Quantifying the Extent to Which Junior Performance Predicts Senior Performance in Olympic Sports: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: To what extent does junior athletic performance predict senior athletic performance (i.e., in the highest, open-age category)? This question is the subject of a lively debate in the literature. Following traditional theories of giftedness and expertise, some researchers and practitioners have proposed that a high level of junior performance is a prerequisite for the development of a high level of later senior performance. Sceptics of this view hold that junior performance has limited predictive value for later senior performance, pointing to empirical evidence indicating that predictors (e.g., participation patterns) of junior performance and of senior performance differ. The straightforward way to resolve this controversy empirically is to test the correlation between junior and senior performance. OBJECTIVE: To provide robust and generalizable evidence on this issue, we performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of relevant studies. The aim was to quantify the overall correlation between junior and senior performance and then test whether correlations vary across junior age categories and subsamples (e.g., types of sports). METHODS: A systematic literature search was conducted in SPORTDiscus, Eric, ProQuest, PsychInfo, PubMed, Scopus, WorldCat, and Google Scholar from 27 January through 30 April 2022. We searched for original studies that recorded athletes' junior and senior performance longitudinally and included measures of association between junior and senior performance. Quality of evidence was evaluated using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool version for nonrandomized studies. RESULTS: The search yielded k = 129 effect sizes from N = 13,392 athletes from a wide range of Olympic sports, 62% male and 38% female, from 2006 to 2021. Four central findings emerged: (1) Overall, the meta-analytic pooled correlation between junior and senior performance was [Formula: see text] = 0.148. That is, junior performance explained only 2.2% of the reliable variance in senior performance. (2) The finding was robust across types of sports, sexes, wider or narrower performance ranges, national or international samples, and binary or continuous performance measures. (3) Effects varied across junior age categories: the younger the junior age category, the lower the correlation between junior and senior performance, with [Formula: see text] ranging from [Formula: see text] = - 0.052 to [Formula: see text] = 0.215. That is, across junior age categories, junior performance explained 0-4.6% of the reliable variance in senior performance. (4) The quality of primary studies was high. DISCUSSION: The results suggest that junior performance has very little, if any, predictive value for senior performance. The findings run counter to claims from traditional theories of both giftedness and expertise. From an applied perspective, talent selection typically begins around puberty or younger-age ranges where youth performance is uncorrelated or negatively correlated with later senior performance. The evidence presented here raises serious questions about the use of junior performance for talent selection purposes. A PRISMA-P protocol was registered at https://osf.io/gck4a/ .

The validity of general cognitive ability predicting job-specific performance is stable across different levels of job experience.

Decades of research in industrial-organizational psychology have established that measures of general cognitive ability (g) consistently and positively predict job-specific performance to a statistically and practically significant degree across jobs. But is the validity of g stable across different levels of job experience? The present study addresses this question using historical large-scale data across 31 diverse military occupations from the Joint-Service Job Performance Measurement/Enlistment Standards Project (N = 10,088). Across all jobs, results of our meta-analysis find near-zero interactions between Armed Forces Qualification Test score (a composite of math and verbal scores) and time in service when predicting job-specific performance. This finding supports the validity of g for predicting job-specific performance even with increasing job experience and provides no evidence for diminishing validity of g. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings, along with directions for personnel selection research and practice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Explaining the Validity of the ASVAB for Job-Relevant Multitasking Performance: The Role of Placekeeping Ability.

Scores on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) predict military job (and training) performance better than any single variable so far identified. However, it remains unclear what factors explain this predictive relationship. Here, we investigated the contributions of fluid intelligence (Gf) and two executive functions-placekeeping ability and attention control-to the relationship between the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) score from the ASVAB and job-relevant multitasking performance. Psychometric network analyses revealed that Gf and placekeeping ability independently contributed to and largely explained the AFQT-multitasking performance relationship. The contribution of attention control to this relationship was negligible. However, attention control did relate positively and significantly to Gf and placekeeping ability, consistent with the hypothesis that it is a cognitive "primitive" underlying the individual differences in higher-level cognition. Finally, hierarchical regression analyses revealed stronger evidence for the incremental validity of Gf and placekeeping ability in the prediction of multitasking performance than for the incremental validity of attention control. The results shed light on factors that may underlie the predictive validity of global measures of cognitive ability and suggest how the ASVAB might be augmented to improve its predictive validity.

Participation patterns in talent development in youth sports.

