Artigo 3
Artigo 3
Artigo 3
Introduction
How expert athletes decide to do what they do is a topic that has interested scientists for
several decades (e.g. Beise & Peasley, 1937), and particularly sport psychologists (e.g.
Straub & Williams, 1984). It has been argued that sport is a most appropriate context for
studying expert decision-making (Gilovich, 1984; Gilovich, Tversky, & Vallone, 1985).
According to Gobet (2016), sport is a domain of expertise, where expertise relies on per-
ception: ‘experts literally “see” things differently compared to novices’ and ‘these
differences in perception and knowledge affect problem solving and decision making’
(Gobet, 2016, p. 7).
Predicated on these ideas, studies of decision-making in sport have intensively tested
athletes’ perception and anticipation, attention, memory, and decision-making. An impor-
tant gap emerges immediately: decision-making in sport, by following trends in cognitive
psychology, has neglected the important role of action and its constitutive role in cogni-
tion (Araújo, Ripoll & Raab, 2009; Prinz, Beisert, & Herwig, 2013; Wolpert & Landy, 2012). In
this article, we critically overview research on the perceptual-cognitive basis of decision-
making, before we present an action-based alternative, from the ecological dynamics fra-
mework, clarifying repercussions for theory and research in sport psychology.
presented, and which were new (recognition paradigm, e.g. Smeeton, Ward, & Williams,
2004), or to recall players’ positions in a display (recall paradigm, e.g. North, Ward, Ericsson,
& Williams, 2011). Results showed that experts attain better recall and recognition per-
formance than non-experts, with structured performance situations, but not with unstruc-
tured situations. These results have been explained with reference to chunking theory
(Chase & Simon, 1973), and this and other memory-based representations are assumed
to underpin experts’ performance superiority, particularly with respect to decision-
making (Tenenbaum & Gershgoren, 2014; see Kording & Wolpert, 2006 for a Bayesian
formalisation).
The influence of the information-processing paradigm on the study of decision-making
in sport has promoted what Simon (1956) called ‘bounded rationality’ (including related,
more contemporary, approaches, e.g. fast and frugal heuristics, naturalistic decision
making): humans are rational within the limits imposed by their cognitive systems (infer-
ring the capacity to process information). The reasoning behind the claim that rationality is
bounded suggests that understanding decision-making requires studying both the
environment and the decision-maker. Even if a decision-maker meticulously follows nor-
mative steps of rationalisation, there is still an influence of environmental constraints to
consider.
The fast and frugal heuristics framework places greater significance on the role of
the environment than the information-processing approach, and is aligned with the
arguments of Simon (1956). It addresses environmental variables that are representa-
tive of those in socio-cultural settings, towards which an experiment is intended to
generalise, as Brunswik (1944, 1956) originally proposed. Fast and frugal heuristics
are strategies for decision-making that do not involve much searching for information
or computation (Gigerenzer & Todd, 1999). This approach has some similarities with the
naturalistic decision-making framework (Klein, 1998) that has investigated decision
making of experts under time pressure in their domain of expertise. A significant con-
clusion of both frameworks is that experts tend not to deliberate between options but
expediently implement the first satisfactory action. Raab and colleagues conducted
research within the fast and frugal heuristics framework in sports contexts (see Raab,
2012 for a review). For example, they (Johnson & Raab, 2003; Raab & Johnson, 2007)
used video clips of team sports performance which were interrupted when a player
with the ball faced several possible actions. Participants choosing better options gen-
erated fewer options. Expert players, performing under time constraints, use the ‘take
the first’ heuristic, choosing the first alternative that emerged and better players
tended to select the ‘best’ option. Option generation and selection were proposed
to occur in an athlete’s memory, from internalised knowledge representations of per-
formance (Raab, 2012).
Similar knowledge structures are proposed as an explanation for how athletes gener-
ate different probabilistic expectations on how an event may evolve, such as the poten-
tial success associated with performing a certain action (e.g. a pass or dribble with a ball),
or in predicting next movements of an adversary (e.g. Alain & Proteau, 1980; McRobert,
Ward, Eccles, & Williams, 2011). It is assumed that the mind or the brain calculates the
statistical distribution of likely event probabilities, and the level of uncertainty in
sensory feedback (Kording & Wolpert, 2006; Williams & Abernethy, 2012), before
making a decision.
