How the Ecological Dynamics Framework can Address Emergent Characteristics of Participation in AAS
At a fundamental level, a common feature in AAS is that they are highly dependent on demands that emerge as the participant engages with the environment, when factors external to a performer play a major role on emergent behaviours [17, 29, 32]. In addition, there is a tendency for AAS to be continuously adapted across different activity boundaries. An advantage of adopting an emergent perspective (ED) in defining sports is that it easily captures the constant evolution of new techniques, variations in participation styles and philosophies and the continuous striving for dynamic creativity and innovation. For example, institutionalization and professionalization of AAS has led to a shift in emphasis in how these sports are occasionally perceived, transitioning from ‘youth sub-culture’ to ‘competitive achievement’ sports now included in traditional organized events such as the Olympic Games [30, 53]. Also, activities characterized as self-directed and conducted in nature are increasingly being repackaged as more structured, formalized, indoor leisure experiences [30]. The desired, independent experience and relatively unpredictable outcome is paradoxically being sold as a predictable, managed commodity [54]. To clarify, we propose AAS to be clearly understood as sports which do not necessarily involve a strictly defined competitive structure, regulated by institutions. They are, however, differentiated from commodities in that participation requires specific skills, which are dynamic in form and continuously subject to constraints of innovation, refinement and creativity by participants. Thus, their very essence is predicated on continuous evolution and development in previously unseen ways and environments, when ‘established’ movement patterns are constantly complemented with emerging, novel techniques and creative styles of action [34, 52]. This striving clearly requires the continuous and intertwined relationship between cognition, perception and action [55, 56].
Constraints on AAS Participation
Key constraints [54] (Fig. 1) that shape individuals’ cognitions, actions and decision-making processes have been well examined in traditional sports such as soccer, basketball and cricket [55–57].
Individual constraints include structural (e.g. height, weight, body shape, technical abilities, connectivity of synapses in the brain) and psychological (e.g. motivations, emotions, cognitions) characteristics of an athlete [34, 53, 57]. Recent studies on AAS have indicated that psychological factors such as fear, anxiety, beliefs and motivation have significant roles during participation and considerable effect on how the environment is perceived by individuals [21, 58, 59]. For example, experiencing varying intensities of fear can trigger panic and impair performance, but it can also be seen as a crucial component of effective performance and positive and potentially life-changing experiences [60].
Task constraints in traditional sports include specific rules, task goals and instructional constraints [34]. AAS are not primarily controlled in the same way as mainstream sports by organizational frameworks, regulated competitive structures or strictly governed rules [34, 61]. They, therefore, differ from many sports in that they are not usually characterized by the traditional concept of rule-based task constraints.
Environmental constraints are physical (e.g. weather, gravity, ambient light) or sociocultural (e.g. values, family support, cultural norms) [34]. Juxtaposed to purely competitive sports, AAS offer a possibility for mastery and perfection in relation to challenging environments [25, 34, 35]. Unpredictable constraints vary in relation to performances taking place on land, on air, on water, either afloat or submerged, and can be natural (e.g. alpine terrains), partially artificial (e.g. shoveled ‘backcountry kickers’ in snowboarding) or entirely artificial (e.g. skateboard parks). In addition to gravity-driven (e.g. BASE jumping) and human-propelled (e.g. parkour, climbing) forms of movement, the dominant source of energy for action can be exploited in natural phenomena such as an ocean swell in surfing or a thermal updraft in BASE jumping (Fig. 1).
AAS as a ‘Form of Life’
Affordances refer to aspects of the environment perceived on the basis of what they offer, invite or demand in terms of action [62]. Different surfaces, substances, objects or other individuals in the environment can afford different actions from different people in relation to individual constraints [53, 62]. Effectivities are complementary capabilities of an individual that can realize affordances in coherent forms of behaviour [63, 64]. For example, skateboarders might seek handrails in urban environments as an affordance to creatively perform, normally perceived to support locomotion by other individuals, and a skilled skateboarder might approach the same handrail with different set of ‘tricks’ compared to novice.
Wittgenstein’s [65, 66] concept of the ‘form of life’ implies how sociocultural practices of humans can constrain the emergence of specific behavioral patterns [63, 67], emphasizing that effectivities are not merely relative to particular individuals actually perceiving or detecting affordances but also have an existence relative to the skills available in practice, or to the abilities available in a form of life as a whole [67]. For example, the same beach and wave conditions can afford many surfing styles: ‘classic’ walking maneuvers on a longboard or more radical direction changes on a high-performance shortboard. Therefore, what is common to participants in particular activities, e.g. for surfers, might not only be the ocean as a material environment or the variety of waves as affordances but also the being of individuals embedded in human sociocultural practices, i.e. sharing stable ways of doing things and interpreting actions and living with others [67]. In the case of humans (or surfers in particular), these regular patterns, being manifested in sociocultural practices, can be exemplified by the emergence of multitude of participation styles and philosophies in AAS, i.e. varying styles of surfing and related lifestyles or different ‘forms of life’ in interacting with specific environmental conditions of the ocean, constrained by winds, surf, currents and proximity of other surfers.
