Governing Talent Selection through the Brain: Constructing Cognitive Executive Function as a Way of Predicting Sporting Success

ABSTRACT

An increasingly central part of the scientific debate in sports has come to focus on how neuroscience can help to explain sports performance and development of expertise. In particular, the process of identifying young talents has been increasingly influenced by neuroscientific tests to identify future potential. It has been argued that instead of relying on coaches’ subjective assessments the process of selection should be based on general metrics of the brain through standardized testing. One key neurological function highlighted in the search for talent is cognitive executive functions. In the contemporary debate, studies of brain activity have suggested that children should undergo neuroscientific testing to determine the appropriate cognitive executive functions (CEF) for elite sports.

This paper builds on previous work on the implications of a neuroscientific ontology in sports and Bruno Latour’s work on the construction of scientific facts. Departing from discourse analysis, this paper studies the production and popularization of CEF as scientific facts. The findings illustrate how representations of brain activity are visualized and legitimized and how the out-of-context tests are translated into facts about brain functions. The CEF test results are produced as inscriptions of undisputable facts, claiming that the results show prerequisites for sporting success. We argue that the mind-brain-behaviour relationship cannot be reduced to CEF tests and instead calls for a critical gaze on neuroscientific truth-claims and taken-for-granted facts in the area of sport.

KEYWORDS:

• Neuroscience
• cognitive executive functions
• talent identification
• inscriptions
• interpretative repertoires

Introduction

In social science an increasingly central part of the scientific debate has come to focus on how neuroscience can help to explain human behaviour (Grant 2015). This area of research has gained significant attention and it is probably fair to say that it is one of the leading research areas of the twenty first century (Birch 2010; Rose 2014). Despite being a new discipline with a short institutional history, it has become a dominant research area, both in terms of research grants and its influence in political debates (Grant 2015; Hardes 2017). In recent decades, neuroscientific discoveries have been increasingly incorporated into traditional areas of social science, such as human behaviour and knowledge. Brain research is suggested to offer an operationalization of abstract philosophical issues of learning, mind and human behaviour. Researchers in the neurobiological field even propose the ontological claim that the brain is what makes us human (Frackowiak 2004). At the same time, for many scholars in the social sciences such claims are treated as profoundly threatening and they argue that neuroscience can create an anticipatory discourse that has the potential to reduce human behaviour to matters of the brain and thereby recreate the very ontology of ourselves (Hardes 2017; Rose and Abi-Rashed 2013). The political propositions that are based on neuroscientific discoveries are often profound. For instance, in the debate about teacher education, it is suggested that pedagogy should be abolished, or at least significantly reduced, for the benefit of cognitive neuroscience (Skogstad 2017).

Neuroscientific researchers in the area of sport also suggest that tests that help to map the functions of the brain can provide a more objective way of assessing development potential and future performance (Sakamoto et al. 2018). Accordingly, contemporary talent identification has been increasingly influenced by scientific tests to identify future potential (Collins and Bailey 2013; Kerr 2018). It has been argued that instead of relying on coaches’ own (subjective) assessments and considerations, the process of selection should be based on general metrics through standardized testing. Traditionally, tests have measured physical performance factors such as power, speed and endurance. In recent times however, they have increasingly focused on psychological traits (Miller, Cronin, and Baker 2015). This area also now includes studies of brain functions. Some researchers suggest that children should undergo neuroscientific tests to determine their cognitive profile (Vestberg, Petrovic, and Lerner 2018). All these assessments are done out-of-context, with participants using pen, paper, or a computer. These out-of-context tests are then translated into abilities on the football field and into subject specific abilities.

In the media, commentators claim that this is a new paradigm in the selection of young talent—instead of being based on assumptions about potential for elite success in adulthood, the tests enable objective and evidence-based selection (Bidshahari 2017; Skogstad 2017). The new neuro-paradigm can apply neuro-scientific methods to everything from curricula design, teaching strategies and talent identification in sport. This, it is argued, is needed to produce and implement ‘a more objective understanding of learning that is based on evidence’ (Bidshahari 2017, 1). A common starting point in the neuroscientific debate is often a general critique of the fields of sociology, philosophy, economy and pedagogy for being politically coloured and (therefore) unscientific and needing to be replaced by evidence-based brain research (Skogstad 2017). In sport selection, the arguments emphasize that neuroscience can achieve more efficient selection and improve the possibility of identifying the ‘truly’ talented child. Accordingly, recent work by Kerr (2018) and Miller, Cronin, and Baker (2015) illustrates how different forms of tests in talent identification are adopted and given the authority of objective facts. One recurring key neurological function highlighted in the search for talent is cognitive executive functions.

