Mental Capacity and Selection of Sport Talent

On October 5, 2011, the University of Applied Sciences in Amsterdam organized a symposium about sportpsychology.

One of the presenters was Wim Keizer, sportpsychologist at the University of Applied Sciences. His main statement was that in the Netherlands selection of talents is too early. This leads to many false negatives. Children who would develop into top talents later are not selected. However, some of these kids would profit more from the kind of training and attention that is now reserved for those who are selected because they develop their sporting skills, cognition and motivation earlier.

Later on, Gerald Weltevreden from the University of Amsterdam told the audience that he is developing a scientific opinion on Implicit Theories of Abilities. Those are either Incremental or Entity.

ATIA expertise:
With reference to the general nature-nurture problem, the scientific staff at ATIA would expect that both views are valid and that part of the false negative selection errors can be avoided by assessing cognitive and affective aspects of sport talent based on neuroimaging.