4 D. ARAÚJO ET AL.
interpret the environment and programme the body to implement actions during per-
formance (Kording & Wolpert, 2006).
Alternatively, non-representational approaches (e.g. ecological dynamics, Araújo,
Davids, & Hristovski, 2006; for a discussion among different approaches see Araújo & Bour-
bousson, 2016) are predicated on the idea that perception and cognition are embedded
and embodied, emphasising the study of the performer-environment relationship as an
appropriate scale of analysis. We elaborate some criticisms of the representational
approach to cognition, where cognition is seen as information processing that results in
representations in the mind or brain (Rowlands, 2009). In interpreting these criticisms,
we discuss ecological dynamics as an important action-based, non-representational
approach to cognition. From this perspective, cognition is the on-going, active mainten-
ance of a robust performer–environment system, achieved by closely coordinated percep-
tion and action (Araújo et al., 2006; Stepp, Chemero, & Turvey, 2011).
Complex, structured energy fields of ambient, patterned energy (i.e. information), such as
light reflected from objects, are an environmental resource to be sought and exploited by
individuals, who continuously modulate their interactions with the world, i.e. exert their
agency (Withagen, Araújo, & de Poel, 2017). Information is the basis for maintaining
contact with the environment because it is specific to its sources. Thus, various exploratory
actions of perceptual systems are required for perception to occur. For the ecological
dynamics approach, meaning in perception is not derived from any form of mental associ-
ation, or labelling, but only from information detected by an observer. Therefore, percep-
tual learning, for example due to training and experience, is the process of becoming
attuned, i.e. better able to differentiate more and more kinds of information, increasing
the range and economy of the information detection process (Reed, 1993).
These arguments suggest that an individual’s regulation of behaviour can be explained
without the postulation of mental representations. Decisions are expressed by actions
(Beer, 2003). Planning an action before acting (denoted as ‘strategical’ in sports science)
can influence the course of decisions (e.g. where to explore), but behaviour is always
dependent on circumstances (action is not a mechanical outcome, but it is ‘tactical,’ i.e.
an intentional exploration for an efficient solution). In this respect, decision-making is
an emergent behaviour (Araújo et al., 2006). As the individual moves with respect to
her/his surroundings, there are opportunities for action (affordances, Gibson, 1979) that
persist, arise, and disappear, even though the surroundings remain the same. Changes
of action can give rise to multiple variations in opportunities for subsequent actions. To
exemplify, in team games, two defenders may face an attacker with the ball, but the
gap between the defenders may vary momentarily, inviting different actions of the
attacker, depending on his/her capacities (e.g. speed of movement), amongst other
things. Perception of affordances (opportunities for action) is the basis for performers con-
trolling her/his behaviours prospectively, i.e. regulating future behaviours (Gibson, 1979;
Turvey, 1992). An important aspect of expert performance involves acting in a manner
that is consistent with ways that are socio-culturally endorsed (Barab & Plucker, 2002;
van Dijk & Rietveld, 2017), such as those valued in different sports. Experience in acting
in a performance context attunes performers to perceptual variables that reliably
specify the state of the environment relevant to performance in a specific task (Araújo
& Davids, 2011a). In this way, athletes can use the situation as its own best model, actively
exploring and scanning it in detail at specific locations according to particular needs in the
moment. This idea was elegantly described by Rodney Brooks, a prominent scientist in
robotics as ‘the world as its best model’ (Brooks, 1991). Accordingly, robotics and other
areas (e.g. computational neuroscience) are actively searching for embodied and
embedded explanations for cognition (including perception and action) (see Clark,
2015) for a recent review). If social, historical, and possibly other external processes, are
to be taken as integral constraints on skilled action, then traditional notions of expert per-
formance (which relegate these processes to an individual’s internal environment) should
be re-examined: focusing on contexts and relations channelling expert performance.
critical issue is that disregard for the need to study functional behaviours in traditional
empirical designs has led to a decoupling of perceptual processes from actions on rel-
evant external objects and events (Fajen, Riley, & Turvey, 2009; van der Kamp, Rivas,
Van Doorn, & Savelsbergh, 2008). Neisser (1976) recognised this weakness, in his
seminal treatise on cognitive psychology, arguing that laboratory settings with con-
trived and trivial tasks, rather than everyday situations in life, can lead to the emer-
gence of artificial decisions and behaviours. Examples abound in sport, perhaps
best exemplified with reference to research methodologies in which film and video
presentations have been used to simulate sport performance contexts. Discrepancies
between these task constraints and performance in sport contexts have long been
well-documented (Williams & Abernethy, 2012; Williams, Davids, & Williams, 1999).
