Expert Performance in Sports: Advances in Research on Sport Expertise - Tapa dura

Studying how athletes reach and stay at the pinnacle of their sport is the domain of sport expertise researchers. This book provides an overview of the most critical issues facing those pursuing research in elite sport. It identifies the questions typically asked when studying sport expertise and provides theoretical and practical applications for the development of sport expertise in athletes, referees and judges. The text also addresses such questions as how to potentially speed up the acquisition process; how easy or difficult it is for experts to retain high performance levels as they age; how coaches structure practices to maximise active time and preparation for the next competition. It also examines the role of coaches and mentors when working with elite performers; what aspects of performance (anticipation, perceptual accuracy, decision speed, response selection, response consistency, strategy etc) best reflect expert behaviours in a particular sport.

Janet Starkes, PhD, is a professor and chair of the department of kinesiology at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. She earned her postdoctorate in clinical neuropsychology at Mt. Sinai Hospital, and she has been doing research in expert performance since 1975. Dr. Starkes is an international fellow of the American Academy of Kinesiology and Physical Education and has served as president of the Canadian Society for Psychomotor Learning and Sport Psychology (1994), president of the North American Society for Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity (1997), and president of the Canadian Council of University Physical Education and Kinesiology Administrators (1999). Dr. Starkes has been invited to speak about sport expertise in 10 different countries, and she was keynote speaker on the topic at the World Congress of Sport Psychology in 2001. This is her second edited book in expert performance. In her spare time, she enjoys cottaging, renovating historic buildings, and reading. K. Anders Ericsson, PhD, Conradi Eminent Scholar and professor of psychology at Florida State University, has greatly influenced the current direction of expertise research. In 1976 he received his PhD in psychology from the University of Stockholm in Sweden, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Carnegie-Mellon University. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Dr. Ericsson delivered the 2001 Distinguished Scholar Lecture Series at the University of Alberta in Canada. Currently he studies the cognitive structure of expert performance in domains such as music, chess, and sport and how expert performers acquire their superior performance by extended deliberate practice. He coedited Toward a General Theory of Expertise and edited The Road to Excellence: The Acquisition of Expert Performance in the Art and Sciences, Sports and Games.