There has been a longstanding debate about the question: What amounts of what types of youth sport activities optimally facilitate later athletic excellence? This article provides a review of relevant research. We first evaluate popular conceptualizations of participation patterns-early specialization, deliberate practice, and deliberate play. Then, we review the available evidence on associations between performance and individual participation variables. The review reveals conceptual, definitional, and empirical flaws of the conceptions of early specialization, deliberate practice, and deliberate play. These approaches thus possess limited usefulness for empirical research. A review of studies considering individual, clearly defined participation variables provides a differentiated pattern of findings: Predictors of rapid junior performance and of long-term senior performance are opposite. Higher-performing juniors, compared to lower-performing peers, started playing their main sport, began involvement in talent promotion programs, and reached developmental performance milestones at younger ages, while accumulating larger amounts of coach-led main-sport practice, but less other-sports practice. In contrast, senior world-class athletes, compared to less-accomplished national-class peers, started playing their main sport, began involvement in talent promotion programs, and achieved performance milestones at older ages, while accumulating less coach-led main-sport practice, but more other-sports practice. We discuss implications for theory, practice, and future research.

Quantifying the Extent to Which Successful Juniors and Successful Seniors are Two Disparate Populations: A Systematic Review and Synthesis of Findings.

BACKGROUND: To what extent does the pathway to senior elite success build on junior elite success? Evidence from longitudinal studies investigating athletes' junior-to-senior performance development is mixed; prospective studies have reported percentages of juniors who achieved an equivalent competition level at senior age (e.g., international championships at both times) ranging from 0 to 68%. Likewise, retrospective studies have reported percentages of senior athletes who had achieved an equivalent competition level at junior age ranging from 2 to 100%. However, samples have been heterogeneous in terms of junior age categories, competition levels, sex, sports, and sample sizes. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to establish more robust and generalizable findings via a systematic review and synthesis of findings. We considered three competition levels-competing at a national championship level, competing at an international championship level, and winning international medals-and addressed three questions: (1) How many junior athletes reach an equivalent competition level when they are senior athletes? (2) How many senior athletes reached an equivalent competition level when they were junior athletes? The answers to these questions provide an answer to Question (3): To what extent are successful juniors and successful seniors one identical population or two disparate populations? METHODS: We conducted a systematic literature search in SPORTDiscus, ERIC, ProQuest, PsychInfo, PubMed, Scopus, WorldCat, and Google Scholar until 15 March 2022. Percentages of juniors who achieved an equivalent competition level at senior age (prospective studies) and of senior athletes who had achieved an equivalent competition level at junior age (retrospective studies) were aggregated across studies to establish these percentages for all athletes, separately for prospective and retrospective studies, junior age categories, and competition levels. Quality of evidence was evaluated using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT) version for descriptive quantitative studies. RESULTS: Prospective studies included 110 samples with 38,383 junior athletes. Retrospective studies included 79 samples with 22,961 senior athletes. The following findings emerged: (1) Few elite juniors later achieved an equivalent competition level at senior age, and few elite seniors had previously achieved an equivalent competition level at junior age. For example, 89.2% of international-level U17/18 juniors failed to reach international level as seniors and 82.0% of international-level seniors had not reached international level as U17/18 juniors. (2) Successful juniors and successful seniors are largely two disparate populations. For example, international-level U17/18 juniors and international-level seniors were 7.2% identical and 92.8% disparate. (3) Percentages of athletes achieving equivalent junior and senior competition levels were the smallest among the highest competition levels and the youngest junior age categories. (4) The quality of evidence was generally high. DISCUSSION: The findings question the tenets of traditional theories of giftedness and expertise as well as current practices of talent selection and talent promotion. A PRISMA-P protocol was registered at https://osf.io/gck4a/ .

Exploring individual differences in musical rhythm and grammar skills in school-aged children with typically developing language.