These concerns were endorsed by a recent meta-analysis (Travassos et al., 2013)
which clarified how expertise effects on decision-making in sport were moderated
by ubiquitous response modes (verbal reports, button pressing, performance of
micro-movements) and methods of stimuli presentation (slides, images, video presen-
tations, in situ) in research. Moderating effects on decision-making were most obvious
when participants were required to move in highly controlled laboratory conditions,
rather than when actually performing sporting actions under in situ task constraints
(Travassos et al., 2013).
For example, evidence has revealed that, when cricketers bat against a bowler, ball
projection machine or a video simulation of a bowler with a projection machine, signifi-
cant variations in timing of movement initiation and downswing initiation arise under
the different task constraints (Pinder, Davids, Renshaw, & Araújo, 2011; see similar find-
ings in studies of catching behaviours, Stone, Maynard, North, Panchuk, & Davids, 2015).
Such findings indicate the relevance of representing in investigations, the key con-
straints of performance environments (see Brunswik, 1956). The representativeness of
a particular situation helps participants to achieve performance goals cyclically, by
acting to perceive information to guide further actions (Araújo & Davids, 2015). There
needs to be a clear correspondence between behaviours in one context (an experiment
or a training session) and behaviours in another context (a performance environment)
(for detailed arguments see Araújo & Davids, 2015). The concept of correspondence is of
great importance in decision-making, because, among other things, it is linked to our
ability to perceive similarities between contexts. Recently, Seifert and colleagues
(Seifert et al., 2013; Seifert, Wattebled et al., 2016) showed how training on an indoor
climbing wall might facilitate climbing on a frozen waterfall. Correspondence
between behaviours in these contexts resulted in emergence of the use of quadrupedal
locomotion, facilitating use of limb extremities and control of gravitational forces due to
the vertical support needed for locomotion.
Performance in sport contexts involves actions, in which perceptual judgements and
decisions are embodied (Araújo et al., 2006; Beer, 2003). Much previous research has
linked perception to verbal responses, eye movements or neuroanatomical parts of
the body supposed to express variables beyond immediate observation (i.e. decisions,
judgments). However, actions by which cognition is expressed require that infor-
mation be available in the patterned ambient energy for behaving with respect
to environmental constraints. In this regard, actions, not their surrogates, are true
cognitive behaviours.
8 D. ARAÚJO ET AL.
Perception is of affordances
In ecological psychology, environmental properties can directly inform an individual per-
former about what he/she can and cannot do in a performance environment (Gibson,
1966a, 1979). For example, the rate of dilation of an image of an approaching object on
an individual’s retina can provide time-to-collision information without mental compu-
tations of distance or speed of an object to intercept it (Craig & Watson, 2011; Lee,
Young, Reddish, Lough, & Clayton, 1983). By calibrating information of their own action
capabilities, individuals directly perceive opportunities to act in the environment (i.e. affor-
dances) (Gibson, 1979). The concept of affordances captures the fit between the con-
straints on each performer and the properties of the environment. Cognition emerges
INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF SPORT AND EXERCISE PSYCHOLOGY 11
during such continuous interactions at the ecological scale of analysis, i.e. the performer-
environment system (Turvey, 1992), not from an internalised model of the world (the
world is its own best model). Affordances, as possibilities for action in a particular perform-
ance setting, are what an arrangement of surfaces, texture and objects offers to a perfor-
mer. Whether a gap between two defenders, for example, is passable or not is not
determined by its absolute size (whether measured in cms, metres or feet and inches),
but how it relates to particularities of an individual performer, including size, speed and
agility. The concept of affordance presupposes that the environment is directly perceived
in terms of what actions a performer can achieve within a performance environment (i.e. it
is not dependent on a perceiver’s expectations, Richardson et al., 2008). Affordances are
dynamic, changing across continuous performer-environment interactions (Fajen et al.,
2009) and are not representational properties of mind. Perceiving an affordance is to per-
ceive how one can act in a particular set of performance conditions. Affordances capture
the dynamics of the continuous interactions among individuals and their environment
(Araújo & Davids, 2016).