In this study we analyze empirical examples—one popular neuroscience book (Brain-ball: The unknown intelligence of football players) and three research articles on which many of the findings in the book are based. The articles and the book claim to help coaches rethink talent identification, which has in turn led to a high profile debate in both the Swedish and international media (Ingle 2016; Johansson 2018). The research has been considered as being groundbreaking by researchers and leading coach practitioners, such as the national team coach of Sweden Jan Andersson and the former English national team coach Roy Hodgson (Vestberg, Petrovic, and Lerner 2018). In this discourse analysis, we analyze the concept of cognitive executive functions in the identification and selection of young talent and, more specifically, how CEF tests are translated into scientific facts, popularized and made applicable in talent management.

Neuroscience and Social Behaviour

In criminology and psychology, neuroscientific studies have been focusing on identifying individual risk, or solving problems in human interactions and the improvement of the population in society (Börjesson and Palmblad 2018; Latour 1987). It is emphasized that key aspects of human behaviour should be governed by neurobiological knowledge. Several neuro-technologies have therefore been produced in many areas: in schools, in drug prevention programmes, or in the search for future elite athletes. The neuro-prefix can be found in a range of different scientific areas, from neurodesign (Bridger 2017), neuroeconomics (Glimscher 2009), neuromarketing (Zurawicki 2010) and neuroaesthetics (Zeki 1999), to neurophilosophy (Churchland 1986), neurotheology (Trimble 2007) and neuroeducation (Goswami 2006). Despite the seemingly different empirical fields of study, the common point of departure is often that the human mind can be studied as brain activity and measured and assessed as observable behaviour. Thereby, measured brain activity is equated with observable actions in social practice. Combining brain activity with social and cultural factors transforms and equates these factors with the human mind. Brain activity is thus treated as observable behaviour in social practice.

Neuroscientific discoveries are also frequently made use of in the media debate or in political arguments. Beck (2010) illustrates how neuroscientific discoveries are so appealing to the general public that the results can easily be over analyzed. Despite well-known difficulties in interpreting the technologies, the limited areas of study and the simple test tasks that are investigated, the power of persuasion has proved to be strong (Grant 2015). This creates a scienciness in which scientific test results become objective facts, unbiased and high status truth claims and neutral facts that are difficult to question (Collins and Bailey 2013; Kerr 2018).

The Brain and Neuroscience Testing as a Gateway to Human Identity

The notion of the brain as the gateway to human identity has resulted in an extended line of neurological social practices throughout history. Such social practices range from phrenology in the 19th century, which involved the claim that mental states and human desires were localized in organs in the brain and could be identified by looking at the form of the skull (Gall and Spurzheim 1809 [2012]; Jay Gould 1996), to mental institutions testing the brains of the mad (Foucault 1979), to criminologists´ attempts to identify criminal minds during the first half of the 20th century (Jay Gould 1996; Rafter 2010). In these areas, tests that measure genetic gifts, as potentials or limitations, have played a central role in the forecasting of human development and the assessment of individual potential since the 1900s. Jay Gould (1996) argues that this long historical interest in measuring and testing humans has produced a biological determinism of heredity as the primary source for uncovering human conduct. Accordingly, Foucault reminds us, the role of philosophy is not to uncover or discover the hidden, but ‘to make visible precisely what is visible and let us see what we see’ (1994, 540).