A growing number of studies have shown a connection between rhythmic processing and language skill. It has been proposed that domain-general rhythm abilities might help children to tap into the rhythm of speech (prosody), cueing them to prosodic markers of grammatical (syntactic) information during language acquisition, thus underlying the observed correlations between rhythm and language. Working memory processes common to task demands for musical rhythm discrimination and spoken language paradigms are another possible source of individual variance observed in musical rhythm and language abilities. To investigate the nature of the relationship between musical rhythm and expressive grammar skills, we adopted an individual differences approach in N = 132 elementary school-aged children ages 5-7, with typical language development, and investigated prosodic perception and working memory skills as possible mediators. Aligning with the literature, musical rhythm was correlated with expressive grammar performance (r = 0.41, p < 0.001). Moreover, musical rhythm predicted mastery of complex syntax items (r = 0.26, p = 0.003), suggesting a privileged role of hierarchical processing shared between musical rhythm processing and children's acquisition of complex syntactic structures. These relationships between rhythm and grammatical skills were not mediated by prosodic perception, working memory, or non-verbal IQ; instead, we uncovered a robust direct effect of musical rhythm perception on grammatical task performance. Future work should focus on possible biological endophenotypes and genetic influences underlying this relationship.

The ACT Predicts Academic Performance-But Why?

Scores on the ACT college entrance exam predict college grades to a statistically and practically significant degree, but what explains this predictive validity? The most obvious possibility is general intelligence-or psychometric "g". However, inconsistent with this hypothesis, even when independent measures of g are statistically controlled, ACT scores still positively predict college grades. Here, in a study of 182 students enrolled in two Introductory Psychology courses, we tested whether pre-course knowledge, motivation, interest, and/or personality characteristics such as grit and self-control could explain the relationship between ACT and course performance after controlling for g. Surprisingly, none could. We speculate about what other factors might explain the robust relationship between ACT scores and academic performance.

Ability and Nonability Predictors of Real-World Skill Acquisition: The Case of Rubik's Cube Solving.

Most research on skilled performance is correlational, with skill and predictors measured at a single point in time, making it difficult to draw conclusions about the acquisition of skill. By contrast, in this study, we trained novice participants (N = 79) to solve Rubik's Cubes using a 7-step solution method. Participants also completed measures of fluid intelligence (Gf), working memory capacity (WMC), and nonability factors (grit, growth mindset, NFC, and the "big five"). Overall, higher Gf (but not WMC) was predictive of efficient and accurate Rubik's cube skill. No nonability variables were associated with skill. Our results provide compelling evidence for the importance of intellectual talent (cognitive ability) in developing expertise in a complex task.

Revisiting the self-generation effect in proofreading.

The self-generation effect refers to the finding that people's memory for information tends to be better when they generate it themselves. Counterintuitively, when proofreading, this effect may make it more difficult to detect mistakes in one's own writing than in others' writing. We investigated the self-generation effect and sources of individual differences in proofreading performance in two eye-tracking experiments. Experiment 1 failed to reveal a self-generation effect. Experiment 2 used a studying manipulation to induce overfamiliarity for self-generated text, revealing a weak but non-significant self-generation effect. Overall, word errors (i.e., wrong words) were detected less often than non-word errors (i.e., misspellings), and function word errors were detected less often than content word errors. Fluid intelligence predicted proofreading performance, whereas reading comprehension, working memory capacity, processing speed, and indicators of miserly cognitive processing did not. Students who made more text fixations and spent more time proofreading detected more errors.

Attributes of Expert Anticipation Should Inform the Design of Virtual Reality Simulators to Accelerate Learning and Transfer of Skill.

Expert sport performers cope with a multitude of visual information to achieve precise skill goals under time stress and pressure. For example, a major league baseball or cricket batter must read opponent variations in actions and ball flight paths to strike the ball in less than a second. Crowded playing schedules and training load restrictions to minimise injury have limited opportunity for field-based practice in sports. As a result, many sports organisations are exploring the use of virtual reality (VR) simulators. Whilst VR synthetic experiences can allow greater control of visual stimuli, immersion to create presence in an environment, and interaction with stimuli, compared to traditional video simulation, the underpinning mechanisms of how experts use visual information for anticipation have not been properly incorporated into its content design. In themes, this opinion article briefly explains the mechanisms underpinning expert visual anticipation, as well as its learning and transfer, with a view that this knowledge can better inform VR simulator content design. In each theme, examples are discussed for improved content design of VR simulators taking into consideration its advantages and limitations relative to video simulation techniques. Whilst sport is used as the exemplar, the points discussed have implications for skill learning in other domains, such as military and law enforcement. It is hoped that our paper will stimulate improved content design of VR simulators for future research and skill enhancement across several domains.

Task independence of placekeeping as a cognitive control construct: Evidence from individual differences and experimental effects.

