Beyond Conventional Coaching: The Role of Transitional Information in Guiding Athlete Attentional Search for Adaptive Performance.

Abstract

In contemporary coaching, verbal augmented information (feedback and instruction) remains a widely used, but inconsistently applied tool for directing athletes' attentional search to improve their performance. Coaches often overlook how augmented information may be used to guide athletes' search for functional solutions within dynamic performance environments. Feedback is typically delivered either concurrently (during an action) or terminally (after an action), often in the form of error correction aimed at reproducing idealized movement solutions. This position paper draws on an ecological dynamics rationale to help coaches become more effective in their use of verbal augmented information. This paper presents the Transitional Learning Model (TLM) as an applied framework that integrates and extends existing approaches to instruction, feedback, and practice design. Within this model, coaches may use clues, challenges and questions, priming athletes to attune to affordances available in their performance environment. This approach aims to promote athletes to search, discover and exploit functional movement solutions within the performance environment. TLM may be applied concurrently or terminally, with transitional information functioning to guide the athletes' ongoing search activities for their next action in a performance environment. The TLM is proposed as a conceptual framework and requires further empirical investigation through applied and in-situ research designs to examine its effectiveness in supporting athlete learning.