Ecological dynamics is a theoretical approach to
explain adaptation behaviors in sport over timescales of
learning and performance. It is comprised of ecological
psychology, using dynamical systems tools and concepts
for formalizing its theoretical models (Arau´jo,
Hristovski, Seifert, Carvalho, & Davids, 2017). Some
key ideas of ecological dynamics are:
1. Perception is of affordances (opportunities for
action). Ecological dynamics emphasizes laws at
nature’s ecological scale, implying identification of
informational variables that guide behaviors. James
Gibson (1979) identified the relationship between
structured energy distributions (informational variables)
available to a perceptual system and environmental
properties causally responsible for that
structure. Information detection is distributed
throughout an active organism (e.g., turning the
head). Affordances are goal relevant descriptions of
the environment, and perceiving an affordance is to
perceive how one can act in a particular set of performance
conditions.
2. Action is self-organized. The performer environment
system is the relevant unit of analysis.
Behavior can be understood as self-organized under
constraints, rather than organization being imposed
from the inside (e.g., the mind) or the outside (e.g.,
the instructions of a coach). An athlete’s task is to
exploit physical (e.g., properties of a field) and
informational (e.g., trajectories of other performers)
constraints to guide and stabilize performance
behaviors. In a performance environment, behavioral
patterns emerge under constraints, due to
self-organization, as less functional states of organization
are dissipated. Changes in performance
constraints can lead an athlete toward bifurcation
points where choices emerge as more specific
information becomes available, channeling
the environment-athlete system to switch to more
functional paths of behavior.
3. To generalize behaviors from one context (e.g.,
experimental laboratory, training session) to another
context (a competitive performance environment),
there should be clear theoretical guidance on establishing
behavioral correspondence between contexts.
This guidance is available in ecological psychology.
For Brunswik (1956), ‘representative design’ refers
to the arrangement of conditions in an experiment
so that they represent a behavioral context to which
results are intended to apply. Contrary to traditional
views in science, Brunswik argued that only by
representing ‘irregular’ (but utterly common) conditions
to a performer can psychologists discover how
a patterned relation with an environment is
achieved, despite the uncertainty engendered. Lack
of representative design might signify that behavioral
processes studied in empirical research may
have been unintentionally altered. Consequently,
results of a specific experiment may not represent
functional behaviors of participants’ environments.
Going beyond Brunswik’s representative design,
behavioral correspondence between settings implies:
(1) Selecting relevant affordances, which should be
a theoretically driven process entailing perception
and action of a performer, if one wants to understand
and generalize observed behaviors (e.g.,
Immonen et al., 2017); (2) Promoting action fidelity.
Since the environment is defined with respect to
behavior (affordances), action fidelity concerns the
degree to which actions performed in the experimental
setting have the same structure as actions performed
during competition; (3) Differentiating
degrees of task goal achievement. Achievement is
the degree of effectiveness, observed during goaldirected
behavior. Behavior is successful if it is
adapted to the structure of the environment in which
it is realized. That is, the performance ecology, and
not an idealized “best” solution, should be the reference
point for observation of human behavior in
sport.
