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Hockey Psychology #3: State Dependent Learning
Rather than being solely interested in people’s mothers, us psychology practitioners have a wide-variety of ways in which we ply our craft. People are often times surprised to find out that for every therapist a doctoral program pumps out there are often two to three other psychologists who will focus entirely on conducting research, and that this research is not primarily based on clinical intervention. Rather, there is an enormous amount of research being conducted on topics such as perception (I.e., visual and auditory processes), attention, motivation, development, education, neurology, statistics, evolution and even forensics. The knowledge attained through such research has allowed for us to offer informed opinions in many areas, including sports, that many people might not expect based on their understanding of the field of psychology.
Take the act of transferring learned information into a subsequent desired action. In sports the appropriate parallel is taking what has been learned during practices and putting it into action during a game in the manner in which it was intended. A well-established psychological literature exists that suggests the optimal circumstances under which this process would occur, and its interesting to note that most teams may not be taking advantage of this knowledge.
Called
State-Dependent Learning, this concept suggests that learning which takes place in a particular situation or "state" is better accessed in the future when the individual is in a similar situation or state to that under which the learning occurred. The stand-by example often used to illustrate this concept is that of the student who studies while intoxicated. Research has suggested that this individual will be able to access the learned information better for their exam if they perform in the same state, meaning if they write the exam while intoxicated. Now this is not to suggest they will do amazing, but rather that they would perform better than they would if they were sober.
Now this is not a concept applied in an "all or nothing" manner, however. Rather there tend to be four different factors at play that impact the transfer of information learned at time one to retrieval at time two. These factors center around the synchronicity of particular contexts or states during both periods. Let's take a look at these with particular attention to how one might use them during practice in order to obtain maximum return during game time.
Environmental context: People who learn something in one environment are able to remember more of that information when required to produce it in the same environment than in a novel one. The same is true of other environmental contexts, including time of day and individuals present. So as a coach, if you want the drills you run in practice to best translate into performance during game time there are a few things you can do here. First, run practice in the actual full sized arena when possible, not the smaller practice arena. Second, instead of a morning or afternoon practice, hold the session in the evening when the majority of games are played. Third, while you cannot pack the arena with people, piping in crowd noise over the speakers during the drills to better simulate the game conditions would be helpful. How about sporting actual game jerseys as opposed to practice ones? Hire a practice squad to scrimmage with or practice set plays against rather than running inter-squad drills, and have them sporting the jerseys of your next opponent. The name of the game here is building a sense of familiarity within your players so that the transfer of skills between a practice and game setting will be easier.
Physical state: The afternoon dinner and nap routine of a game day is adhered to quite readily in hockey. At the same time if you are practicing in the morning or afternoon you are not hitting the ice in the same physical state you will be playing under. Drawing off the environmental factors suggested earlier, synchronization of the player’s physical state may be best achieved by a practice day routine of an afternoon meal, nap then an evening practice, thereby better equating the physical state of the player across these two situations.
Emotional state: The way things shake down here is that individuals tend to remember information congruent with the mood they are in (i.e., Sad = better able to remember unhappy or unpleasant information/memories; Happy = better able to remember happy/pleasant information/memories). The obvious difficulty regulating this particular state is that there is no “hockey” emotion! I would suggest here, however, that this is an area where coaching staff would benefit from attempting to establish a certain mood or tone to practice and games that are not so different as to elicit conflicting emotional states. Specifically, if you think you can run a relaxed and light practice all the time but push for an intense game mood, the transfer of information learned in practice into the player’s game performance will not be optimized. Running a more intense practice, however, may facilitate better transfer into the game performance as the mind sets will be similar. Note that “intense” doesn’t mean running players into the ground, but rather is more a reflection of the style of instruction and mood the session takes.
Sensory modality: In a nutshell, if you learned it by doing it you’ll be better able to do it than describe it with words. If you learned it by words, you’ll be better able to use words to express the info than by doing it. Now this applies to the most basic tenets of any sports practice where, barring the use of some charting to draw up plays and the like, are very much hands on and an attempt to simulate game play, albeit on a more basic level. This isn’t to say we cannot enhance the sensory experience, however. Like I stated in the environmental context description, the piping in of crowd noise during practice can better simulate the conditions under which a team will be playing their game, thereby facilitating on a sensory level the transfer of information from one context to another. The same goes for the aforementioned donning of game jerseys during practice, creating more of a visual connect between the two contexts.
Some of these suggestions are quite subtle, others are more extreme, and all are in the name of facilitating what might be small improvements in the practice to game information transfer. At the same time, the world of sports has progressed to a point where currently a great deal of effort is spent in gaining that extra tenth of a second, inch of distance, mile per hour of velocity, centimeter of accuracy, all in the name of victory. Certainly psychology has more to offer in this area than others have seen in the past, and from what we’ve seen here there’s a lot to be said for improving the cost efficacy of practice sessions for NHL clubs where a couple of goals a year can now spell the difference between a post-season or an early exit…
Shawn Gates
[email protected]
Twitter: ShawnHockeybuzz
Facebook: Shawn Gates
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Previous “Hockey Psychology” Articles
Arousal and Performance
Depression
Previous “WHAT IF…?” Articles
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#2 What If Quebec Traded Lindros To The Rangers Instead Of The Flyers?
#3 What If Calgary Drafted Martin Brodeur Instead Of Trevor Kidd?
#3a What If Calgary Drafted Martin Brodeur Instead Of Trevor Kidd?: A RESPONSE
#4 What If The WHA Never Existed?
#5 What If The Position Of Rover Had Not Been Eliminated?
#6 What If Pittsburgh Had Not Been Awarded A Team In 1967?
#7 What If Steve Smith Had Not Scored In His Own Net In Game 7?
#8 What If The NHL Had a Cross-Conference Playoff Structure?
#9 What If The NHL Asked For Fan Ideas For Improving The Game??
#10 What If Henderson Had Missed The Net In Game 8?
#11 What If You Could Sneak Into A Stanley Cup Celebration?
#12 What If The NHL Returned To Quebec City?
#13 What if Toronto and Edmonton Had Traded Teams in 1981?
#14 What if You Could Create Your Own Hockey Dream Team?
#15 What if An Active Player in the NHL “Came Out” as Gay?
#16 You Could Assemble Your Own Fantasy Pick-up Hockey Team?
#17 Hockey Had A Champions League Tournament?
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#2: The Zamboni
#3: Maurice “The Rocket” Richard
#4: Ron Hextall
#5: Stanley Cup Abuse, Neglect and Versatility
#6: The Puck
#7: Don Cherry
#8: Cam Neely
#9: The Early Years of Les Canadiens
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