Visit any youth soccer field, baseball diamond, basketball court or football field and you will likely see them:  parents behaving badly.  Take a look at this Good Morning America report:

These are the extremes, but at most games, you can find at least one adult making comments at the referee, shouting at their child, or having a verbal exchange with another parent.  Thankfully, these parents represent only a small percentage of those attending the game.  Does that mean the others don't become upset at something during the game?  Usually not, as there are lots of opportunities to dispute a bad call or observe rough play or react to one of these loud parents.  The difference is in our basic personality psyche, according to Jay Goldstein, a kinesiology doctoral student at the University of Maryland School of Public Health .  His thesis, recently published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology (see reference below), hypothesized that a parent with "control-oriented" personality would react to events at a game more than a parent with an "autonomy-oriented" personality.

According to Goldstein, defending our ego is what usually gets us in trouble when we feel insulted or take something personally.  At youth sports games, we transfer this pride to our kids, so if someone threatens their success on the field, we often take it personally.  The control-oriented parent is more likely to react with a verbal or sometimes physical response, while an autonomy-oriented parent is better able to internalize and maintain their emotions.  This "control" vs. "autonomy" comparison has also been seen in research on "road rage", when drivers react violently to another driver's actions.
Goldstein and his team focused their research on suburban Washington soccer parents back in 2004.  They designed a survey for parents to fill out prior to watching a youth soccer game that would help categorize them as control or autonomy-oriented.  Immediately after the game ended, another survey was given to the parents that asked about any incidents during the game that made them angry on a scale of 1, slightly angry, to 7, furious.  They were also asked what action they took when they were angry.  Choices included "did nothing" to more aggressive acts like walking towards the field and/or yelling or confronting either the referee, their own child, or another player/parent.  53% of the 340 parents surveyed reported getting angry at something during the game, while about 40% reported doing something about their anger.
There was a direct and significant correlation between control-oriented parents, as identified in the pre-game survey, and the level of angry actions they took during the game.  Autonomy-oriented parents still got mad, but reported less aggressive reactions.  As Goldstein notes, “Regardless of their personality type, all parents were susceptible to becoming more aggressive as a result of viewing actions on the field as affronts to them or their kids.  However, that being said, it took autonomy-oriented parents longer to get there as compared to the control-oriented parents.”
So, now that we know the rather obvious conclusion that parents who yell at other motorists are also likely to yell at referees, what can we do about it?  Goldstein sees this study as a first step.  He hopes to study a wider cross-section of sports and socio-economic populations.  Many youth sports organizations require parents to sign a pre-season "reminder" code of conduct, but those are often forgotten in the heat of the battle on the field.  Maybe by offering the same type of personality survey prior to the season, the "control-oriented" parents can be offered resources to help them manage their tempers and reactions during a game.  Since referees were the number one source of frustration reported by parents, two solutions are being explored by many organizations; more thorough referee training and quality control while also better training of parents on the rules of the game which often cause the confusion.
Sports contests will always be emotional, from kids' games all the way up to professionals.  Keeping the games in perspective and our reactions positive are tough things to do but when it comes to our kids, it is required.


!http://www.researchblogging.org/images/rbicons/ResearchBlogging-Medium-White.png|height=50|alt=ResearchBlogging.org|width=80|src=http://www.researchblogging.org/images/rbicons/ResearchBlogging-Medium-White.png!


Goldstein, J.D., Iso-Ahola, S.E. (2008). Determinants of Parents' Sideline-Rage Emotions and Behaviors at Youth Soccer Games. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 38(6), 1442-1462. DOI: 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2008.00355.x</span>

!http://bp1.blogger.com/_3b3RMRFwqU0/SHPW2TXf7bI/AAAAAAAAAXM/Ai7wkX-Ok1s/s320-R/golf.jpg|style=border: 0pt none ;|src=http://bp1.blogger.com/_3b3RMRFwqU0/SHPW2TXf7bI/AAAAAAAAAXM/Ai7wkX-Ok1s/s320-R/golf.jpg!Here are some quotes we have all heard (or said ourselves) on the golf course or at the ball diamond.

On a good day:

"It was like putting into the Grand Canyon"

"The baseball looked like a beach ball up there today"

On a bad day:

"The hole was as small as a thimble"

"I don't know, it looked like he was throwing marbles"

The baseball and the golf hole are the same size every day, so are these comments meaningless or do we really perceive these objects differently depending on the day's performance?  And, does our performance influence our perception or does our perception help our performance?

