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During the talent development (TD) process in sport, cognitive and psycho-behavioural skills are necessary to successfully overcome TD-specific challenges. This cross-sectional study explored executive functions (EF) and psycho-behavioural skills (PCDE), in male and female high-level artistic gymnasts between 9 and 26 years old. The first objective was to investigate if an ideal profile would emerge for these gymnasts. In the youngest age group (9–12yo), a general improvement with age for EF was observed, and gymnasts scored higher on imagery use than the quasi-control group. The older age group showed that gymnasts had significantly higher scores on inhibition, imagery use and self-directed control and management than the quasi-control group. The second objective was to conduct a person-centred approach, investigating the individual profiles of a selected group of four high-level gymnasts. The radar charts revealed a relatively similar profile in all four gymnasts and the quasi-control group for the EF components, while there was a pronounced within group and between groups variation for the PCDE profiles. This study showed that inhibition, imagery use and self-directed control and management could be potential performance indicators in gymnastics. The radar charts support the idea that, once an athlete scores above a specific threshold on all variables, there is no necessity for trying to maximise each and every of these skills but rather, it might be better to leave room for individual profile variation. Since individually different profiles were indeed observed, we recommend an athlete-centred approach in all TD phases from a young age onwards.

A good set of cognitive and psycho-behavioural skills are beneficial for young athletes to overcome and benefit from developmental challenges. Unfortunately, there is still a dearth of knowledge on how both these cognitive (i.e., executive functions; EF) and psycho-behavioural (i.e., psychological characteristics of developing excellence; PCDE) skills develop in youth athletes. Especially for athletes in early specialisation sports such as artistic gymnastics, the early EF and PCDE development might be important to be able to cope with the pressure and challenges that comes with a transition to the next stage. In the current study, artistic gymnasts between 9 and 22 years old were tested twice with a 12-month interval to investigate the changes in EF and PCDE. Results showed that EF developed within the youngest stage, but plateaued at the later stages. Most PCDE did not seem to change over time within each stage. Furthermore, the transition to a new stage does not seem to coincide with an increased improvement of PCDE. However, with a case study approach in the oldest stages, still inter-individual differences in EF and PCDE scores over time were observed. This study shows that EF and PCDE develop over time, albeit in a non-linear way, and along a variety of developmental trajectories.

Executive functioning (EF) plays a major role in many domains of human behaviour, including self-regulation, academic achievement, and even sports expertise. While a significant proportion of cross-sectional research has focused on the developmental pathways of EF, the existing literature is fractionated due to a wide range of methodologies applied to narrow age ranges, impeding comparison across a broad range of age groups. The current study used a cross-sectional design to investigate the factor structure of EF within late childhood and adolescence. A total of 2166 Flemish children and adolescents completed seven tasks of the Cambridge Brain Sciences test battery. Based on the existing literature, a Confirmatory Factor Analysis was performed, which indicated that a unitary factor model provides the best fit for the youngest age group (7–12 years). For the adolescents (12–18 years), the factor structure consists of four different components, including working memory, shifting, inhibition and planning. With regard to differences between early (12–15 years) and late (15–18 years) adolescents, working memory, inhibition and planning show higher scores for the late adolescents, while there was no difference on shifting. The current study is one of the first to administer the same seven EF tests in a considerably large sample of children and adolescents, and as such contributes to the understanding of the developmental trends in EF. Future studies, especially with longitudinal designs, are encouraged to further increase the knowledge concerning the factor structure of EF, and the development of the different EF components.

Purpose: To evaluate the predictive value of a (non-)sport-specific test battery on the future success of young cyclists, test scores were compared with competition performances 2–3 years later. Methods: Three motor coordination, 5 physical performance, and 2 cycling-specific measurements were collected in 111 U15 (13.0–14.9 y) and 67 U17 (15.0–16.9 y) male road cyclists. In addition, maturity status, relative age, and competition history were assessed. National and provincial competition results 2–3 years later, in the U17year2 and U19year2 categories, were submitted to 2 separate 4-stage hierarchical regressions. Results: The results of the model of the U15 group revealed that maturity, relative age, competition history, motor coordination, physical performance, and cycling-specific performance accounted for 22.6% of the variance in competitive success. For the U15 category, only maturity and motor coordination were significant predictors of competitive success in the U17year2 category. Maturity and motor coordination each uniquely explained ±5% of the variance. However, for the U17 group—neither motor coordination, physical performance, nor cycling-specific performance could predict competitive success in the U19year2 category. Conclusions: The current study underlines the importance of general motor coordination as a building block necessary for optimal development in youth cycling. However, considering the lack of predictive value from the U17 category onward, other features may determine further development of youth athletes. Nevertheless, it is questioned why athletes need to possess a minimum level of all physical, motor coordination, and cycling-specific characteristics to experience success and enjoyment in their sport.

