Athlete or Not? Ten Questions

[babysheep]

You mean facial contortions and mental gymnastics don't count?

Do they?

I mean these kids aren't somehow skilled in the muscular movements required for speech any more than we are. I think a main aspect of what makes up a sport/athlete is that to be an elite contender in that activity you need physical prowess in that activity that the average person does not possess. None of us can jump like AD, run like Adrian Peterson, throw like Peyton Manning, etc., but we all have relatively the same skill in speech production as those kids.

Then, the actual spelling itself, requires a different kind of cognition than other traditional "sport" activities. These kids learn the phonetic rules of as many languages as they can, and then try to tap into that knowledge as best they can when they spell. The strategies they use allow for more concrete ways of winning than I think the cognition for other sports does. Sporting cognition, in my opinion, is motor memory and (depending on the activity; some sports don't require it) specialized kind of learning associated with that sport (Basketball IQ, QBs reading defenses, etc.) that is used to predict the actions of competing competitors.

 

[ZenConn]

Do they?

I mean these kids aren't somehow skilled in the muscular movements required for speech any more than we are. I think a main aspect of what makes up a sport/athlete is that to be an elite contender in that activity you need physical prowess in that activity that the average person does not possess. None of us can jump like AD, run like Adrian Peterson, throw like Peyton Manning, etc., but we all have relatively the same skill in speech production as those kids.

Then, the actual spelling itself, requires a different kind of cognition than other traditional "sport" activities. These kids learn the phonetic rules of as many languages as they can, and then try to tap into that knowledge as best they can when they spell. The strategies they use allow for more concrete ways of winning than I think the cognition for other sports does. Sporting cognition, in my opinion, is motor memory and (depending on the activity; some sports don't require it) specialized kind of learning associated with that sport (Basketball IQ, QBs reading defenses, etc.) that is used to predict the actions of competing competitors.

In other news, Morris Claiborne scored a 4 on the Wonderlic test.

 

[babysheep]

I bet that that test doesn't ask questions about reading an offense's lineup, positioning, movement, quarterback cues and movement, receiver cues and movement, judging points and angles of attack, having the spatial awareness and predictive ability of himself and the other 21 players on the field, etc. That's what I'm saying: many professional athletes develop their cognition for very specific scenarios and actions, that are not/ possibly cannot be measured by a general "intelligence" test.