!http://bp3.blogger.com/_3b3RMRFwqU0/SHPWUztPsBI/AAAAAAAAAXE/RdKYh_ozFHQ/s200-R/witt-golfLO.jpg|style=border: 0pt none ;|src=http://bp3.blogger.com/_3b3RMRFwqU0/SHPWUztPsBI/AAAAAAAAAXE/RdKYh_ozFHQ/s200-R/witt-golfLO.jpg!Jessica Witt, an assistant professor of psychological science at the University of Virginia has made two attempts at the answer.  First, in a 2005 study, "See the Ball, Hit the Ball", her team studied softball players by designing an experiment that tried to correlate perceived softball size to performance.  She interviewed players immediately after a game and asked them to estimate the size of the softball by picking a circle off of a board that contained several different sizes.  She then found out how that player had done at the plate that day.  As expected, the players that were hitting well chose the larger sized circles to represent the ball size, while the underperforming hitters chose the smaller circles.  The team was not able to answer the question of causality, so they expanded the research to other sports.

Fast forward to July, 2008 and Witt and her team have just released a very similar study focused on golf, "[Putting to a bigger hole: Golf performance relates to perceived size | http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/psocpubs/pbr/2008/00000015/00000003/art00013]".  Using the same experiment format, players who had just finished a round of golf were asked to pick out the perceived size of the hole from a collection of holes that varied in diameter by a few centimeters.  Once again, the players who had scored well that day picked the larger holes and vice versa for that day's hackers.  So, the team came to the same conclusion that there is some relationship between perception and performance, but could not figure out the direction of the effect.  Ideally, a player could "imagine" a larger hole and then play better because of that visual cue. 

Researchers at Vanderbilt University may have the answer.  In a study, "[The Functional Impact of Mental Imagery on Conscious Perception | http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2008.05.048]", the team led by Joel Pearson, wanted to see what influence our "Mind's Eye" has on our actual perception.  In their experiment, they asked volunteers to imagine simple patterns of vertical or horizontal stripes.  Then, they showed each person a pattern of green horizontal stripes in one eye and red vertical stripes in the other eye.  This would induce what is known as the "binocular rivalry" condition where each image would fight for control of perception and would appear to alternate from one to the other.  In this experiment, however, the subjects reported seeing the image they had first imagined more often.  So, if they had imagined vertical stripes originally, they would report seeing the red vertical stripes predominantly.

The team concluded that mental imagery does have an influence over what is later seen.  They also believe that the brain actually processes imagined mental images the same way it handles actual scenes.  "More recently, with advances in human brain imaging, we now know that when you imagine something parts of the visual brain do light up and you see activity there," Pearson says. "So there's more and more evidence suggesting that there is a huge overlap between mental imagery and seeing the same thing. Our work shows that not only are imagery and vision related, but imagery directly influences what we see."

So, back to our sports example, if we were able to imagine a large golf hole or a huge baseball, this might affect our actual perception of the real thing and increase our performance.  This link has not been tested, but its a step in the right direction.  Another open question is the effect that our emotions and confidence have on our perceived task.  That hole may look like the Grand Canyon, but the sand trap might look like the Sahara Desert!

<span 5px;
\="" left;="" padding:="" style="">!http://www.researchblogging.org/images/rbicons/ResearchBlogging-Medium-White.png|height=50|alt=ResearchBlogging.org|width=80|src=http://www.researchblogging.org/images/rbicons/ResearchBlogging-Medium-White.png!</span>

<span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&amp;rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&amp;rft.aulast=Witt&amp;rft.aufirst=J&amp;rft.aumiddle=K&amp;rft.au=J+ Witt&amp;rft.title=PsychonomicBulletin%26Review&amp;rft.atitle=Puttingtoabiggerhole%3Agolfperformancerelatestoperceived+size&amp;rft.date=2008&amp;rft.volume=15&amp;rft.issue=3&amp;rft.spage=581&amp;rft.epage=585&amp;rft.genre=article&amp;rft.id=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ingentaconnect.com%2Fcontent%2Fpsocpubs%2Fpbr%2F2008%2F00000015%2F00000003%2Fart00013&amp;rft.id=info:PMID/18567258">Witt, J.K. (2008). Putting to a bigger hole: golf performance relates to perceived size. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 15(3), 581-585.

From:  Sports Are 80 Percent Mental - Teaching Tactics and Techniques In Sports

You have probably seen both types of teams. Team A: players who are

evenly spaced, calling out plays, staying in their positions only to

watch them dribble the ball out of bounds, lose the pass, or shoot

wildly at the goal. Team B: amazing ball control, skillful shooting and

superior quickness, speed and agility but each player is a

"do-it-yourselfer" since no one can remember a formation, strategy or

position responsibility. Team A knows WHAT to do, but can't execute.

Team B knows HOW to do it, but struggles with making good team play

decisions. This is part of the ongoing balancing act of a coach. At the

youth level, teaching technique first has been the tradition, followed

by tactical training later and separately. More recently, there has

been research on the efficiency of learning in sports and whether there

is a third "mixed" option that yields better performance.

Earlier, we took an initial look at  as an introduction to this discussion.