The use of the short form of the Körperkoordinationstest für Kinder (KTK3) to evaluate children's and adolescents' motor competence (MC) is increasing. When combined with an alternating one-handed catching and throwing ball task, assessing eye-hand coordination (EHC), it has been shown that the different aspects of motor skills are adequately covered in one compact KTK3+ test battery, studied in 6- to 10-year-old children. The present study aimed to validate the KTK3+ test battery and to provide contemporary MC normative values for boys and girls from 6- to 19-year-olds. A total of 2,271 children and adolescents (1,112 boys, 1,159 girls) participated in this study and were evaluated on the four included test items: jumping sideways (JS), moving sideways (MS), balancing backwards (BB), supplemented by an EHC task. Children's participation in organised sport was registered using a demographic questionnaire. For the first objective, a factor analysis with multidimensional scaling demonstrated that the one-dimensional model provided the best fit, with all test items correlating to the same latent construct: “MC”. This was further supported with moderate to good correlations between all four test items (r = 0.453–0.799). Construct validity was investigated with a three-way MANOVA, demonstrating a significant multivariate interaction effect between sex and age group (p = 0.001) as well as a multivariate main effect of sex, age group, and organised sport participation (p < 0.001). Boys outperformed girls on two out of the four tests (JS and EHC, p < 0.005), while girls were better than boys on the BB test (p < 0.005). Performance scores increased across age groups on all tests (p < 0.001). Only for the BB test score, a plateau effect was noted around the age of 12 years. Children and adolescents participating in sports generally outperformed their peers who were not involved in organised sports, on the present KTK3+ test battery. For the second objective, raw score normative values are provided separately for both sexes between 6- to 19-year-olds. In combination with the one-factor structure confirmation, these sex, age, and sport participation effects demonstrate the validity of the test battery. The provided normative values are useful to evaluate MC in children and adolescents from 6 to 19 years old. The use of only four test items that are identical across all ages makes the KTK3+ test battery a practical instrument to assess and compare MC development.

Children’s motor and cognitive functions develop rapidly during childhood. Physical activity and executive function are intricately linked during this important developmental period, with physical activity interventions consistently proving to benefit children’s executive function. However, it is less clear which type of physical activity shows the strongest associations with executive function in children. Therefore, this study compared executive function performance of children aged 8 to 12 that either participated in team sports or self-paced sports or were not involved in any kind of organized sports (non-athletes). Results demonstrate that children participating in team sports show superior executive function compared to children participating in self-paced sports and non-athletes. Importantly, children participating in self-paced sports do not outperform non-athletes when it comes to executive function. This study is the first to show that even at a very young age, team sports athletes outperform athletes from self-paced sports as well as non-athletes on a multifaceted and comprehensive test battery for executive function. Furthermore, our findings support the hypothesis that cognitively engaging physical activity, such as participation in team sports, might show stronger associations with executive functioning compared to other types of sports and physical activity.

The aim of the study was to identify benchmarks for anthropometric, physical performance, motor coordination, and psychological characteristics by comparing youth badminton players of different levels through the use of a multifactorial test battery. Sixty-one male participants aged 12-18 years were divided into three groups: elite (N = 10), sub-elite (N = 24), and novice (N = 27). Standard test batteries for anthropometry (including measures to estimate biological maturity), physical performance, and motor coordination were applied, as well as the modified PCDEQ2 questionnaire for psychological characteristics of youth athletes (Hill, 2016). Multivariate analyses of covariance (MANCOVAs) with age and biological maturity as covariates were used to investigate differences between skill levels. A discriminant analysis was used to reveal to what extent participants could be correctly assigned to their skill group. Significant differences were found in physical performance (explosive power, flexibility, speed, and endurance), BMI and motor coordination. In the psychological domain, perfectionism was found to be significantly different and elites scored highest. The discriminant analysis showed that 100% of the participants were correctly classified and 80.0% were correctly cross validated. These results significantly add to the previously limited youth players' reference values, and confirm the value of a generic, i.e. without sport-specific testing, multifactorial approach to talent identification in youth badminton.