Performers can anticipate or prospectively control their actions by producing move-
ments guided by information about future states of affairs in a performance environment
(Beek, Dessing, Peper, & Bullock, 2003; Montagne, 2005; Turvey & Shaw, 1995). Gibson
(1966a, 1979) termed this direct perception, or ‘knowledge of’ the environment. This
type of knowledge is not formulated in pictures, symbols or words, because it is the knowl-
edge that makes the formulation of pictures and words possible. Knowledge of the
environment obtained through direct perception is not subjective or private. Information
is available in the environment, and performers can detect it. On the other hand, Gibson
conceived another type of knowledge: ‘images, pictures, and written-on surfaces afford a
special kind of knowledge that I call mediated or indirect, knowledge at second hand’
(Gibson, 1979, p. 42). This kind of knowledge, or indirect perception, is intrinsically
shared, because it involves the displaying of information to others. In these cases the infor-
mation on which direct perception can be based is selectively adapted and modified in a
display, for example as a schematic presentation of the co-positioning of players in two
handball teams. They consolidate gains of perception by mediating knowledge through
communication. The role of indirect forms of knowledge is to make others aware and
to articulate shared knowledge (Reed, 1991). Thus, contradicting some unfortunate misin-
terpretations in sport psychology (e.g. Ripoll, 2009; Sutton & McIlwain, 2015; Williams &
Ward, 2007), the ecological dynamics approach is deeply concerned with knowledge
and considers cognition to play an important role in theoretical explanations of human
behaviour (Araújo, Cordovil, Ribeiro, Davids, & Fernandes, 2009).
A recurrent question to ecological psychologists is ‘what about consciousness?’. Scien-
tists and philosophers have argued about the nature of consciousness, whether it exists or
can be verified, without reaching a consensus about the involvement of mind–body
dualism, physical reductionism, or epiphenomenalism (Shaw & Kinsella-Shaw, 2007).
Specifically in psychology, Wilhelm Wundt and William James conceived consciousness
without separating inner and outer experiences. However, Chalmers (1996) identified
the ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ problems in defining consciousness. For him, the solution to the
easy problem involves discovering the alignment between behaviours and their neuro-
logical correlates. The ‘hard’ problem implies moving beyond mere correlation to show
how the nature of experience (behaviours) superimposes on the nature of physiological
12 D. ARAÚJO ET AL.
events. Merely correlating inner and outer events, avoids questions of how experience
arises and where its content comes from (Shaw & Kinsella-Shaw, 2007). Correlation
between two data series says nothing about the nature of the items correlated.
For Shaw and Kinsella-Shaw (2007) consciousness facilitates the detection and use of
information. It can improve its integration, specification, interpretation, and generalisation,
as well as making movement control more flexible and coordinated over a wider range of
tasks. Consciousness contributes to the adaptive value of being aware of one’s needs, pre-
ferences, and intentions with respect to actual or potential performance situations.
However, the greater the ecological significance of what one needs to be aware of, the
more likely it will be attended to. As Gibson put it:
Perceiving is an achievement of the individual, not an appearance in the theater of his con-
sciousness. It is a keeping-in-touch with the world, an experiencing of things rather than a
having of experiences. It involves awareness-of instead of just awareness. It may be awareness
of something in the environment or something in the observer or both at once, but there is no
content of awareness independent of that of which one is aware (Gibson, 1979, p. 239).
With this understanding of perception, Gibson advanced the holistic view of conscious-
ness of Wundt and James, by eliminating the need for solving the ‘easy-hard’ problems
of consciousness. Within this view these problems do not even arise: mental and material
have equal status (Shaw & Kinsella-Shaw, 2007). Gibson followed James and Holt in reject-
ing the mind-matter dualism in that consciousness needs to be capable of physical charac-
terisation. For example, the experience of observing a goal scored when a football is
curved through the air, implies a particular way of kicking the ball by a soccer player, in
relation to a specific position related to the goal, and to the specific angle of the observer.
These physical relations are needed for this experience to occur. Consciousness is a phys-
ical relation that only exists at the level of the individual-environment system. If one sub-
tracts such relations, only matter exists. Individuals can directly perceive their situation and
themselves in that situation without needing a ‘consciousness copy’ of it.