In addition, Dr. Markus Raab of  the Institute for Movement Sciences and Sport, University of Flensburg, Germany,

(now of the Institute of Psychology, German Sport University in

Cologne), took a look at four major models of teaching sports skills

that agree that technical and tactical skills need to be combined for

more effective long-term learning.Each of the four models vary in their

treatment of learning along two different dimensions; implicit vs.

explicit learning and domain-specific vs. domain-general environments.

Types of Learning

Imagine two groups of boys playing baseball. The first group has gathered at

the local ball diamond at the park with their bats, balls and gloves.

No coaches, no parents, no umpires; just a group of friends playing an

informal "pick-up" game of baseball. They may play by strict baseball

rules, or they may improvise and make their own "home" rules, (no

called strikes, no stealing, etc.). In the past, they may have had more

formal coaching, but today is unstructured.

The second group is what we see much more often today. A team of players, wearing

their practice uniforms are driven by their parents to team practice at

a specific location and time to be handed off to the team coaches. The

coaches have planned a 90 minute session that includes structured

infield practice, then fly ball practice, then batting practice and

finally some situational scrimmages. Rules are followed and coaching

feedback is high. Both groups learn technical and tactical skills

during their afternoon of baseball. They differ in the type of learning

they experience. The first group uses "implicit" learning while the

second group uses "explicit" learning. Implicit learning is simply the

lack of explicit teaching. It is "accidental" or "incidental" learning

that soaks in during the course of our play. There is no coach teaching

the first group, but they learn by their own trial and error and

internalize the many if-then rules of technical and tactical skills.

Explicit learning, on the other hand, is directed instruction from an

expert who demonstrates proper technique or explains the tactic and the

logic behind it.

An interesting test of whether a specific skill or piece of knowledge has been

learned with implicit or explicit methods is to ask the athlete to describe or verbalize the

details of the skill or sub-skill. If they cannot verbalize how they

know what they know, it was most likely learned through implicit

learning. However, if they can explain the team's attacking strategy

for this game, for example, that most likely came from an explicit

learning session with their coach.

Types of Domains

The other dimension that coaches could use in choosing the best teaching

method is along the domain continuum. Some teaching methods work best

to teach a skill that is specific to that sport's domain and the level

of transferability to another sport is low. These methods are known as

domain-specific. For more general skills that can be useful in several

related sports, a method can be used known as domain-general. Why would

any coach choose a method that is not specific to their sport? There

has been evidence that teaching at a more abstract level, using both

implicit and explicit "play" can enhance future, more specific

coaching. Also, remember our discussion about kids playing multiple sports.

Based on these two dimensions, Dr. Raab looked at and summarized these four teaching models:

• Teaching Games for Understanding (TGFU)

• Decision Training (DT)

• Ball School (Ball)

• Situation Model of Anticipated Response consequences of Tactical training (SMART)

TGFU

The TGFU approach, (best described by Bunker, D.; Thorpe, R. (1982) A model for the

teaching of games in the secondary school, Bulletin of Physical Education, 10, 9–16), is known

for involving the athlete early in the "cognition" part of the game and

combining it with the technical aspect of the game. Rather than learn

"how-to" skills in a vacuum, TGFU argues that an athlete can tie the

technical skill with the appropriate time and place to use it and in

the context of a real game or a portion of the game. This method falls

into the explicit category of learning, as the purpose of the exercise

is explained. However, the exercises themselves stress a more

domain-general approach of more generic skills that can be transferred

between related sports such as "invasion games" (soccer, football,

rugby), "net games" (tennis, volleyball), "striking/fielding games"

(baseball, cricket) and "target games" (golf, target shooting).

Decision Training

The DT method, (best described by Vickers, J. N., Livingston, L. F.,

Umeris-Bohnert, S. & Holden, D. (1999) Decision training: the

effects of complex instruction, variable practice and reduced delayed

feedback on the acquisition and transfer of a motor skill, Journal of

Sports Sciences, 17, 357–367), uses an explicit learning style but with

a domain-specific approach. Please see my earlier post on Decision Training for

details of the approach.

Ball School

The Ball School approach, (best described by Kroger, C. & Roth, K.

(1999) Ballschule: ein ABC fur Spielanfanger [Ball school: an ABC for

game beginners] (Schorndorf, Hofmann), starts on the other end of both

spectrums, in that it teaches generic domain-general skills using

implicit learning. It emphasizes that training must be based on

ability, playfullness, and skill-based. Matching the games to the

group's abilities, while maintaining an unstructured "play" atmosphere

will help teach generic skills like "hitting a target" or "avoiding

defenders".