In recent years, the issue of measurement has gained increased attention, focusing on the presuppositions and syllogism of measurement in practice. Many scholars are now emphasizing that we live in a ´paradigm of human measurement´ where institutional and human conduct and problems are assessed, mapped and solved through standardized tests and evaluations (Bornemark 2018; Gruijters and Fleuren 2017). This credence to an objective, measureable and evidence-based apparatus of knowledge is an important part of neuroscience (Latour 1987). When standardized test results are compiled they appear unambiguous, neutral and value free and are therefore hard to question. Thus, the problem is not the compilation, but rather how such juxtaposition can veil the translation and legitimizing of specific knowledge claims. Accordingly, within this field of diagnosis and categorization of human behaviour, neuroscientific research has been an important engine (Börjesson and Palmblad 2018). Historically, neuroscience has been a hybrid of concepts from different schools of thought (Rose and Abi-Rashed 2013). By hybridizing thoughts and techniques from different scientific areas, a new style of thinking has been incorporated into social science—‘the neuromolecular gaze’ (Abi-Rashed and Rose 2010, 1). This gaze now influences questions of human development and cohabitation. Through the translation of small laboratory studies of brain function to real life contexts, this ‘hybrid of thoughts’ has resulted in a number of inter-disciplinary (or rather intra-, trans-) collaborations. In education research, public health care and teacher education, the role of neuroscience has become increasingly important worldwide (programmes are e.g. offered at Teachers College in Boston, John Hopkins University in the UK, University of Bordeaux in France, Radboud University in the Netherlands, University of Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain and at Stockholm University in Sweden). This educational neuroscience is often explained as part of a wider field of mind-brain-education, bringing together scholars from fields such as cognitive neuroscience, educational technology and neuro-engineering and claiming to bridge the gap between biological processes in the brain and learning outcomes. Research in the area ranges from identifying the neural mechanism of reading or measuring the brain functions of children with dyslexia, to mapping brain functions among children with neuropsychiatric variations, such as ADHD or giftedness. Thereby, the ‘cerebral knowledge’ has left the lab and is now incorporated in the conduct of people in many areas of society (Rose and Abi-Rached 2010). One way of making this cerebral knowledge available outside the laboratory and applicable in a real life environment is to make it visible. Whereas phrenologists during the 19th century assumed that brain functions could be read off from the outside of the skull, this is now done from the inside (for images of brain functions visibility on the skull, see images in Gall and Spurzheim 1809 [2012]). By visualizing brain activity and claiming to show abstract entities of the human mind in for instance brain scanners, neuroscience is made accessible to a wider public. This visual repertoire has been an important part of the popularization of neuroscience in everyday life (Rose and Abi-Rashed 2013). At the same time, many cultural and social scientists have shown that these visual pictures of mental life in the brain are no more ‘true to nature’ than other machineries of visualization, such as a regular camera. Rose and Abi-Rashed underline that brain scanning does not show the mind-in-the-brain, but rather a pictorial image of mind-in-the-brain. However, what such an image of brain activity does show is scientifically disputable. At the same time, the power of visualization is strong in the popularization and acceptance of specific scientific truth claims.

Neuroscience in Sports

In sport, neuroscientific knowledge seems to be widely disseminated and has attracted a great deal of interest (Birch 2010: Schonbrun 2018). In particular, the role of cognitive executive functions and CEF testing of both young people and adult elite athletes has been highlighted by researchers as a vital capacity (Sakamoto et al. 2018; Vestberg et al. 2017). They have also underlined that in many aspects sport is a cerebral activity and that it is important to find children with the right cognitive profile from the start. Moreover, they emphasize that these new neuroscientific discoveries will fundamentally redefine talent management and enable coaches to objectively identify ´the truly talented individual´ by means of a few simple tests (Schonbrun 2018; Vestberg, Petrovic, and Lerner 2018). For example, one educational enterprise referring to the material investigated in this study explain: ‘With a set of unique tests, we measure the brain’s ´executive functions´. More specifically the ability to handle information, emotions and thoughts and how this effects our decisions, actions, behavior and finally performance’ (Game Intelligence 2019). Moreover, the company guarantees that ‘the testing accuracy is very high and scientifically verified’ and that the tests can predict performance ‘independently of occupation, task, experience, education, gender, age or ethnicity’ (Game Intelligence 2019).

However, this is not the first time in history that scientific discoveries have been described as revolutionizing social practice. During the first half of the 20th century, the term psychology was adopted to describe different aspects of e.g. leadership-psychology, organizational-psychology and brand-psychology (Rose 1996). The field of sports research was no exception. Sports psychology became an integral part of coach education and everyday sporting practice during the 1990s and onwards. The mental capacity of the athlete is still considered crucial for achieving sporting success and ‘the human psyche’ is now a central part of coach education worldwide. However, in recent years a neuroscientific management logic has also emerged within the field of sport science, marking a shift from a psychological, government logic to a neuromolecular logic. Even if neuroscientific knowledge today may not have a dominant position in contemporary talent selection practice, it is part of a growing governing discourse working within social, political and economic realities and highlighted as a specifically legitimate type of knowledge (Hardes 2017). This encompasses a specific socio-political logic of regulation in a bio-political discourse that governs specific knowledge claims above others (Foucault 1979).

