1. 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

2. Run forrest, run

3. Carlos tejada

4.
Carlos Tejada
Forrest Gump

5. 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

6. 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

7. Two sports - Records

8. Jumping records

9. 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?

10. BMI and ID

11. 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)

12. 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)

13. 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?

14. 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

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

16. 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

17. 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

18. 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

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

20. Numbers in each sport

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

22. 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

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

24. Wechsler IQ and sport

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

26. 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

27. 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)

28. Wechsler subdomains

29. 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).  

30. 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?

31. 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

32. Swimming european records