive the untrained symmetrical B to A relation while nonhuman animals have much more difficulties. Urcuioli (2008, Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 90, 257-–282; 2015, Conductal, 3, 4-–25) proposed that the apparent difficulty of animals in symmetry testing reflects their double encoding of the information on the stimuli (identity and relation) and their positional (i.e., spatial and temporal/ordinal) characteristics. This comparative study tested the emergence of symmetry in humans and baboons in a task in which the position of the stimuli was manipulated independently of their relation. Humans and baboons initially learned to associate pairs of visual shapes on a touch screen in a specific order. Three pairs of (A-B, C-D, and E-F) stimuli were used in training. After training, the two species were tested with the B-A, F-C, and E-D pairs. The B-A pairs preserved the association initially learned with A-B but reversed the positional information relative to training. The F-C pair neither preserved the association nor the positional information of the training pairs, and positional information were the only cues preserved in the E-D pair. Humans showed a response time advantage for B-A, suggesting symmetry, but also for E-D, suggesting that they also process positional information. In baboons, the advantage was found only for E-D, suggesting that they only process positional information. These results confirm that the processing of stimulus pairs differ between nonhuman animals to humans.     

Development of SFON in Ecuadorian Kindergartners

This study explored the development of Ecuadorian Kindergartners’ spontaneous focusing on numerosity (SFON) during the kindergarten year, as well as the contribution of early numerical abilities to this development. One hundred Kindergartners coming from ten classrooms received two SFON tasks, one at the beginning and one at the end of the school year, and an early numerical abilities achievement test at the beginning of the school year. Results first demonstrated limited SFON development during the kindergarten year, with inter-individual differences and intra-individual stability of children’s SFON tendency. Second, both children’s SFON tendency and their early numerical abilities at the start of the kindergarten year were predictively related to their SFON tendency at the end of the year. Our results do not only add to our theoretical understanding of SFON in young children, but also inform educational policy and practices in the domain of early mathematics education in Ecuador, as they provide building blocks for optimizing the educational goals and curricula for kindergarten mathematics.     

Exploring teachers' instructional design practices from a systems design perspective

Curricular changes in higher vocationaleducation have rendered teachers' instructionaldesign activities increasingly important. Usinga repertory grid technique, this paper sets outto analyse current design activities of tenteacher trainers. Their actual approach iscompared with an instructional systems design(ISD) approach and related to innovativeteacher roles. Teachers' activities show animbalance in two ID phases, that is problemanalysis and evaluation. The results suggestthat they attempt to translate curricular goalsdirectly into concrete lessons and they payrelatively little attention to evaluation. Inline with this finding, they underrate the twoinnovative teacher roles of the `diagnostician'and the `evaluator'. It is argued thatimbalanced or incomplete design approaches andperceived roles may hinder innovation ineducation. Implications for the support ofteachers' design activities are discussed.     

Perception of pictorial human faces by baboons: Effects of stimulus orientation on discrimination performance

The effect of stimulus rotation was assessed in four Guinea baboons (Papio papio), using pictures of familiar human faces presented in a computerized go/no-go task. In Experiment 1, 2 baboons were initially trained to discriminate upright faces, and 2 others were trained to discriminate upside-down faces. For the two groups, postlearning discrimination was impaired when the training faces were rotated 180°. In Experiment 2, upright and upside-down priming faces appeared prior to the display of target faces. For the two groups, response times were faster when the prime and the target faces had the same orientations than when they were depicted under different orientations. Finally, Experiments 3 and 4 identified variations in facial contours as the most salient discriminative cue controlling performance in 2 baboons. Altogether, our results provide no evidence that the baboons processed the pictures as representations of faces. It is suggested that the effect of rotation derived from the encoding of the pictorial faces as meaningless mono-oriented shapes, rather than as natural human faces.     

The effect of short online pedagogical training on university teachers’ interpretations of teaching–learning situations

The aim of the study was to explore whether short online pedagogy courses can have an effect on university teachers’ interpretations of teaching–learning situations. Before and after participating in a short online pedagogical training programme, a total of 66 participants wrote their interpretations of two short video clips, which depicted a content-focused teacher and a learning-focused teacher, respectively. The training was successful in changing participants’ interpretations from a knowledge-transmission view to a learning-facilitation view of teaching. This result indicates that even short online training programmes have the potential to affect participants’ interpretations of teaching–learning situations, especially when participants are not very experienced in teaching. Therefore, pedagogical training should be offered already at the early stages of teaching careers.

     

Stress Regulation in Adolescents: Physiological Reactivity During the Adult Attachment Interview and Conflict Interaction

The current study examined whether adolescents’ attachment representations were associated with differences in emotion regulation during the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI; C. George, N. Kaplan, & M. Main, 1996 ) and during a mother–adolescent conflict interaction task (Family Interaction Task [FIT]; J. P. Allen et al., 2003 ). Participants were one hundred and fifty‐six 14‐year‐old adolescents. Dismissing adolescents showed less interbeat interval (IBI) reactivity (indicating less stress) during the AAI than secure adolescents. However, during the FIT, dismissing adolescents showed more IBI reactivity. No differences in physiological reactivity were found between individuals with resolved or unresolved loss or trauma during the AAI or FIT. The results indicate that dismissing adolescents may effectively use a defensive strategy during the AAI but less so in direct conflict interaction with their attachment figure.     

Evidence of repeated access to immediate verbal memory during handwriting

Writing is a relatively slow process. A certain degree of overlapping must therefore be assumed to exist between motor activities and more «central» processes involved in the production of language. The present experiment was based on the assumption that these management processes must leave some traces at the level of execution. Subjects were asked to read and memorize a sequence of three words (examples: «parachute parapluie paramètre», «taximètre décimètre paramètre»); and write them down on a graphic tablet. The results are consistent with the following ideas:

1. the same motor program was used for the three occurrences of repeated morphemes
2. Non-repeated morphemes were recovered from verbal memory while the preceding repeated morpheme was being written.