As highlighted in the previous sections, this new brain science has had an important impact on the scientific community in many areas of the social sciences and humanities. In a sports context, numerous books highlight brain functions and athletic performance and several web-based programs are now available to help coaches find future talent using neuroscientific programs (see e.g. Ant-neuro, C8 Science, Eurotracker, Game Intellegence, Sport-neuro-training). The idea here is to connect neuroscience with sports training and to transfer abstract and laboratory studies of the brain to the field of sports practice by offering everything from EEG data and brain computer interface (BCI), to transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) positioning within the subject´s cranium. This neuro technology is suggested to unveil differences in brain activity between potential top performance athletes and those lacking such ability. Moreover, the tests can be translated into any sport (team and individual) and it is emphasized that this cerebral knowledge is the next frontier of technology in sport and that it will redefine talent management in the future (Schonbrun 2018).

In talent selection, Kerr (2018) has shown how different forms of tests are already adopted to ‘scientifically’ identify young people with a potential for elite success. Using these tests, the subjective process of assessing talent or future potential can be seen as neutral and unbiased—based on objective results and scientific facts, rather than personal opinions as subjective measures. In this way the process of talent selection has become disconnected from the individual coach performing the selection (Kerr 2018). In her study of coaches and talent selection in Danish soccer, Christensen (2009) illustrates how coaches often refer to subjective measures, such as personal feelings and opinions, rather than general metrics or test results. However, this ‘gut feeling’ as the basis for selection has been questioned as being arbitrary, unsafe and unscientific (Miller, Cronin, and Baker 2015). It has been argued that selection must be based on scientific measures, rather than personal opinions and an individual coach’s judgement. Talent identification, it is argued, calls for selection to be based on scientific knowledge as the outcome of unbiased scientific measures.

Theoretical Considerations

Science and technology have an important role to play in the everyday aspects of contemporary society and many people who have studied science have become scientists. In his classic work of science in the making, Latour (1987) accentuates that what scientists have done is visible in the machines that we use, the advice we follow, the pills we take and the textbooks we read. However, he also emphasizes that we do not really know how this is done. The entry of brain science into the social sciences is also a question of epistemology: the nature of knowledge and the rationality of specific truth claims (Dean 2010). Moreover, it is related to the very ontology of becoming human and how knowledge of the brain relates to an intricate web of evolving networks—about knowledge that is relationally interwoven in history, culture and social context. This also includes a dimension of power at work and which type of knowledge is attributed value and given prominence in the governing of social practice. Foucault has had a substantial influence on studies focusing on the government of individuals in an institutional setting and the rationality of governing conduct (Dean 2010; Foucault 1979). In this article we are analysing the governing of talent selection and the assessment of talent based on neuroscientific knowledge. There is, however, a multiplicity of rationalities and ways of thinking in a systematic manner and producing legitimate knowledge. Scientific knowledge is essential in the construction of such rationality, as an important part of the ‘mentality of government’ in contemporary societies. As Wittgenstein (1969) underlines, scientific truth-claims must also be studied in their production, as productions. Similarly, Latour argues that scientific facts are not produced in a societal vacuum, but are established after the closure of a debate in the scientific community. Furthermore, in his studies of the laboratory life of natural science, he underlines a paradox in the fundamental epistemology of scientific facts by saying: ‘even though we construct Nature, Nature is as if we did not construct it […] Nature and Society must remain absolutely distinct: the work of purification must remain absolutely distinct from the work of mediation’ (Latour 2005, 32). Latour (2005) notes that saying that scientific facts are constructed in the minds of many natural scientist means that something is not true. Either something is true and real, or it is constructed, contrived, artificial, made up and false (Latour 2005). In addition, Potter (1996) argues that scientific truth-claims are always made relevant in a specific context. Scientific knowledge is embedded in procedures of translation from in order to become inscriptions (Latour 1987) and these inscriptions are the outcome of the effective alignment between technology and organizations.