SMART

Dr. Raab's own SMART model, (best described in Raab, M. (2003) Decision making in

sports: implicit and explicit learning is affected by complexity of

situation, International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 1,

406–433), blends implicit and explicit learning within a

domain-specific environment. The idea is that different sports'

environmental complexity may demand either an implicit or explicit

learning method. Raab had previously shown that skills learned

implicitly work best in sport enviroments with low complexity. Skills

learned explicitly will work best in highly complex environments.

Complexity is measured by the number of variables in the sport. So, a

soccer field has many moving parts, each with its own variables. So,

the bottom line is to use the learning strategy that fits the sport's

inherent difficulty. So, learning how to choose from many different

skill and tactical options would work best if matched with the right

domain-specific environment.

Bottom-Line for Coaches

What does all of this mean for the coach? That there are several different

models of instruction and that one size does not fit all situations.

Coaches need an arsenal of tools to use based on the specific goals of

the training session. In reality, most sports demand both implicit and

explicit learning, as well as skills that are specific to one domain,

and some that can transfer across several sport domains. Flexibility in

the approach taken goes back to the evidence based coaching example we gave last time.

Keeping an open mind about coaching methods and options will produce better prepared athletes.

(2007). Discussion. Physical Education & Sport Pedagogy, 12(1), 1-22. DOI: 10.1080/17408980601060184

From: Sports Are 80 Percent Mental - Single Sport Kids - When To Specialize

So, your grade school son or daughter is a good athlete, playing

multiple sports and having fun at all of them. Then, you hear the usual

warning, either from coaches or other parents; "If you want your

daughter to go anywhere in this sport, then its time to let the other

sports go and commit her full-time to this one." The logic sounds

reasonable. The more time spent on one sport, the better she will be at

that sport, right? Well, when we look at the three pillars of our

Sports Cognition Framework, motor skill competence, decision making ability,

and positive mental state, the question becomes whether any of these would benefit from

playing multiple sports, at least in the early years of an athlete

(ages 3-12)? It seems obvious that specific technical motor skills,

(i.e. soccer free kicks, baseball bunting, basketball free throws) need

plenty of practice and that learning the skill of shooting free throws

will not directly make you a better bunter. On the other end, learning

how to maintain confidence, increase your focus, and manage your

emotions are skills that should easily transfer from one sport to

another. That leaves the development of tactical decision making

ability as the unknown variable. Will a young athlete learn more about

field tactics, positional play and pattern recognition from playing

only their chosen sport or from playing multiple related sports?

Researchers at the University of Queensland, Australia

learned from previous studies that for national team caliber players

there is a correlation between the breadth of sport experiences they

had as a child and the level of expertise they now have in a single

sport. In fact, these studies show that there is an inverse relation

between the amount of multi-sport exposure time and the additional

sport-specific training to reach expert status. In plain English, the

athletes that played several different (but related) sports as a child,

were able to reach national "expert" level status faster than those

that focused only one sport in grade school . Bruce Abernethy,

Joseph Baker and Jean Cote designed an experiment to observe and

measure if there was indeed a transfer of pattern recognition ability

between related sports (i.e. team sports based on putting an object in

a goal; hockey, soccer, basketball, etc.)

They recruited two group of athletes; nationally recognized experts in each

of three sports (netball, basketball and field hockey) who had broad

sports experiences as children and experienced but not expert level

players in the same sports whose grade school sports exposure was much

more limited (single sport athletes). (For those unfamiliar with

netball, it is basically basketball with no backboards and few

different rules.) The experiment showed each group a video segment of

an actual game in each of the sports. When the segment ended the groups

were asked to map out the positions and directions of each of the

players on the field, first offense and then defense, as best they

could remember from the video clip. The non-expert players were the

control group, while the expert players were the experimental groups.

First, all players were shown a netball clip and asked to respond.

Second, all were shown a basketball clip and finally the hockey clip.

The expectation of the researchers was that the netball players would

score the highest after watching the netball clip (no surprise there),

but also that the expert players of the other two sports would score

higher than the non-expert players. The reasoning behind their theory

was that since the expert players were exposed to many different sports

as a child, there might be a significant transfer effect between sports

in pattern recognition, and that this extra ability would serve them

well in their chosen sport.

The results were as predicted. For each sport's test, the experts in that sport scored the

highest, followed by the experts in the other sports, with the

non-experts scoring the poorest in each sport. Their conclusion was

that there was some generic learning of pattern recognition in team

sports that was transferable. The takeaway from this study is that

there is benefit to having kids play multiple sports and that this may

shorten the time and training needed to excel in a single sport in the

future.

So, go ahead and let your kids play as many

sports as they want. Resist the temptation to "overtrain" in one sport

too soon. Playing several sports certainly will not hurt their future

development and will most likely give them time to find their true

talents and their favorite sport.

Source:

Abernethy, B., Baker, J., Côté, J. (2005). Transfer of pattern recall skills may

contribute to the development of sport expertise. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 19(6), 705-718. DOI: 10.1002/acp.1102