Neurocognitive skills combine visual skills and perceptual-cognitive skills. These differentiate good athletes from great because they directly impact on-field performance. While neurocognitive skills are trainable, not all training is created equal. Coaches and athletes want to know, “What actually transfers to the court, field, or ice?”
Why I Learned How to Juggle
In Little League, I was no Aaron Judge. I struggled at the plate. One day my dad handed me a set of juggling balls he had picked up and said figure it out. He told me juggling would make me a better hitter.
I was skeptical, but also desperate. I really wanted to put more balls in play.
Was juggling really going to make me a better hitter? Let’s take a look at the literature.
How to Increase Transfer of Neurocognitive Training to Competition
With advances in neuroscience and technology, there are more innovative ways to train visual and perceptual-cognitive skills than ever before. But which methods or devices truly work? And by work I mean – transfer to real athletic skills and situations. For more information on what neurocognitive skills are check out this article.
Let’s look at what Hadlow and colleagues (2018) referred to as modified perceptual training, which “collectively describes on- or off-field sports training tasks that are specifically designed to develop visual and perceptual-cognitive skill” (i.e., neurocognitive skills).
Part 1: What to Train
Does the Skill Matter?
There are 3 questions you should ask before training a neurocognitive skill:
1. Does the skill differentiate athletes of different skill levels?
- If average athletes are just as good at the skill as elite athletes, then it probably isn’t a contributing factor to improving in that sport.
2. Can the skill be improved through training?
- Review existing research.
3. Does improvement in the skill transfer to improvement on the competition surface?
- Review existing research.
I can’t tell you how many organizations I’ve talked to (at a variety of levels) that didn’t answer these 3 questions first. If the answer to any of these is “No,” then training the designated skill is wasting time.
Visual acuity in baseball is a great example of a neurocognitive skill that doesn’t check all the boxes. This is the eye chart test at the optometrist’s office. While visual acuity is a valid and meaningful measure of basic vision, it isn’t as relevant in baseball where the action is fast moving and dynamic. Consequently, research has demonstrated that while visual acuity can be improved (Yes to Question 2), that improvement doesn’t make a difference on the field (No to Question 3).
Answering these questions can be tough. And knowing how to train these skills can be even tougher. I help teams, facilities, and organizations do just that. And I would love to help you too. Contact me.
Part 2: How to Train
3 Factors to Improve Transfer of Neurocognitive Training
In order to help athletes, teams, and organizations make better decisions about HOW to train these neurocognitive skills, researchers developed the modified perceptual training framework (MPTF).
The MPTF outlines 3 key factors which interact with one another to help us determine the likelihood of a training task to transfer to actual performance in competition. Each factor is represented on a continuum from less to more effective.
- The skill is being trained – Is it a lower order skill visual skill or a higher order perceptual-cognitive skill?
- Similarity of the stimuli (i.e., target, ball, etc.) to what an athlete encounters in competition – both visually and how the object moves.
- Similarity of an athlete’s response in the task to how he responds in competition (i.e., visual tracking, catching, swinging a bat).
First, the target skill needs to score a Yes on the 3 questions in Part 1. Second, the neurocognitive training should be congruent with the sport context to increase the likelihood of skill transfer to competition.
The military units I’ve worked with had a phrase that sums all this up rather well – “Train how we fight.”
An Example.
Let’s look at training information processing speed for soccer goalies defending shots on goal.
Part 1: WHAT
Does the skill differentiate athletes of different skill levels?
- Yes, expert soccer players have a much greater information processing speed than novices.
Can the skill be improved through training?
- The research says yes.
Does improvement in the skill transfer to improvement on the competition surface?
- The research says yes.
Part 2: HOW
A goalie will wear stroboscopic eyewear (i.e., strobe glasses) while defending shots on goal.
1. Which skill is being trained? Is it a lower order skill visual skill or a higher order perceptual-cognitive skill?
Information processing speed is a higher order perceptual-cognitive skill which we are training in a highly sport-specific context. Strobe training forces the athlete’s brain to work harder to process the visual information she uses to identify, track and react to a shot, which speeds up her processing speed once the glasses are removed.
2. How similar is the stimuli in training to what an athlete encounters in competition?
In our training task, the stimuli (a player kicking a soccer ball toward the goal) is almost identical to what the goalie sees in competition. Note: From a training perspective, you may not start the goalie taking full-speed shots on goal. However, a goalie could work up to this level of speed and intensity.
3. How similar is the athlete’s response in the training task to what she would execute in competition?
In our training task, the goalie’s desired response is to make the stop and defend the goal. Therefore, her movements to deflect or secure the ball would be the same as in a competition.
Conclusion: Based on this analysis, having a goalie use strobe glasses to improve information processing speed while practicing shots on goal has a high likelihood of improving goalie performance in competition.
What about my juggling experiment?
The key here is in the skill being trained. If the skill my dad wanted me to train was eye tracking (following a single object as it moves), then we shouldn’t expect a high degree of transfer. The balls were not baseballs, they weren’t coming at me as in a pitch trajectory, and I was catching and throwing them in a coordinated rhythm, not hitting them with a bat. However, the real intent was to improve my concentration and ability to focus on a single task. And for that, juggling was indeed helpful.
Increase the Transfer of Your Neurocognitive Training to Improve Athlete Performance
By designing exercises and using technologies that closely resemble the natural stimuli and responses within a given sport, we can expect a drill to more likely transfer to the real world performance. Remember, train how you fight. Use the above questions and the MPTF from Hadlow et. al (2018) guides when making important decisions about practice drills, training exercises, and technologies. And if you need a little help, let us know. It’s what we do.
Question: What have you seen work or not work when it comes to neurocognitive training? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below, or on Facebook or Twitter.
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