Understanding Skilled Adaptive Behavior: The Role of Action, Perception, and Cognition in an Ecological Dynamics Perspective

This chapter presents an ecological dynamics approach to conceptualizing affordances in the context of sports to understand the acquisition of skilled behaviors. Ecological dynamics is a multidisciplinary framework anchored in the sciences of complex systems, framed by concepts in ecological psychology and nonlinear dynamics, for analyzing behavioral adaptations (i.e., coordination and control) to surrounding constraints, predicated on processes of perception and action. We emphasize how the continuous regulation of human behavior is founded on information that guides the behaviors of each individual-environment system. The role of information is to support perception of affordances, which can solicit and constrain behaviors in a specific performance environment. We highlight how affordances are body-and action-scaled, meaning that affordances are relative to the abilities of each individual. Environments in sports offer a rich landscape of multiple affordances, supporting skilled behaviors to emerge as sports performers engage in goal-directed actions based on perception of nested affordances. Explanations of skilled behaviors are enriched by the integration of tools and concepts from nonlinear dynamics to highlight how information is embedded in the dynamics (including those of tasks and individuals) of a performance environment, signifying how sports contexts can afford multiple modes of actions for athletes during the performance.