Thus, a niche is a set of affordances which offers an individual a specific way of life [62]. An important notion when considering how distinguishable niches or disciplines are being evolved is that stable ways of doing things might surpass the boundaries of tool-related constraints. For example, the ‘ecological niche of free riders’ (big-mountain skiers and snowboarders) might have more in common in terms of effectivities that shape participation and experiences than effectivities common for big-mountain and freestyle snowboarders (two groups of snowboarders representing different forms of life). Therefore, ignoring sociocultural constraints when defining sports fails to capture the depth and nuances through which participation of individuals or groups in sports can be described.
When varying sociocultural practices evolve in similar environments, participants can acquire abilities that flourish in different practices from one’s own [67]. New possibilities for action can emerge for individuals in a material environment, simultaneously transcending the ‘sport’ itself. This idea exemplifies one potential constraint: interacting individual and social factors which can lead to the emergence of novel forms of movement such as ski-mountaineering or tow-in surfing, examples of humans making new combinations by exploring different fields in the rich landscape of affordances that the environment already offers. The important point here is that these innovations are an inherent aspect of AAS which has been completely ignored in previous research. They are predicated on the perception and exploitation of affordances which depend on effectivities, individually perceived by innovating athletes. Further, the development of new inventions, such as equipment (e.g. wingsuits) or built environments (e.g. cable wakeboarding parks, parkour facilities), extends the opportunities for exploiting rich possibilities for action available in a form of life, unveiling creative behaviours and forming previously unseen niches.
Skill Acquisition and Creativity in AAS
Although some attempts have been made, skilled performance in AAS should not be evaluated comprehensively by traditional quantitative measurements (e.g. measuring time, distance or score) or in comparison to other participants as in many traditional sports. In AAS particularly, aesthetic aspects such as personality of ‘style’ (i.e. how it looks and meets task goals) and creativity (i.e. innovation, novelty, originality) play a major role in how performances are judged [61, 68, 69] and further promoted [70] in an AAS form of life [61, 68, 69]. Here, we argue that this visual judgment, dependent on the perspective of other participants, represents a unique social constraint, interacting with each individual’s physical and psychosocial experiences (i.e. how it feels) [17, 47, 70]. In AAS, the functionality of skill (i.e. how effectively task goals are achieved) partially depends on subtle interactions of task and personal constraints such as originality, collective agreement and interpretation. Thus, an important task constraint to address is the value placed on creativity and innovation of actions expressed during performance or in terms of the contexts within which performance takes place. These notions further emphasize the need for a multidisciplinary approach and careful evaluation of research methods to understand these emerging characteristics shaping participation in AAS.
Central to any AAS is the innovative and creative behaviours of individuals or groups that compose a form of life. Sociocultural tendencies within forms of life, or ‘the field of promoted actions’ [70], can significantly constrain the behaviours of individuals, or reinforce established ones. However, particular social agreement among participants might, for example, invite them to act functionally, by challenging rules and norms. Therefore, development of expertise requires that a participant is not only well aware of underpinning sociocultural constraints or functionality of practice (i.e. usefulness, effectiveness, appropriateness or adequacy) but also knows how to diverge from them with novelty (i.e. originality). Functional skill (engaging with affordances to achieve goal-directed outcomes) might consequently consist of understanding and balancing actions relative to sociocultural influences that can be in conflict with personal style and tendencies. Performance is not predicated only on participation purely as subordinate to social norms but also on tendencies to imagine, innovate and explore action possibilities outside of (affordances available to) a particular niche. The culture of innovation in many AAS forms of life would suggest that behaviours supporting the capacity to explore new environments (e.g. urban skiing) and creative movement solutions (e.g. ‘tricks’ in skateboarding) are particularly functional to participants. Thus, in the case of AAS, creativity can be defined as ‘the process of perceiving, exploiting, and ‘generating’ novel affordances during socially and materially situated activities’ [71]. One practical implication of this idea is that (with solid understanding of sociocultural affordances) constraints in learning contexts should be designed to support continuous functional exploration of performers [52].
