Run forrest, run Cognition and sport: The case of Low ability Institute of Education Run forrest, run Cognition and sport: The case of Low ability Tim Williams, Jan Burns, Summer Hubble and Emily Stretch Universities of Reading and Canterbury Christ Church

Run forrest, run

Carlos tejada

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT1KtXsQKWQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTGRUSTTvI0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RpCOngEVzo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nshCUpvYO4Q Carlos Tejada Forrest Gump

Why do this work? Help people with ID achieve their potential Perhaps make them healthier and happier Understand more about the factors that affect sporting performance Discover what IQ is about

Logic of inas Some (perhaps all) sports depend on intellectual ability Is this a theoretical statement? People with lower IQ perform less well at sports For INAS class at the Olympics (Paralympic Games) evidenced INAS sports in Olympic competition Swimming Cricket Football/Futbal – 5 a side Athletics (includes sprint Tennis Table Tennis

Two sports - Records

Jumping records

Possible reasons Physique Strength Variability in performance Cognitive skills This is a unique population of sports people because their cognitive test results are all known enabling cross sport comparisons BUT does the Wechsler family of tests measure anything important?

BMI and ID

Factors affecting weight Obesity Living with own family (OR = 3.28) Being female (OR = 2.78) Down Syndrome (OR = 2.3) Cerebral palsy (OR = 0.07) Underweight Down Syndrome (OR = 0.46) Taking medication (OR = 0.57)

ID and motor skills Lahtinen (1986) Shorter Greater variability Lower mean performance in motor skills Not surprising that they do worse in sports than able bodied athletes Participants with ID were weaker (sit up), had worse balance (stork), and showed poorer manual dexterity (pearl transfer)

Questions, questions, questions… What role does intelligence play in sporting skills? Does intelligence play any role in sporting performance? It could all be down to practice…10,000 hours and all that Does IQ measure the effect of intelligence sufficiently? Which cognitive skills affect performance in which sports? So which subtests in the IQ batteries are the relevant ones for which sports?

Sports and cognition What do we know so far? Elite athletes have better executive functioning than non-elite athletes Evidence from football players (Swedish first division vs low level players) Sport specific cognitive skills Very unclear

Executive skills and athletes Jacobson & Matthaeus, 2014 (college students) * = p <0.05; **= p<0.01

Sports classification Gross – fine (Davis , 2000) – concerned with precision of movement Open – closed (Galligan, 2000) Open constantly changing environment eg football Closed stable predictable environment eg swimming, indoor sprint External internal paced (Galligan) Internal paced – performer controls rate of movement – long jump Externally paced – environment controls pace – table tennis Individual team Many other classifications exist dealing with how it is practiced, extent of interaction with others during competition, level of organisation

Open vs closed Jacobson & Matthaeus (2014) Hypotheses were: EP athletes would score highest on the DMAccuracy , DMSpeed, and PS task (EP>SP>Non) SP athletes would score highgest on Inhibition due to low distractibility needed for practice and performance (SP>EP >non) SP athletes would

Eligibility and classification Ensures impairment is relevant to sport performance cf. male/female; age banding; weight (boxing, judo) Alternative is handicapping eg horse racing, golf Eligibility Ensures the presence of an impairment For intellectual disability (ID) it is defined as: An IQ of 75 or below Significant limitations in adaptive behaviour Must have been present before age 18 years

Classification and “discipline” Measure impact of disability on sports performance Different for different sports

Numbers in each sport

INAS sports selected on basis of >50 participants with Wechsler IQ tests Tennis Futsal – 5 aside football Swimming Table Tennis Basketball Cricket

Sport and IQ - history Van Biesen, MacTavish & Vanlandewijck, 2014 – Table tennis Compare county level TD with national level ID – similar practice level reaction time, block design worse for athletes with ID Van Biesen, MacTavish et al. 2016 -

Evidence from speed tasks (Van Biesen et al. 2016)

Wechsler IQ and sport

IQ and sporting ability There is a significant difference between sports (F(6,2520)=22.65, p<0.001, η2=0.05)

Table of mean differences in IQ   Athletics Basketball Cricket Football Swimming Tennis -4.54*** -4.20** 0.34 -3.75*** 0.78 0.45 0.24 4.77*** 4.43* 3.99*** 0.56 5.09* 4.75+ 4.31* 0.32 Table tennis 1.22 5.76*** 5.42* 4.97*** 0.99 0.66 Games Howell tests of significance of differences between means += 0.1 >p>0.05 * = p < 0.05, ** = p <0.01, *** = p < 0.001

Initial analysis There is no difference between open and closed sports There are differences between team and non team sports Is this explicable by fractionating the IQ score? What would you predict from first principles? Team sports require more communication hence ↑VIQ Ball sports might require ↑PIQ Team sports require good working memory (several sources)

Wechsler subdomains

Can I display this more clearly? WAIS Subdomain scores   df F Sig. Partial Eta Squared Verbal Comprehension 5, 376 1.895 0.094 0.025 Perceptual Reasoning 2.655 0.022 0.034 Working Memory 1.147 0.335 0.015 Processing Speed 1.085 0.368 0.014 MANCOVA F (20, 1486) = 2.159, p = 0.002, η2 = 0.028 Univariate F for perceptual reasoning: F(5,376) = 2.66, p = 0.022, η2 = 0.034 Pairwise (perceptual reasoning): Table Tennis - Athletics (d = -3.48, p = 0.018) Table Tennis - Swimming (d = -4.75, p = 0.001).    

conclusions We are a long way from understanding the data We have significant doubts about the utility of IQ as a measure in this range cf. Whitaker NB no simple additive relationship between subtest score and IQ Are there better culture free IQ tests? Do the subdomain scores reflect what cognitive scientists measure? What would you recommend that we test for? How secure are we in claiming that there are IQ differences between sports?

A Wechsler iq test puzzle WASI matrices WASI Block design 0.65*** Wechsler IQ 0.166** (p=0.002) 0.161** (p=0.003) WASI matrices WASI Block design IQ Verbal Comp 0.524** 0.413** 0.595** Percept Reason 0.431* 0.333 0.562** Working Memory -0.108 -0.052 0.363* Process speed 0.006 -0.019 0.397** What is going on? Holm-Bonferroni calculator suggests that only the two highlighted values should be considered significant * = p<0.05; ** = p<0.01; *** = p < 0.001

Swimming european records