Many cognitive tasks have what we refer to as a placekeeping requirement: steps or subtasks must be performed in a linear or other systematic fashion, without repetitions or omissions that would compromise performance. Here we asked whether the cognitive control mechanisms that meet this requirement are specific to individual tasks or general enough to be shared across tasks. Participants (N = 289) performed two tasks (Letterwheel and UNRAVEL) that share a sequential structure but are otherwise distinct. Placekeeping measures correlated significantly across tasks after controlling for construct-irrelevant variance, evidence that individual differences in placekeeping ability correlated across tasks rather than varying independently. Furthermore, an empirical pattern in the form of a crossover interaction in placekeeping error gradients was evident for both tasks, evidence that placekeeping in the two tasks is supported by similar cognitive mechanisms. The results suggest that placekeeping ability is a task-independent cognitive control construct and that placekeeping measures could help predict performance in a range of workplace and everyday tasks.

Predictors of Junior Versus Senior Elite Performance are Opposite: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Participation Patterns.

BACKGROUND: Does early specialization facilitate later athletic excellence, or is early diversification better? This is a longstanding theoretical controversy in sports science and medicine. Evidence from studies investigating athletes' starting age, childhood/adolescent progress, and amounts of coach-led practice and peer-led play in their main sport and in other sports has been mixed. Each participation variable was positively correlated with performance in some studies but uncorrelated or negatively correlated with performance in others. However, samples were heterogeneous in age, sports, and performance levels. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to establish robust, generalizable findings through a systematic review and meta-analysis. We investigated three questions: (1) did higher- and lower-performing athletes differ in childhood/adolescent progress, starting age, or amounts of main-sport or other-sports practice or play; (2) do effects differ between junior and adult athletes, compared performance levels, or types of sports; and (3) are effect sizes from different predictors associated with one another? METHODS: We conducted a systematic literature search in SPORTDiscus, ERIC, ProQuest, PsycINFO, PubMed, Scopus, WorldCat, and Google Scholar until 28 February 2021. Selection criteria included original research studies comparing higher- versus lower-performing athletes regarding one or more of our predictor variables within defined age categories, sports, and sex, and reporting effect sizes or data needed to compute effects sizes. Mean meta-analytic Cohen's d was calculated for each predictor. Quality of evidence was evaluated using GRADE. RESULTS: In total, 71 study reports met all eligibility criteria and included 262 international athlete samples, 685 effect sizes, and a total sample size of 9241 athletes from local to Olympic competition level and from diverse sports. The following findings emerged. (1) Compared with their national-class counterparts, adult world-class athletes had more childhood/adolescent multi-sport coach-led practice, a later main-sport start, less main-sport practice, and slower initial progress (|0.23|< [Formula: see text]<|0.50|; all p < 0.001). (2) The opposite was true for predictors of junior-age performance: higher-performing juniors had an earlier main-sport start, more main-sport practice, less other-sports practice, and faster initial progress (|0.23|< [Formula: see text]< |0.61|; all p < 0.001). (3) Main-sport or other-sports peer-led play had negligible effects (all p > 0.05). (4) Results were robust across types of sports. (5) Effect sizes from different predictors were associated with one another (|0.64|< r <|0.79|). A GRADE assessment revealed a low quality of evidence for peer-led play but a moderate to high quality of evidence for all other predictors. DISCUSSION: Excess childhood/adolescent specialized practice may hinder athletes' long-term development through overuse injury, burnout, suboptimal athlete-sport match, and limiting long-term learning capital. By contrast, adult world-class athletes' childhood/adolescent multi-sport practice with reduced main-sport practice implied a relatively resource-preserving, cost-reducing, and risk-buffering pattern that yielded greater long-term sustainability and practice efficiency.

What Makes a Champion? Early Multidisciplinary Practice, Not Early Specialization, Predicts World-Class Performance.

What explains the acquisition of exceptional human performance? Does a focus on intensive specialized practice facilitate excellence, or is a multidisciplinary practice background better? We investigated this question in sports. Our meta-analysis involved 51 international study reports with 477 effect sizes from 6,096 athletes, including 772 of the world's top performers. Predictor variables included starting age, age of reaching defined performance milestones, and amounts of coach-led practice and youth-led play (e.g., pickup games) in the athlete's respective main sport and in other sports. Analyses revealed that (a) adult world-class athletes engaged in more childhood/adolescent multisport practice, started their main sport later, accumulated less main-sport practice, and initially progressed more slowly than did national-class athletes; (b) higher performing youth athletes started playing their main sport earlier, engaged in more main-sport practice but less other-sports practice, and had faster initial progress than did lower performing youth athletes; and (c) youth-led play in any sport had negligible effects on both youth and adult performance. We illustrate parallels from science: Nobel laureates had multidisciplinary study/working experience and slower early progress than did national-level award winners. The findings suggest that variable, multidisciplinary practice experiences are associated with gradual initial discipline-specific progress but greater sustainability of long-term development of excellence.