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-2-spo-10.1177_1747954120948146 for Discriminating performance profiles of cycling disciplines by Mireille Mostaert, Felien Laureys, Pieter Vansteenkiste, Johan Pion, Frederik JA Deconinck and Matthieu Lenoir in International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching

The aim of this study was to document the athletic profiles of adolescent and young adult high performance cycling athletes and to investigate to what extent different cycling disciplines can be discriminated from each other based on a generic test battery. A total of 243 adolescent (12.0- 15.99 y) and 63 young adult (>=16 y) male cyclists from road cycling, track cycling, cyclo-cross, and mountain bike (MTB) participated in the study. All participants performed four anthropometric, five physical, three motor coordination, and two cycling-specific tests. Using discriminant analyses, the young adult athletes could be correctly classified to their discipline for 80.7%. Track cyclists outperformed the other disciplines in explosive and coordinative skills while for cyclo-cross, and particularly MTB, the performance on the shuttle bike test seemed to be a distinctive variable. Road cyclists however, showed a significant overlap in performance characteristics with the other disciplines. In spite of the less pronounced discriminative character in the adolescent cycling population (51.0%), the discriminative characteristics are in line with the results of the young adults. This study allows to orient cyclists towards their best-fitted discipline in young adulthood. The relevance of these findings for coaches, experts and federations with respect to early/late specialization, and talent orientation are discussed.

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-spo-10.1177_1747954120948146 for Discriminating performance profiles of cycling disciplines by Mireille Mostaert, Felien Laureys, Pieter Vansteenkiste, Johan Pion, Frederik JA Deconinck and Matthieu Lenoir in International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-3-spo-10.1177_1747954120948146 for Discriminating performance profiles of cycling disciplines by Mireille Mostaert, Felien Laureys, Pieter Vansteenkiste, Johan Pion, Frederik JA Deconinck and Matthieu Lenoir in International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching

In children, adequate motor competence is essential for the acquisition and maintenance of a physically active and healthy lifestyle. Clearly, children with a chronic illness are severely challenged in this respect, due to physical difficulties and psychosocial obstacles. Furthermore, it is known that these challenges are even greater in families with a low socio-economic status. The quarantine measures associated with the COVID-19 pandemic have led to an increase in online activities that potentially foster physical activity, however, we hypothesise that those may not have reached the vulnerable group of children with chronic diseases. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to investigate if the level of physical activity in the quarantine had changed in comparison with the previous year in a group of children with a chronic disease and in a healthy control group. Furthermore, we aimed to explore the role of motor competence and motivation towards sport in the potential change of physical activity. During the Summer of 2020, seventy children with a chronic disease (31 girls, age range: 6-18), including 43 with renal failure, 15 with cystic fibrosis, 9 with diabetes and 3 with inflammatory bowel disease, completed the Flemish Physical Activity Questionnaire to measure the level of physical activity during the pandemic and at a similar time the year before. Motor competence was evaluated using a qualitative video assessment of core movement activities and motivation towards sports was assessed with a validated questionnaire. The same data were collected on a control group of 136 healthy control children (75 girls, age range: 6-18). The preliminary results of this study (based on 31 patients, of which 18 with renal failure, 11 with cystic fibrosis and 2 with diabetes and 30 control children) show a considerable decrease in the total amount of physical activity during the pandemic relative to the previous year in both groups. In the patient group, the level of sedentary activity remained unaltered and high, but the amount of walking and cycling during transport increased. When controlled for age, children with a chronic illness demonstrate a lower level of motor competence and less autonomous motivation towards sport than the control group. These preliminary findings highlight the importance of stimulating and monitoring motor development and physical activity in children with chronic diseases, during as well as after the pandemic.