Grounded situational awareness emerges when the performer notices what surrounds
her/him, what is changing, and what is emerging (Shaw, 2003). Importantly, to be aware of
an affordance is not to have some kind of belief about the world (e.g. beliefs about cause
and effect; Reed, 1996). Informed awareness is not just information about the environ-
ment, but of information about oneself in relation to that surrounding environment as
well (Shaw & Kinsella-Shaw, 2007).
Recently, Seifert, Cordier and colleagues (2017), in a study about decision-making in
climbing, showed that, during previewing, climbers do not necessarily make plans
based on mental representations for programming their actions. Rather previews help
them become aware of functional properties of the environment. They perceive opportu-
nities for action rather than neutral physical properties (metrics such as distance, in cms or
inches, to reach a hold). By capturing gaze behaviours during route previewing, and by
relating those behaviours to actual climbing actions, Seifert and colleagues (2017) demon-
strated that previewing allowed climbers to become perceptually attuned to affordances.
Once acted upon they implied adjustments and revealed new information that, in turn,
implied further adjustments and so on towards goal achievement (see Araújo, Dicks, &
Davids, in press). Previewing (attuning to specific affordances) can be considered a stra-
tegical behaviour (changing at a slower timescale without relying on mental
INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF SPORT AND EXERCISE PSYCHOLOGY 13
Araújo and colleagues (e.g. Araújo et al., 2006; Davids & Araújo, 2010) have previously
explained that decision-making behaviours during performance emerge in such a land-
scape of attractors (stable system states), as potential task solutions. In contrast to the tra-
ditional view of arriving at a putative ‘single best solution’, athletes modulate their
interactions with the environment until the performer-environment system arrives at a
stable, functional solution. A viable option selected is the strongest attractor for an individ-
ual-environment system at any given moment, with other options having less strength of
attraction. Decision-making is explained through an integration of intentions, actions and
perceptions, since selected behaviours are the realisation of affordances. This selection
only emerges from the continuous interactions of an individual and a performance
environment. Ignoring other options is a consequence of the dynamical (athlete-environ-
ment) system relaxing to one stable state, concomitantly ignoring remaining options
(attractors). The presence of a stronger attractor does not eliminate the influence of
other attractors in the dynamic landscape of action possibilities (e.g. Araújo, Diniz,
Passos, & Davids, 2014). Under dynamic performance conditions, other attractors (i.e. as
options) may emerge and exert their attraction. Dynamical models can explain different
decisions through the same underlying process of originating and decaying attractors.
A model initially proposed by Tuller, and colleagues (Tuller, Case, Ding, & Kelso, 1994),
for judging between pronounced words accounted for decision-making behaviours in
other tasks such as the walk-run transition (Diedrich & Warren, 1998), or the decision to
start from right or left positions in a sailing regatta (Araújo, Davids et al., 2015). In the
model of Tuller et al. (1994), it is assumed that the system’s state changes over time influ-
enced by the dynamics of the attractor landscape. In the study of Araújo, Davids et al.
(2015), the system’s state was the decision, expressed by ecological constraints such as
the sailors’ place on the starting line and the angle between the wind direction and the
starting line. In agreement with predictions of Tuller et al.’s (1994) model, Araújo et al.
(2006, Araújo, Davids et al., 2015) observed properties such as qualitative changes,
abrupt jumps, critical fluctuations and multi-stability. In the crucial pre-start period,
there was no single ‘valid’ course for each boat to follow, so the boats engaged in an inten-
sive pre-start competition, with each continuously trying to gain a positional advantage
over opponents. Analysis of the pre-start period revealed that, although decisions regard-
ing the discrete ‘most favourable starting place’ could be made in advance, this tactic was
inherently misleading. There is a need to consider and interact with instantaneously chan-
ging task (e.g. movements of opposing boats) and environmental constraints (e.g. ocean
currents) (Araújo, Davids, & Serpa, 2005; Pluijms, Cañal-Bruland, Kats, & Savelsbergh, 2013).
This particular process of decision-making (the selection of a path to an advantageous
starting point) clearly cannot be based on mental comparisons between optimal and
actual states mentally represented, because they emerge under the interaction of emer-
ging constraints including an adversary’s actions, wind changes, ocean currents, and
boat manoeuvring skills. Due to high computation loads required, this level of action pro-
gramming would be highly infeasible, perhaps needless. It would be impossible to pre-
cisely calculate the exact relational state of each source of constraint such as opponent
manoeuvres, winds, tides and currents, and personal/boat movements, and predict their
changes, and plan how to act accordingly, on a momentary basis (see also Araújo et al.,
2014 for a model in decision-making in Rugby Union).
INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF SPORT AND EXERCISE PSYCHOLOGY 15
Rather, action modes are chosen when affordances are selected, but they can change,
guided by appearance and disappearance of affordances in the performance landscape.
As Turvey and Shaw put it ‘to see the distance-to-contact is to see the work required, to
see the time-to-contact is to see the impulse forces required, to see the direction to-
contact is to see the torques required’ (Turvey & Shaw, 1995, p. 158). During performance,
an athlete’s actions generate perceptual information, which, in turn, constrains the emer-
gence of further movements. For example, in ice climbing, Seifert and colleagues (2014)
observed how skilled climbers perceived different properties of ice surface structures to
adapt their inter-limb coordination patterns with ice tools and crampons. When they
detected holes in the ice surface left by previous climbers, hooking actions emerged. Con-
versely, when the ice was smooth and dense, climbers used swinging actions to create
holes needed for a safe and rapid traversal. In turn, a climber’s movements continuously
change his/her relationship with the ice surface. Decision-making in this climbing task is
facilitated by multi-stability of the perception-action system. Multistability refers to the
principle of ‘functional equivalence’ (Kelso, 2012, p. 907), also known as ‘degeneracy’
(Edelman & Gally, 2001). Degeneracy corresponds to ‘the ability of elements that are struc-
turally different to perform the same function or yield the same output’ (Edelman & Gally,
2001, p. 13763). It signifies that an individual can vary action-perception without compro-
mising function (Mason, 2010), as an expression of the adaptive and functional role of
coordination pattern variability in order to satisfy interacting constraints (Seifert, Komar
et al. 2016). A higher level of skill reflects greater adaptive capacity to achieve similar per-
formance outcomes with different movements and coordination patterns, rather than
relying on a single (programmed, represented) ready-made solution. The presence of
degeneracy in sport actions increases an athlete’s complexity and robustness against per-
turbations and ensures a functional ongoing engagement (decision-making) with a
dynamic environment.
invitation to act in a specific way (Withagen et al., 2012, 2017). Since affordances do not
select themselves, the intention to use an affordance, as Reed (1993) put it, like other bio-
logical phenomena, emerges out of a process of variation and selection. In this way,
people are ‘drawn into’ interactions with affordances offered by a performance environ-
ment (Withagen et al., 2017).
Relatedly, Kiverstein and Rietveld (2015) defined skilled intentionality as ‘the individ-
ual’s selective openness and responsiveness to a rich landscape of affordances’ (p.701).
This notion indicates that the everyday environment offers a range of more or less inviting
affordances (Withagen et al., 2012). However, these affordances are relational: accessible
to individuals with necessary skills (e.g. developed through previous experiences) to act
on them. For example, where one tennis player with an excellent backhand shot may per-
ceive an opportunity to force cross-court shots when using it, another player who is highly-
skilled at volleying may perceive every ball as an opportunity to approach the net. Thus,
sports people interact with a surrounding environment through skilled engagement with
the affordances that a specific environment offers them, because of their unique skill set.
From this viewpoint perceptual attunement developed through experience brings an
‘openness’ to affordances that, without skill, would not be accessible, since it is skill that
opens up possibilities for action to an individual.
Moreover, individuals act relative to multiple relevant affordances simultaneously, or to
what Rietveld and colleagues (Kiverstein & Rietveld, 2015; van Dijk & Rietveld, 2017) call a
‘field of affordances’, each of which is of greater or lesser significance to the performer. For
example, the field of affordances of significance for a goalkeeper in hockey or football only
marginally overlaps with the field of affordances for an attacking player in these invasion
games. This idea justifies why an individual is open to and ready to act on multiple affor-
dances at the same time. Through experience, training and practice, individuals can
display tendencies towards a specific link with the environment in a field of affordances.
Additionally, the existence of constellations of constraints, maximising the availability of
affordances, has been identified in different sports settings (e.g. Barsingerhorn, Zaal,
dePoel, & Pepping, 2013; Hristovski, Davids, Araújo, & Button, 2006; Paulo, Zaal, Fonseca,
& Araújo, 2016 Pepping, Heijmerikx, & de Poel, 2011). These regions of ‘hyper-link’ in a
field of affordances may be important in sensitising performers to subtle differences in
an opponent’s actions, and thus in the process of calibration to a perceived affordance.
