Unified Framework for the Study of Sport-Related Behavior

[eng] A high disciplinary specialization and development of context-specific languages in sport science has promoted its current fragmentation and a lack of communication and transfer of knowledge among scientists. However, common general principles can be found among apparently unrelated disciplines and phenomena under study when the focus is put on the processes and dynamics of change. In fact, dynamic approaches are changing the research scenario in areas as distant as biology and social sciences, among others. The Nonlinear Dynamical Systems Theory (NDST), which has already undertaken a paradigm shift in several scientific fields, has been recently applied to the study of human coordination and sport-related behavior. This theory offers key concepts and a common language which can provide a unified framework for sport science (and for science in general), and thus, contributes to promote transdisciplinarity. The objective of this thesis is to show how seemingly unconnected sport-related behavior extracted at individual and social levels can be studied by using the same dynamic principles and concepts. Several experiments where different collective variables are tested under the influence of different types of constraints are presented. Concerning the organismic level, the evolution of the performance level in function of the workload was modelled, and the dynamics of kinematic and psychological variables during static and dynamic exercises performed until failure was analysed. Concerning the social level, the attitudes of sport fans in connection with the number of wrong referee decisions were also studied. The results show how all these collective variables share common dynamic features such as stability, instability and nonlinear change of state, regardless of the level and time scale of analysis. In conclusion, the NDST can provide a unified framework to study different types of sport­ related phenomena and thus contribute to the integration of scientific knowledge and facilitation of the transfer of ...