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Movement Models from Sports Provide Representative Task Constraints for Studying Adaptive Behavior in Human Movement Systems

Chris Button

School of Physical Education, University of Otago, New Zealand

Duarte Araújo

Faculty of Human Kinetics, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal

Ian Renshaw

Division of Sport and Recreation, Faculty of Health, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand

Robert Hristovski

Faculty of Physical Culture, University of St Cyril and Methodius, Republic of Macedonia

Researchers studying adaptive behavior in human movement systems have traditionally employed simplified, laboratory-based movement models in an effort to conserve experimental rigor. Brunswikian psychology raises questions over the representativeness of many of these popular experimental models for studying how movements are coordinated with events, objects, and surfaces of dynamic environments. In this article we argue that sports provide rich ecological constraints for representative task design in modeling the complex interactions of human performers with their environments. Adopting a functionalist perspective enriched by ideas from ecological psychology and nonlinear dynamics, we consider data from exemplar movement models in basketball and boxing to support this contention. We show that this preference for movement models from sports, although not completely novel, has accelerated over recent years, mainly due to the theoretical re-emphasis on studying the interaction of individual and task constraints. The implications of using such applied models of move ment behavior in studying the design of natural and artificial systems are also discussed.

Key Words: movement coordination and control • constraints • repesentative design • perception and action • degrees of freedom

Adaptive Behavior, Vol. 14, No. 1, 73-95 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/105971230601400103


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