The perception of a new affordance in a landscape of temporally nested affordances (Hris-
tovski, Davids, Araújo, & Passos, 2011; Torrents Martín, Ric, & Hristovski, 2015) can bring
about higher adaptive capacities of performers.
We recently suggested that one important way to explain how affordances are selected
is based on information for the next affordance (Araújo et al., in press). This is the informa-
tional basis for the selection of affordances in multi-scale dynamics (Keijzer, 2001). This
means that affordances are conditionally-coupled (van Geert, 1994), allowing a dynamic
assembly of overall behavioural sequences. In tennis, Carvalho and colleagues (2014)
studied how sequential behaviours, expressed as successive strokes in a rally, was
based on conditionally-coupled affordances. The goal-directed displacement index, was
developed as a measure to simultaneously consider the distance of competing players
in relation to two on-court reference points –the central line of the court and the net-
during competitive performance. This eco-biophysical variable reflects the state of the
individual-environment system. This study showed that different functional relations
INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF SPORT AND EXERCISE PSYCHOLOGY 17
could be established between skilled players attuned, open, and responsive to match
affordances. A player with an advantage is perceiving and creating affordances for the
other (see Fajen et al., 2009), where the other is invited (pressured) to act upon such affor-
dances, since he/she is open and responsive to play in the rally. The stability of the inter-
actions between players is highly constrained by the co-adaptations (co-positioning) of
the players (near or away from the central line of the court, or from the net) and the
pattern of interactions developed during play (cross-court or down-the-line rallies). In
such a field of affordances, a player with an advantage tries to create a successively
more unstable situation for the other player, stroke after stoke, in an effort to de-stabilise
the existing spatial-temporal coordination between them (Carvalho et al., 2013). The
advantage in a rally is a process that is developed though successive actions, where
nested affordances are dynamically assembled and imply perceptual attunement of
skilled players to information for the next affordance.
Conclusion
In sport, coordination of whole body actions with events, objects and surfaces and other
athletes in the environment, is a requisite of performance. In other social-cultural activities,
such as chess or playing piano, expert action tends to reside in micro-movements. A gen-
eralised interest of the scientific community on the topic of action has been around for no
more than two decades (Herwig, Beisert, & Printz, 2013). However, sport performance is
not typically predicated on performance of micro- or simple movements. It is a phenom-
enon that capitalises on detailed interactions between an individual and a performance
environment. This is why the structure of action, during ongoing interactions of a perfor-
mer in a performance environment, is a key issue for understanding expert cognition in
sport.
From this viewpoint, the study of decision-making in sport involves selecting among
affordances. However, once an affordance is perceived, its selection embodies an action
mode, i.e. the action mode is chosen in the perception of an affordance. Interestingly,
this action mode can change to other action modes guided by the information conveyed
by the affordance (e.g. from walking to running when fielding in cricket or baseball if a
ball’s trajectory is perceived as falling to ground earlier). A few models of decision
making already exist in ecological dynamics (e.g. Araújo et al., 2014, 2015). But there are
many other courses of action, competition sub-phases and sports to address. Moreover,
action modes bring about new affordances among which new selections may emerge.
Therefore, the two instances of decision-making are intimately connected and future
research is needed to investigate this relationship.
Ecological dynamics is focused in the performer-environment system as an explanatory
level of analysis, not on inferred internal variables. Ecological dynamics research is limited
at the moment, but it is needed to understand how environmental manipulations (e.g.
match status in competition, effects of differences in heights between a competing
attacker and defender or the influence on performance of variations in holds designed
into a climbing wall) influence the behavioural dynamics of the participants (Cordovil
et al., 2009).
The understanding of action, and therefore cognition, as an emergent process under
individual, environmental and task constraints has consequences for how decision-
18 D. ARAÚJO ET AL.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Funding
This work was partly supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, under Grant UID/DTP/
UI447/2013 to CIPER – Centro Interdisciplinar para o Estudo da Performance Humana (unit 447).
ORCID
Duarte Araújo http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7932-3192
Robert Hristovski http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6805-2833
Ludovic Seifert http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1712-5013
João Carvalho http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8873-0213
Keith Davids http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1398-6123
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