Veranstaltungsprogramm

Developmental questions are inherent to the field of sport and exercise in general and research in sport and exercise psychology in particular. When do specific motor and/or cognitive skills develop? How do those skills and their development differ between age and expertise groups? When and how can they best be trained? And how do they influence physical activity behavior and sport performance? These are a few of the relevant development questions athletes, coaches, teachers and researchers alike are interested in and strive to answer (scientifically).

In this symposium, three talks will be presented targeting motor and psychological (Henning et al.) as well as motor-cognitive (Musculus et al.; Schäfer et al.) development. In the talks, the development of children (Henning et al.; Musculus et al.), adolescents (Schäfer et al.), and adults (Musculus et al.; Schäfer et al.) will be looked at.

First, Henning et al. will present the results of a six-year longitudinal cohort study on the development of motor performance and the physical self-concept in children during primary school focusing on the stability of the constructs (i.e., self-concept, motor skills, physical fitness) and their reciprocal relationships across time.

Second, Musculus et al. will share insights into the relation between general cognitive and sport-specific embodied planning in climbing and portray the development of both by comparing two groups of children and young adults.

Third, Schäfer et al. will show two studies comparing cognitive-motor dual-task performance between adolescent and young adult rowers as well as between two Taekwondo skill groups.

In detail, each talk discusses original data in light of the respective state-of-the-art and emphasizes the added value of the findings for the research field. In the end, we aim to broaden the scope beyond individual studies and open the overall discussion to highlight potential future directions. We, thereby, hope to inspire systematic research programs for developmental sport psychology in the future.

From a sport and exercise psychology and developmental psychology perspective, motor performance (i.e., actual motor competencies and physical fitness) and physical self-concept (i.e., perceived motor competence and perceived physical fitness) are important predictors of physical activity in primary school children (Stodden et al., 2008). Throughout the last years, the relationship between actual and perceived motor competence (e.g., De Meester et al., 2020), as well as physical fitness and physical fitness self-concept (e.g., Dreiskämper et al., 2020), have been investigated, but separate and mostly cross-sectional. This is the first study that investigates the effects between motor competencies, physical fitness, perceived motor competencies, and perceived physical fitness across primary school age together in one study, including data over a six-year period. The aim of this study is fourfold. First, the stability of motor performance and physical self-concept is investigated. Second, reciprocal effects between factors are examined. Third, differences in development of motor performance and self-concept domains are analyzed. Fourth, differences in the effects according to grade are investigated.

Over a six-year period, motor performance and physical self-concept were measured in first to fourth-grade children once a year (primary school age; N = 1003; M = 8.01 years; SD = .93). Path models in a cross-lagged design were performed to investigate the relationships between motor performance and physical self-concept in three groups (group1: first to second graders; group 2: second to third graders; group 3: third to fourth graders; 1588 pathways in total).

Results indicate that one model including motor competencies, physical fitness, and their associated self-concepts does not fit the data well. Thus, it can be suggested that in this age group the two constructs may not be as closely related as assumed. Separate models for both motor performance domains were calculated. Fitness ( = .61 to .67) appears to be more stable than motor competencies ( = .16 to .37) over one year in all groups. Stability of physical fitness self-concept develops from third to fourth grade (group 2 = .37;  group 3 = .60), whereas the stability of perceived motor competence increases slightly from first to fourth grade ( = .46 to .56). Finally, results show weak to moderate reciprocal effects between motor performance and physical self-concept. The development of motor competencies, physical fitness and their associated self-concepts across primary school will be discussed (e.g., self-enhancement and skill-development hypothesis). Implications for future studies will be derived.

In everyday life and sports, people of all ages have to plan actions to act in a goal-directed manner. Under the umbrella of embodied cognition, the interaction between cognitive and motor decision-making and planning processes have come to the attention of research in sport psychology (Hinz et al., 2022; Musculus et al., 2021; Raab, 2017). One of the reasons research now focuses more on the interaction of motor and cognitive processes, is that those processes are often intertwined in every day and especially sports actions (e.g., Araujo et al., 2009; Hinz et al., 2022; Raab, 2017). This research line focuses on the interaction between motor and cognitive planning in climbing by taking a developmental embodied cognition perspective (Musculus et al., 2021). In this study, we aim to better understand the development of climbing-specific embodied planning 1) by relating it to general cognitive planning and 2) by comparing children of different age groups and adults.

For this cross-sectional study, a total of N = 147 was tested, falling into three age groups: younger children (6-8 year-olds, n = 39), older children (9-12 year-olds, n = 52), and young adults (18-40 years, n = 56). The data stems from a large-scale training study (pre-registration: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/YVZ8J) and the baseline assessments of climbing-specific embodied planning (EP) and general cognitive planning (GP) were analyzed. Climbing-specific embodied planning was measured using an interactive climbing wall with touch-sensitive holds capturing times at ms accuracy (Musculus et al., 2021). General cognitive planning was measured using a standardized task, the Tower-of-London (Shallice, 1982, following the developmental protocol of Injoque-Ricle & Burin, 2008).

The data was analyzed in R using correlational analyses to depict the relation between climbing-specific embodied planning (initial planning time, number of holds, total time) and general planning (initial planning time, number of steps, total time) variables and a one-factorial MANOVA to examine differences between the three age-groups. The correlational pattern depicted substantial relations between climbing-specific embodied and general planning variables. The MANOVA revealed a significant multivariate main effect of age group (F(1, 6) = 30.14, p <. 001, eta² = 0.61 with CI [0.51; 1.00]). Between age groups, significant univariate differences in all climbing-specific (except initial planning time) and general-planning variables emerged: In both tasks, older compared to younger children became faster. Further, adults needed fewer planning steps and were faster in the general planning task than both groups of children. In the embodied planning task, adults were faster than the younger children but not than the older children.

Overall, the correlational pattern indicates construct validity for climbing-specific embodied planning while the corresponding age differences reveal somewhat differential developmental trends. These developmental trends will be discussed in more detail considering the state-of-the-art on planning research.

In cognitive-motor dual-task situations, the extent of performance decrements is influenced by the attentional requirements of each task. Well-learned motor skills should be automatized, leading to less interference (Fitts & Posner, 1967; Furley et al., 2015). In addition, advanced adult age may lead to a higher need for cognitive control in previously automatized motor tasks, resulting in higher dual-task costs (Schaefer, 2014). We present two studies combining an episodic memory encoding task (Method of Loci) with well-practiced motor tasks in athletes. The memory task consisted of to-be-learned word lists which were encoded by using a mental imagery strategy.

Study 1 asked 40 rowers from different age groups (early teenagers to middle adulthood) to row on ergometers with slow or fast speeds. Rowing speeds were calibrated individually for each athlete. In study 2, Taekwondo athletes (n = 37) of different skill levels performed a well-practiced sequence of martial arts movements (To-San-Hyong or Taeguk sam jang). Taekwondo performances (technique and presentation) were judged by expert raters who were blinded to the experimental condition. For both studies, participants performed each task under single- and dual-task conditions.

Performing the motor task during encoding led to pronounced performance reductions in memory in both studies, with costs of up to 80 %. Cognitive costs were even larger when rowing with the fast as compared to the slow speed in study 1. Both studies also revealed decrements in motor performances under dual-task conditions: Rowing became slower and more irregular (study 1), and the quality of the Taekwondo performance was reduced. Although higher-level athletes outperformed others in the motor skill under single-task conditions, proportional dual-task costs were similar across skill levels and age groups for most domains. This indicates that even well-practiced motor tasks require cognitive resources.