Reference

Araujo, D., Davids, K., Chow, J., & Passos, P. (2009). The development of decision making skill in sport: an ecological dynamics perspective. Perspectives on cognition and action in sport, 157-169.

🚀 Article in 3 Sentences

1. They introduce Ecological Dynamics as a theoretical framework for studying decision making in sport and explain how learning from an Ecological point of view is becoming more sensitive to the specifying information in the environment
2. The different stages of developing decision making skills in sport are discussed. These are exploration, stabilising and exploiting
3. Implications for training decision making in sport are given

🤝Impressions

This was a really insightful paper and there was so much takeaways. Challenges many long held beliefs on the development of decision making. The inclusion of implications of training at the end of the paper meant there were insights for coaches to take from the paper.

👨‍🏫Who should read this?

There is quite a bit of theory discussed in the paper so I’d recommend reading the paper if you have a good understanding of Ecological Dynamics already.

🎾How Article will influence my coaching

• I’ll be more conscious of the different stages of decision making and making sure that I’m presenting the appropriate constraints for the level of performer.
• Thinking more about if the tasks that I’m designing are promoting the acquisition of expertise
• Explore what the best way to introduce tasks that involve inducing fatigue, pressure and altering emotional states would be

📃Takeaways for coaches

• Learning from an Ecological point of view is becoming more sensitive to the specifying information in the environment
• Accurate perception, action and decision-making are characteristics of expert performance in sport
• Two attributes of successful performers in sport- stability (attractors) and flexibility (fluctuations)
• Successful performers in sport need to be able to adapt their actions to the everchanging environments
• ”To make decisions is to direct a course of personal interactions with the environment towards a goal, and decisions emerge from this cyclical process of searching for information to act and acting to detect more information”