Skill Acquisition in Sport

Nicola J. Hodges is a Professor at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver, Canada in the School of Kinesiology. Originally from the UK, she developed a passion for sport (namely soccer) and experimental psychology and has continued to live out these passions through the study of motor behaviour in Canada over the last 25 years. It is at UBC that Dr Hodges runs the Motor Skills Laboratory (http://msl.kin.educ.ubc.ca), where she studies the mechanisms of motor skill learning. Her particular research focus is on processes involved in watching and learning from others (action-observation) and how practice should be best structured to bring about long-term enhancement of motor skills. Her research has been funded by the three tri-council agencies in Canada, she has been involved in sport-consulting and she has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and chapters. A. Mark Williams is Chair of Health, Kinesiology, and Recreation at the University of Utah, USA. His research interests focus on the neural and psychological mechanisms underpinning the acquisition and development of expertise. He has published more than 200 journal articles in peer-reviewed outlets, written more than 80 book chapters and co-authored/edited 15 books. His research work has been supported by various funding agencies in the UK, USA and Australia. He is a Fellow of the European College of Sports Science, the British Association of Sport and Exercise Science, the National Academy of Kinesiology and the British Psychological Society. He is Editor-in-Chief of several academic journals.

Preface: The Science Behind Sport Skill Acquisition: What’s New, What Stood the Test of Time and What Are the Future Challenges?

Section 1: Providing Instruction and Feedback

1. Enhancing Motor Skill Acquisition with Augmented Feedback

2. Changing Automatized Movement Patterns

3. Errors, rewards, and reinforcement in motor skill learning

4. Motor Imagery Practice and Skilled Performance in Sport: From Efficacy to Mechanisms

5. Further advances in implicit motor learning

Section 2: Organizing Effective Practice

6. Contextual Interference: New Findings, Insights, and Implications for Skill Acquisition

7. Self-controlled Learning: Current Findings, Theoretical Perspectives, and Future Directions

8. Learning together: Observation and other mechanisms which mediate shared practice contexts

9. Constraints-Led Learning in Practice: Designing effective learning environments

10. Operationalizing deliberate practice for performance improvement in sport

Section 3: High-level Skill Training

11. Sports training technologies: Achieving and assessing transfer

12. Models of game intelligence and creativity in sport: Implications for skill acquisition

13. Perceptual-Cognitive Expertise and Simulation-Based Training in Sport

14. Mental toughness training

15. Staying cool under pressure: Developing and maintaining emotional expertise in sport

Section 4: Mechanisms and Models of Skill Acquisition

16. Motor Skill learning and its Neurophysiology

17. Appropriate Failure to Create Effective Learning: Optimizing Challenge

18. Ecological Dynamics and Transfer from practice to performance in sport

19. The Development of skill and Interest in Sport