Volume 2, Issue 3

September 2019

Investigating the Period of Practice Needed to Acquire Expertise in Great Britain 2012 Track and Field Olympic Athletes

Toby Staff¹, Fernand Gobet², & Andrew Parton¹
¹Brunel University, ²University of Liverpool
Deliberate practice theory argues that expertise can be acquired only after 10 years of domain-specific deliberate practice. To assess this prediction, we examined data from track (n = 57) and field (n = 15) athletes representing Great Britain Track and Field team (Team GB) at the 2012 Olympics. We defined the period to excellence as the difference in age between achieving expertise (the first selection for an international senior outdoor athletic championship) and starting age (joining a club, being coached, or engaging in competition). Results indicated that elite track (75.4%) and field (93.3%) athletes acquired expertise in significantly less than 10 years (M = 7.20, SD = 3.20, p < .001). Expertise mostly relying on the anaerobic pathway (n = 51) was acquired significantly faster than expertise mostly utilizing the aerobic pathway (n = 21), 6.15 ± 2.84 years vs. 9.78 ± 2.52 years (p < .001). Those who did not specialize early (n = 40) were faster in acquiring expertise in a new sport than those who specialized early (n = 32), 6.27 ± 2.78 vs. 8.38 ± 3.34 years (p = .005), contrary to deliberate-practice contention that early specialization is critical.

Do Racing Drivers Practice Racing? The Effect of Intentional Following on Formula Car Drivers’ Steering Behavior

Simon M. Rosalie¹& James M. Malone²
¹Curtin University, ²Raptor Motorsports, USA
Overtaking in formula car racing often requires close following to gain the benefits of slipstreaming. Research in road driving suggests that following another car closely causes a reallocation of visual attention to a narrower visual search strategy. In formula car racing, drivers’ visual search strategy is based on head movement rather than eye movement and is tightly coupled to their steering behavior. Therefore, a change in visual search strategy may affect a formula car driver’s steering behavior. We used electromyography to investigate whether skilled amateur formula car drivers (n = 4) transferred stable patterns of neck, shoulder girdle, and trunk muscle activation from a task that required them to drive on a clear track to a task that required them to follow another car closely. Rates of fatigue decreased in the muscles of the neck when drivers followed another car suggesting that head movement decreased, consistent with a narrowing of visual search. Concomitant changes occurred in the activation patterns of drivers’ shoulder girdle and trunk muscles. The findings imply that the drivers have not practiced following another car sufficiently to maintain stable bimanual coordination patterns for steering when attentional demand is increased in tasks typical of racing. Our results should be taken cautiously because of the small number of drivers tested. However, further studies are warranted to investigate how attentional demands affect formula car drivers’ coordination patterns for steering.

Predicting Musical Aptitude and Achievement: Practice, Teaching, and Intelligence

Miriam A. Mosing^1,2, David Z. Hambrick³, Fredrik Ullén¹
¹Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, ²Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, ³Department of Psychology, Michigan State University
Studies of expertise have traditionally had a strong focus on the role of one single factor, i.e. long-term deliberate practice, for expert performance. However, recent empirical and theoretical work strongly suggests that expertise is a function of many variables that may have practice-independent effects on performance, but also moderate the efficacy of practice itself. Here we study such interaction effects in a large cohort (N > 4,500) of Swedish twins, using music as a model domain, and measured expert performance (musical auditory discrimination) as well as self-reported real-life achievement as indices of expertise. Specifically, we test two recently proposed hypotheses, i.e. (1) that the efficacy of practice increases if the individual also takes part in teacher-led lessons, and (2) that practice efficacy increases with higher intelligence. The results did not support the first hypothesis. Both practice and frequency of music lessons had positive associations with the two measures of expertise but, contrary to predictions, the interaction between them was negative, i.e. the effect of each practiced hour decreased with more lessons. In contrast, the second hypothesis was supported by the data, i.e. we found a positive interaction between practice and intelligence, suggesting that higher cognitive ability is related to more efficient practice behaviors. Together the results further support that domain-specific expertise is a complex outcome, which depends on an interplay of a variety of factors.