Renshaw Ian, Davids Keith, Araújo Duarte, Lucas Ana, Roberts William M, Newcombe Daniel J, Franks Benjamin
School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia.
Centre for Sports Engineering Research, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, United Kingdom.
Front Psychol. 2019 Jan 21;9:2468. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02468. eCollection 2018.
The recent upsurge in "brain training and perceptual-cognitive training," proposing to improve isolated processes, such as brain function, visual perception, and decision-making, has created significant interest in elite sports practitioners, seeking to create an "edge" for athletes. The claims of these related "performance-enhancing industries" can be considered together as part of a proposing enhanced cognitive and perceptual skills and brain capacity to support performance in everyday life activities, including sport. For example, the "process training industry" promotes the idea that playing games not only makes you a better player but also makes you smarter, more alert, and a faster learner. In this position paper, we critically evaluate the effectiveness of both types of process training programmes in generalizing transfer to sport performance. These issues are addressed in three stages. First, we evaluate empirical evidence in support of perceptual-cognitive process training and its application to enhancing sport performance. Second, we critically review putative modularized mechanisms underpinning this kind of training, addressing limitations and subsequent problems. Specifically, we consider merits of this highly specific form of training, which focuses on training of isolated processes such as cognitive processes (attention, memory, thinking) and visual perception processes, separately from performance behaviors and actions. We conclude that these approaches may, at best, provide some "general transfer" of underlying processes to specific sport environments, but lack "specificity of transfer" to contextualize actual performance behaviors. A major weakness of process training methods is their focus on enhancing the performance in body "modules" (e.g., eye, brain, memory, anticipatory sub-systems). What is lacking is evidence on these isolated components are modified and subsequently interact with other process "modules," which are considered to underlie sport performance. Finally, we propose how an ecological dynamics approach, aligned with an embodied framework of cognition undermines the rationale that modularized processes can enhance performance in competitive sport. An ecological dynamics perspective proposes that the body is a complex adaptive system, interacting with performance environments in a functionally integrated manner, emphasizing that the inter-relation between motor processes, cognitive and perceptual functions, and the constraints of a sport task is best understood at the performer-environment scale of analysis.
最近，“大脑训练和感知认知训练”热潮兴起，这类训练旨在改善诸如脑功能、视觉感知和决策等孤立的过程，这引起了精英体育从业者的极大兴趣，他们试图为运动员创造一种“优势”。这些相关“提高成绩产业”的说法可以一并被视为一个提议的一部分，即提高认知和感知技能以及大脑能力，以支持包括体育运动在内的日常生活活动中的表现。例如，“过程训练产业”宣扬这样一种观点：玩游戏不仅能让你成为一名更好的运动员，还能让你更聪明、更机敏、学习速度更快。在本立场文件中，我们批判性地评估了这两种过程训练计划在向运动表现进行迁移推广方面的有效性。这些问题分三个阶段进行探讨。首先，我们评估支持感知认知过程训练及其在提高运动表现方面应用的实证证据。其次，我们批判性地审视支撑这类训练的假定模块化机制，探讨其局限性及后续问题。具体而言，我们考量这种高度特定形式训练的优点，它专注于孤立过程的训练，比如认知过程（注意力、记忆力、思维）和视觉感知过程，与表现行为和动作分开。我们得出结论，这些方法充其量可能会将基础过程进行一些“一般迁移”至特定运动环境，但缺乏“迁移的特异性”来将实际表现行为情境化。过程训练方法的一个主要弱点在于它们专注于提高身体“模块”（如眼睛、大脑、记忆、预期子系统）的表现。所缺乏的是关于这些孤立组件如何被改变以及随后如何与其他被认为是运动表现基础的过程“模块”相互作用的证据。最后，我们提出一种生态动力学方法如何与具身认知框架相结合，削弱模块化过程能提高竞技运动表现的基本原理。生态动力学观点认为身体是一个复杂的自适应系统，以功能整合的方式与表现环境相互作用，强调运动过程、认知和感知功能以及运动任务的限制之间的相互关系，最好在执行者 - 环境分析尺度上理解。
