Exploring Dynamics of Changes in Psychological Skills in the Development of Talented Athletes.

In this study we examined changes in a psychological skill set, defined as crucial for the growth of talented athletes, through repeated assessments of the six-factor Psychological Characteristics of Development Excellence Questionnaire (PCDEQ). In a first phase of this study, we built and evaluated a French adaptation of the PCDEQ: the PCDEQ-SV (18 items). After confirmatory factor analysis, Cronbach's alpha revealed that scales for its six factors ranged from very good to just below minimally acceptable as a model fit. The mean inter-item correlations for the scales, built on three items per scale, were optimal, leading us to assume that this short version was reliable. In the second phase, we analyzed the changes in the skill sets of 67 talented Swiss athletes who were given the PCDEQ-SV three times over 1 year. Feedback on the scores was provided to participants in comparison to the test's cutoffs after T1 and T2. The analysis then focused on those who scored below the cutoffs and their resources for skill improvements. We found that the highest number of participants scored below the cutoffs at testing times, T1 and T2 on Factors 2, 6 and 1. Changes in scores were characterized by overall dynamics of improvement. The resources most used to effect those changes were "personal work with no outside help," "discussions with significant others," and "specific work with the coach." The results are discussed in relation to the iGen's resources for self-determination of psychological skills improvement.

Creative Togetherness. A Joint-Methods Analysis of Collaborative Artistic Performance.

In the present study, we combined first-, second-, and third-person levels of analysis to explore the feeling of being and acting together in the context of collaborative artistic performance. Following participation in an international competition held in Czech Republic in 2018, a team of ten artistic swimmers took part in the study. First, a self-assessment instrument was administered to rate the different aspects of togetherness emerging from their collective activity; second, interviews based on video recordings of their performance were conducted individually with all team members; and third, the performance was evaluated by external artistic swimming experts. By combining these levels of analysis in different ways, we explore how changes in togetherness and lived experience in individual behavior may shape, disrupt, and (re-)stabilize joint performance. Our findings suggest that the experience of being and acting together is transient and changing, often alternating phases of decrease and increase in felt togetherness that can be consistently recognized by swimmers and external raters.

Reviewing the role of the environment in the talent development of a professional soccer club.

This two-part study examined the perceptions of talented Swiss soccer players about their talent development environment. The first study presented the translation and validation of the Talent Development Environment Questionnaire (TDEQ) into French using a recommended methodology for translating and culturally adapting questionnaires. Two hundred and three Swiss athletes (M = 16.99 years old) responded to the 25 items of the TDEQ-5. One item was excluded due to low factor loadings, and the descriptive statistics showed that the re-specified TDEQ-5 instrument had acceptable global model fit according to the thresholds in the literature (χ2 (df = 17) = 484.62, p<0.001, CFI = 0.91, TLI = 0.90, RMSEA = 0.07, SRMR = 0.06). This adaptation is thus valid for assessing the effectiveness of talent development processes. For the second study, a holistic design was used to examine the perceptions of a set of players embedded in a top-level Swiss soccer academy (i.e., 64 elite soccer players from 14 to 18 years old) by using the TDEQ-5. The results showed some relative strengths (i.e., F1-Long-Term Focus for the M15 and M16 age-groups) and weaknesses (i.e., F2-Alignment of Expectations for the M17 and M18 age -groups and F3-Communication for M17). They also highlighted that the talent pathways of these Swiss soccer players could not be summarized by a single type of transition toward a professional team. Rather, there were context-specific requirements, such as the critical period between the M15-M16 and M17-M18 age-groups, suggesting that when the players first entered their TDE they experienced a set of affordances to develop and flourish, which thereafter were perceived as less rich and/or abundant. These results offer a starting point for optimizing talent pathways.

Optimizing Performative Skills in Social Interaction: Insights From Embodied Cognition, Music Education, and Sport Psychology.

Embodied approaches to cognition conceive of mental life as emerging from the ongoing relationship between neural and extra-neural resources. The latter include, first and foremost, our entire body, but also the activity patterns enacted within a contingent milieu, cultural norms, social factors, and the features of the environment that can be used to enhance our cognitive capacities (e.g., tools, devices, etc.). Recent work in music education and sport psychology has applied general principles of embodiment to a number of social contexts relevant to their respective fields. In particular, both disciplines have contributed fascinating perspectives to our understanding of how skills are acquired and developed in groups; how musicians, athletes, teachers, and coaches experience their interactions; and how empathy and social action participate in shaping effective performance. In this paper, we aim to provide additional grounding for this research by comparing and further developing original themes emerging from this cross-disciplinary literature and empirical works on how performative skills are acquired and optimized. In doing so, our discussion will focus on: (1) the feeling of being together, as meaningfully enacted in collective musical and sport events; (2) the capacity to skillfully adapt to the contextual demands arising from the social environment; and (3) the development of distributed forms of bodily memory. These categories will be discussed from the perspective of embodied cognitive science and with regard to their relevance for music education and sport psychology. It is argued that because they play a key role in the acquisition and development of relevant skills, they can offer important tools to help teachers and coaches develop novel strategies to enhance learning and foster new conceptual and practical research in the domains of music and sport.

