Towards talent inclusion: The ecological ground of performance and potentiality – comment on McAuley et al.

Abstract

From a scientific perspective, talent inclusion for the purposes of development is the most promising path for the use of genetic testing, requiring an enhanced scientific literacy of sports organisation decision-makers, making them less vulnerable to the FOMO effect.

The mainstream inflated importance of genetic testing exemplifies an organismic asymmetry. Instead, performance and potentiality should be understood at the ecological level, the organism-environment system level of analysis. Commitment to understanding human behaviour at this ecological scale signifies that performance and potential are not properties located within the athlete (e.g., genes, mental representations), nor within the environment. Rather, it implies the coupling of the performers’ unique characteristics throughout development with affordances offered by a performance context.