Sport Informatics and Analytics/Audiences and Messages/Feedforward

Introduction
This topic has been included in this course to explore how | feedforward might offer an alternative way to share messages with audiences. Peter Dowrick has led the discussion of feedforward (learning forward) in sport settings.

Feedforward
In Peter Dowrick's work, feedforward uses video to model behaviour. His Ph.D research led him to define self-modeling as: the behavioral change that results from the repeated observation of oneself on videotapes that show only desired target behaviors. He researched the potential of video self-modeling for four decades. Keith Lyons has provided a review of Peter Dowrick's research. Feedforward need not be restricted to video self-modeling. Peter Dowrick's review of self modeling noted: The most rapid learning by humans can be achieved by mental simulations of future events, based on reconfigured preexisting component skills. These reconsiderations of learning from the future, emphasizing learning from oneself, have coincided with developments in neurocognitive theories of mirror neurons and mental time travel. This 'learning from oneself' does raise important pedagogical issues that can be overlooked if a focus is placed solely on feedback. It continues a discussion started by Richard Schmidt about augmented information.

The use of feedforward on physical education and sport settings has the potential to transform learning environments. Diane Ste-Marie and her colleagues, Cojanu Florin , Harrison Kingston , Simon Middlemas and Priscila Marques and her colleagues (2017) provide examples of how feedforward might impact on explorations of learning.

Mental time travel
In a paper published in 2012, Peter Dowrick poses the question 'What is the connection between the neurocognitive process  of  anticipating  personal  future events and behavioral performance at the time that  the  future  event  arrives?'.

In Peter Dowrick's argument, self-modeling as feedforward constructs an image of achievement "beyond the individual's current capability" and invites us to contemplate mental time travel.

Thomas Suddendorf and Michael Corballis define mental time travel as: the mental reconstruction of personal events from the past (episodic memory) and the mental construction of possible events in the future. It is not an isolated module, but depends on the sophistication of other cognitive capacities, including self-awareness, meta-representation, mental attribution, understanding the perception-knowledge  relationship, and dissociation of imagined mental states from one's present mental state.

This approach raises fundamental issues for the sharing of analytical insights with coaches and athletes. If the aim of the sport analytics process is to provide actionable insights then analysts should consider the neurocognitive aspects of their sharing of the insights. Two aspects considered by Peter Dowrick are 'cognitive anticipatory mechanisms' and 'mirror neuron' activity.

Engagement with these issues as analysts makes it possible to consider cognition and an "epistemology of potentiality". Markus Peschi and Thomas Fundneider suggest that “learning from the future” and “listening to the future as it emerges”: involves a whole new set of cognitive abilities, attitudes and epistemological virtues, such as radical openness,  deep  observation,  skills  of  deep  understanding,  reframing,  identifying  and  cultivating potentials. We suggest that reflection on the potential of feedforward in the analytics process raises some profound issues about why, what, how and when we share our actionable insights with a range of audiences.