Validation of a French Version of the Psychological Characteristics of Developing Excellence Questionnaire (MacNamara & Collins, ): A Situated Approach to Talent Development.

This study sought to validate the psychometric properties of a French-language version of the Psychological Characteristics of Developing Excellence Questionnaire (PCDEQ). Data were gathered from 305 athletes in French-speaking Switzerland (mean age: 16.6 yr, SD: 2.9). Translation of the PCDEQ followed established guidelines and included a standardized back-translation process. The psychometric properties were examined by descriptive statistics, Cronbach's alphas for internal reliability, confirmatory factor analysis, intraclass correlations and a paired t-test for test-retest reliability. The results provided evidence of validity of the French version of the PCDEQ. Two items were excluded for low factor loading, and the re-specified model was improved and confirmed the six-dimensional structure with acceptable fit using most criteria (χ2/df), RMSEA, SRMR, TFI, CFI). Cronbach's alpha also indicated that internal reliability was adequate for validation. Given the adequate psychometric properties, the French-version PCDEQ can be used with confidence for monitoring and designing interventions to enable aspiring athletes or artists to develop the psychological skills and characteristics that can act as important catalysts for their development.

Enacting Phenomenological Gestalts in Ultra-Trail Running: An Inductive Analysis of Trail Runners' Courses of Experience.

Using an enactive approach to trail runners' activity, this study sought to identify and characterize runners' phenomenological gestalts, which are forms of experience that synthesize the heterogeneous sensorimotor, cognitive and emotional information that emerges in race situations. By an in-depth examination of their meaningful experiences, we were able to highlight the different typologies of interactions between bodily processes (e.g., sensations and pains), behaviors (e.g., actions and strategies), and environment (e.g., meteorological conditions and route profile). Ten non-professional runners who ran an ultra-trail running race (330 km, 24,000 m of elevation gain) volunteered to participate in the study. Data were collected in two steps: (1) collection of past activity traces (i.e., race maps, field notes, and self-assessment scales) and (2) enactive interviews using the past activity traces in which the runners were invited to relive their experience and describe their activity. The enactive interviews were coded using the course-of-experience methodology to identify the phenomenological gestalts that emerged from activity and scaffolded the runners' courses of experience. The results revealed that runners typically enact three phenomenological gestalts: controlling global ease, enduring general fatigue and experiencing difficult situations, and feeling freedom in the running pace. These phenomenological gestalts were made up of specific behaviors, involvements, and meaningful situated elements that portrayed various ways of achieving an ultra-endurance performance in the race situation. They also highlighted how runners enact a meaningful world by acting in relation to the fluctuations in physical sensations and environmental conditions during an ultra-trail race. Practical applications for preparation, race management and sports psychology interventions are proposed to enrich the existing recommendations. In conclusion, this approach provides new research perspectives by offering a more holistic grasp of activity in trail running through an in-depth analysis of athletes' experience. In doing so, we may expect that runners can connect these typical gestalts to their own personal experiences and stories as trail runners in order to sustain a viable approach to their sport.

How Do Soccer Players Adjust Their Activity in Team Coordination? An Enactive Phenomenological Analysis.

This study examined how individual team members adjust their activity to the needs for collective behavior. To do so, we used an enactive phenomenological approach and explored how soccer players' lived experiences were linked to the active regulation of team coordination during eight offensive transition situations. These situations were defined by the shift from defensive to offensive play following a change in ball possession. We collected phenomenological data, which were processed in four steps. First, we reconstructed the diachronic and synchronic dynamics of the players' lived experiences across these situations in order to identify the units of their activity. Second, we connected each player's units of activity side-by-side in chronological order in order to identify the collective units. Each connection was viewed as a collective regulation mode corresponding to which and how individual units were linked at a given moment. Third, we clustered each collective unit using the related objectives within three modes of regulation-local (L), global (G), and mixed (M). Fourth, we compared the occurrences of these modes in relation to the observable key moments in the situations in order to identify typical patterns. The results indicated four patterns of collective regulation modes. Two distinct patterns were identified without ball possession: reorganize the play formation (G and M) and adapt to the actions of putting pressure on the ball carrier (M). Once the ball was recovered, two additional patterns emerged: be available to get the ball out of the recovery zone (L) and shoot for the goal (L and M). These results suggest that team coordination is a fluctuating phenomenon that can be described through the more or less predictable chaining between these patterns. They also highlight that team coordination is supported by several modes of regulation, including our proposal of a new mode of interpersonal regulation. We conclude that future research should investigate the effect of training on the enaction of this mode in competition.