Toward a cumulative science of expertise: commentary on Moxley, Ericsson, and Tuffiash (2017).

In a recent Psychological Research article, Moxley, Ericsson, and Tuffiash (2017) report two studies of SCRABBLE expertise. The results revealed that the average SCRABBLE rating was higher for males than for females. Moreover, correlational and structural equation analyses revealed that activities that the authors refer to as "purposeful practice" accounted for a substantial amount of the variance in SCRABBLE ratings. The authors generalize their findings concerning SCRABBLE to STEM careers. We believe this generalization is unjustified, as is their argument that SCRABBLE can be used to understand the gender gap in STEM fields. Moreover, the authors' conclusions are undermined by inconsistencies and contradictions in their arguments. We discuss these problems with Moxley et al.'s article in terms of their impact on the cumulative science of expertise.

Incremental validity of placekeeping as a predictor of multitasking.

Multitasking is ubiquitous in everyday life, which means there is value in developing measures that predict successful multitasking performance. In a large sample (N = 404 contributing data), we examined the predictive and incremental validity of placekeeping, which is the ability to perform a sequence of operations in a certain order without omissions or repetitions. In the context of multitasking, placekeeping should play a role in the performance of procedural subtasks and the interleaving of subtasks that interrupt each other. Regression analyses revealed that placekeeping ability accounted for 11% of the variance in multitasking performance, and had incremental validity relative to each of a diverse set of cognitive abilities (working memory capacity, fluid intelligence, perceptual speed, and crystallized intelligence). The predictive validity of placekeeping for multitasking was stable across samples of performance and robust to placekeeping practice. Broader measures of performance on our placekeeping task accounted for 21% of the variance in multitasking performance and had incremental validity relative to an estimate of psychometric g. The results provide evidence that placekeeping is a distinct cognitive ability with its own specific role to play in multitasking, and raise the possibility that measures of placekeeping ability could have utility in selecting personnel for occupations that require certain kinds of multitasking, such as interleaving of procedures.

Is the Deliberate Practice View Defensible? A Review of Evidence and Discussion of Issues.

The question of what explains individual differences in expertise within complex domains such as music, games, sports, science, and medicine is currently a major topic of interest in a diverse range of fields, including psychology, education, and sports science, to name just a few. Ericsson and colleagues' deliberate practice view is a highly influential perspective in the literature on expertise and expert performance-but is it viable as a testable scientific theory? Here, reviewing more than 25 years of Ericsson and colleagues' writings, we document critical inconsistencies in the definition of deliberate practice, along with apparent shifts in the standard for evidence concerning deliberate practice. We also consider the impact of these issues on progress in the field of expertise, focusing on the empirical testability and falsifiability of the deliberate practice view. We then discuss a multifactorial perspective on expertise, and how open science practices can accelerate progress in research guided by this perspective.

Innovative problem-solving in wild hyenas is reliable across time and contexts.

Individual differences in behavior are the raw material upon which natural selection acts, but despite increasing recognition of the value of considering individual differences in the behavior of wild animals to test evolutionary hypotheses, this approach has only recently become popular for testing cognitive abilities. In order for the intraspecific approach with wild animals to be useful for testing evolutionary hypotheses about cognition, researchers must provide evidence that measures of cognitive ability obtained from wild subjects reflect stable, general traits. Here, we used a multi-access box paradigm to investigate the intra-individual reliability of innovative problem-solving ability across time and contexts in wild spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta). We also asked whether estimates of reliability were affected by factors such as age-sex class, the length of the interval between tests, or the number of times subjects were tested. We found significant contextual and temporal reliability for problem-solving. However, problem-solving was not reliable for adult subjects, when trials were separated by more than 17 days, or when fewer than seven trials were conducted per subject. In general, the estimates of reliability for problem-solving were comparable to estimates from the literature for other animal behaviors, which suggests that problem-solving is a stable, general trait in wild spotted hyenas.