lEARNING OBJECTIVES:
- Athlete Cognition: Key stakeholders will learn how an athlete engage the world through the brain
- Define the term sport specialization and understand the developmental stages of sport participation
- Define the term cognitive development and its context to sport
- Identify stages of cognitive development during adolescence through a Piagetian perspective.
- Describe and apply Piaget’s Formal Operational Stage to the context of adolescents in sport.
Unit 1: WHAT IS Specialization.Sport Specialization is the period in which youth athletes begin to decrease the number of sports participating in to increase deliberate practice in one or two sports (Côté & Fraser-Thomas, 2007). In there Development of Sport Participation model, Côté and Fraser-Thomas (2007) reference three stages of sport participation:
1. Recreational Performance Through Sampling (Age 6-12): Athletes during this time look to participate for the pure focus of enjoyment while playing in multiple different sports. 2. Elite Performance Through Sampling (Age 13-15): Athletes in this stage begin to specialize in one sport while eliminating other alternatives to commit to deliberate practice. During this period, coach-athlete relationships begin to develop stronger bonds while parents become less involved in sport instruction. 3. Elite Performance Through Early Specialization(Age 16+): This level of participation is characterized by high volumes of deliberate practice and low amounts of deliberate play. As a result, post-secondary athletic interest (i.e., intercollegiate athletic scholarships) become an increased incentive to participate. |
Our focus is on the latter two!
Unit 2
What is cognition?Jean Piaget explains the cognitive process of thinking through his theory of cognitive development. As an athlete develops skills over time, they increase their abilities to think. This process, Piaget considers schemas. Schemas are the process of reciprocating and building information on previous information. Schemas are the cognition (i.e., thinking) that helps athletes make sense of their experiences (Santrock, 2016, p. 92).
Schemas are unique to everyone because all of our schemas are different. In the context of sport, how every athlete makes sense of a drill, play or in-game read will be different. For the schema of an athlete to improve over a season, each experience a process called equilibration (i.e., eureka moment)/ disequilibrium (i.e., I’m confused). Equilibration or equilibrium is a balanced state of cognitive functioning in which an athlete makes sense of the environment (Santrock, 2016; Crain 2017). While at times, athletes will experience disequilibrium (i.e., cognitive conflict or confusion through an attempt to understand). The cognitive grappling that occurs in this process is described in two processes: 1) Assimilation – digesting new information about the environment that potentially will replace pre-existing knowledge. 2) Accommodation – making space for the new information to reshape our preexisting schema (Crain, 2017). Every day, athletes continue to move back and forth between these stages of equilibrium and disequilibrium as they continue to assimilate and accommodate new information. |
formal operational stage of COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT |
Piaget argues that there are four stages of cognitive development that humans experience (Santrock, 2016). Since the focus is on athlete adolescents, I will hone in on the last stage (i.e., Formal Operational) to explain the latter of Côté et al., (2007) Stages of Sport Participation.
In the formal operational stage (age 11 to adulthood), athletes can think more abstract (Crain, 2017) and can conjure make-believe situations (Santrock, 2016). In other words, athletes are believed to have the cognitive ability to understand hypothetical scenarios. For example, a basketball coach can draw up a hypothetical scenario (i.e., a game-winning play) in a timeout and can expect an athlete in this stage to make sense of the play and even provide suggestions or critique. Piaget considers this type of thought to be hypothetical deductive reasoning (Santrock, 2016, p. 95). The basketball coach example, Piaget considers being a late formal operational thought for the athlete. To provide coach feedback or critique would require an athlete to have tested their reasoning with prior experience and intellect. While, in early formal operational thought, adolescent athletes can think of unlimited possibilities that have been tested through experience. In sport, Côté et al., (2007) would consider the latter of formal operational thought to be elite sport specializing because this stage athletes can comprehend greater detail of their sport due to the amount of schema building through practice and competition. |
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