David Farrokh

(PDF) Experience, scale, and co-adaptation PDF | While the ontological and epistemological issues surrounding the status of the mind and its relation to the body are often considered abstract... | Find, read and cite all the research you need ...

I'm pleased to share a preprint of a chapter I wrote for an upcoming book on embodied cognition. I try to tackle some thorny questions surrounding unit and scale as they relate to symbols and dynamics in cognitive science.

www.researchgate.net/publication/...

(PDF) The myth of the Bayesian brain PDF | The Bayesian brain hypothesis—the idea that neural systems implement or approximate Bayesian inference—has become a dominant framework in... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on Re...

Madhur poses some excellent questions to predictive processing approaches in cognitive science here. I'd be curious how proponents would respond!

www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Produced famous player x" or something like that.

I don't think these people would ever care what skill acquisition science finds. They are just not open to science a lot of the time, in my experience.

There are many training activities that are quite obviously motivated by the idea that skill acq is the storage of context-independent movement patterns.

I don't think it's some great evil for coaches to use those activities but the justification is usually just "well this coach did it and they

Thanks for signposting the barrett et al article, i hadn't seen it. What I mean by "received view" of skill is that coaches may not know or explicitly think about it but it pervades practice via copying and means you mention.

coaching practice, and I don't have data on the prevalence of these practices so I'd be open to changing my mind if shown convincing data to the contrary.

Curious on your thoughts.

I don't make it some big moral issue and I think kids being active, outside, interacting with caring adults is certainly a net positive so inefficient skill acq doesn't trigger me like it does some, but I do think we can do better.

Of course, some of this is anecdotal. I don't study

coaches right now (lovely people). What's painfully obvious is that the recieved view of coaching is centered around getting kids to repeat movements and then hopefully stand in the right areas of the pitch.

So, it does feel to me that this is where coaches start out more often than not.

training event it seems clear to me that this individual-level definition of skill still motivates practice design. Nick Gearing's work has also shown that football academy coaches are still attached to individual technical training.

Anecdotally, I'm working with a few new grassroots football

For example, practice fidelity will defined differently depending on whether you think skill is an adaptive functional performer-environment relationship or a property of the individual performer.

I still see a lot of advocacy for the latter, and if you roll up to a random youth sports

What evidence supports this form of inclusivity? I have a sense that supporters of mixing feel they are inherently less dogmatic or more nuanced, but is enforcing C (A+B) any different than enforcing A or B?

Second is the idea that CLA creates straw men.

that I find a bit concerning right now.

First is a sort of generic "both/and" inclusivity that doesn't allow for preference/selectivity.

I think we need to have a serious discussion about whether doing both A and B is actually doing A and B, or a third thing C.

Thanks for these thoughtful insights.

I think we've agreed that these LP vs NLP studies have key limitations as a general format (relying on group mean and assuming the purpose of skill acq research is to draw a box around around a set of activities).

But there are two trends in skill acq

Damian has arrived! Also, really enjoyed co-authoring this chapter with this group. Check it out here 👇

Frontiers | The influence of linear and nonlinear pedagogy on motor skill performance: the moderating role of adaptability

www.frontiersin.org/journals/psy...

@jcassidysport.bsky.social thoughts?

(PDF) The myth of optimality in human movement science PDF | The concept of optimality dominates contemporary human movement science, with researchers across biomechanics, motor control, and neuroscience... | Find, read and cite all the research you need ...

Great new piece from Madhur Mangalam's lab. Some clear reasoning around the concept of optimality with empirical examples to back it up.

www.researchgate.net/publication/...

To my knowledge, Ripoll never tested this requirement empirically.

We have the data to answer this question now. Results will be out shortly!

Finally, Ripoll's claims echo Alan Newell's confidence in an independent "knowledge level" operating in distinction from physical dynamical processes.

This requires the process in question to unfold at a single, "vertically separated" timescale (Simon, 1977).

A rather puzzling statement from Hubert Ripoll here (perspectives on cognition and action in sport, Araujo, Ripoll, Raab eds.)

First of all, what is a "conventional playing system" if not an evolved form of interaction??

Second, if not from repeated interactions where the heck does it come from?

Transfer of calibration between hand and foot: Functional
equivalence and fractal fluctuations (Stephen & Hajnal, 2011)

link.springer.com/content/pdf/...

I'm far more likely to look at a specific academic's google scholar or researchgate page to see what they've been working on or read up on a topic/area.

Do I just not pay much attention to journals? Part of me wonders if it's a bit generational based on days of print journals.

Thoughts?

Question for academics: I often see academics speak about journal-specific readership. I'm curious how common it is for academics to follow journals.

Personally, I don't think "hmm let me see what's out in journal x".

it is grimly hilarious that, given the immense, decades-long fetishization of "leadership" and "leadership skills" in business-oriented academia and politics, even unto the formation of leadership institutes, there should turn out to be no leaders in any positions of power

What is cognition? www.wiringthebrain.com/2025/03/what... - some weekend musings on this tricky concept, with lots of help from all you Blueys!

Interesting read. As an ecological psychologist I would have worried I was creating a straw man of mainstream cognitive science if I attributed some of those definitions to them 😂 Seems like Pylyshyn's 1980 definition is still influential.

Ball Don't Lie: Commentary on Chemero (2024) and Wallot et al. (2024) A commentary article reflecting on the current state of the so-called interaction dominant dynamics branch of the dynamical-systems hypothesis. This article highlights the importance of multifractali...

Just gunna leave this here

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

This is a good overview of the type of empirical results that have often been unfairly dismissed by cognitive scientists.

www.researchgate.net/profile/Dami...

The question of whether someone can considered be a cognitive scientist without accepting mental representation as the hard core remains.

If no, then cog sci has to deal with the body of empirical results from these other fields.

If yes, then other forms of explanation must be acceptable.

but we are also told that these alternatives cannot constitute a competing paradigm/revolution because cog sci already includes these things.

It can't be both. If you want a pluralistic cognitive science you can't restrict explanation to a limited form of computational modeling.

The problem is that cognitive science wants it both ways when it comes to the "hard core" of computation over representation.

Strong empirical programs have been scoffed at and quickly dismissed because they didn't explain in these terms (see below)

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....