Therefore, it is important to study the construction of scientific facts to reveal how we are convinced of scientific findings. In this article we investigate the construction and legitimizing of the neuroscientific concept of cognitive executive functions in the search for young talents. Our ontological and epistemological point of departure is that also scientific facts are produced, in-context and reproduced in language use. In all genres of research, when researchers construct their versions of the world, they have to use scientific vocabulary in order to be perceived as credible and reliable. This involves presenting ‘the nature of a scientific fact’ as empirically tested, neutral and impersonal (Potter 1996). In other words, by using an empiricist discourse in which data are constructed as ‘natural’, a researcher becomes a passive responder to ‘nature showing itself’ (Potter 1996). This means constructing facts as though they were independent of the researcher producing them. Hence, attention is drawn away from the researcher to produce what Potter (1996) calls an out-there-ness—a reality beyond human agency by using phrases such as ‘it was found that’ or ‘the results are in line with previous research’. In his study of laboratory science, Latour illustrates how the central problems of such scientific studies primarily are technical rather than conceptual (Latour 2005). The concept of inscription is used by Latour to explain how laboratory experiments and tests are translated into scientific texts, figures and models. Once an inscription is established (e.g. translated from ‘test result’ to ‘data’) it is removed from the social and historical circumstances on which it depends. When the translation of the experiment is done, it is freed from the circumstances of its production. Thereafter, the inscription is again re-translated by the researcher or by other researchers and, in this process, the inscription acquires new meaning (Latour 1987).

In this text we illustrate how cognitive executive function tests, as tools for the assessment of young talent, become inscriptions and are understood, translated and used in a new context. The starting point is to investigate how a neuro-ontological rationality of facts is constructed, made popular and understandable and, thereby, constructed as an inscription of truth (Latour and Woolgar 1979). Rationality in this sense should not be understood in a common-sense way as being particularly logical or wise, but rather as the thinking that lies behind a specific way of governing (Bacchi 2009). This way of thinking determines how things ‘are’ or ‘ought to be’ (Dean 2010). Within such a system of rationality, specific statements become trustworthy and others not. Conversely, complex relations and nexuses must be simplified, operationalized and translated into social practice. This translation involves simplification and reduction in order to appear as clear connections. Therefore, when analyzing the production of facts in this text, language-use is viewed as action (Potter 1996; Billig 1996). The analyses focus on what is achieved with language-use and how language is organized to allow this achievement (it is both an action and epistemological orientation). As previously mentioned, researchers often draw on an empiricist discourse vocabulary when describing their scientific findings. For example, when laboratory findings are translated in a new context and presented in a text they become inscriptions, i.e. facts used to legitimize social practice that are at the same time (as they are scientific facts) difficult to question (Latour 2005).

Gilbert and Mulkay (1984) use the analytical tool of interpretative repertoire when studying how researchers (re)produce the scientific discourse in different contexts. As an analytic tool it illustrates the ways in which a discourse and its practices are organized. In short, this provides tools for studying discourse in action (Potter 1996). Interpretative repertoires consist of different sets of concepts, accounts, metaphors and narratives about an object or phenomenon in order to be socially and culturally accepted (Gilbert and Mulkay 1984; Potter 1996; Potter and Wetherell 1992). Thus, interpretative repertoires are different ways of talking about events and objects in a coherent manner (Edley 2001). The concept of interpretative repertoire is used to discern how the rationale of cognitive executive functions are shaped by language in the empirical material. In making sense of the variability of the scientific discourse, Gilbert and Mulkay (1984) identify two repertoires: 1) the contingent repertoire—the use of informal talk about researchers’ actions and beliefs and 2) the empiricist repertoire—the use of formal accounts in text and talk to minimize the researchers’ involvement in interpreting data. Hence, it is about constructing an out-there-ness of the scientific findings (Potter 1996). Interpretative repertoires can also be regarded as rhetorical resources that are used in everyday interaction and in researchers’ texts and talk—making truth-claims by using different repertoires to explain and justify their specific version of truth (Edley 2001; Potter 1996; Potter and Wetherell 1992). Other rhetorical resources are metaphors or metaphorical expressions, which means thinking and talking about a phenomenon/object/event as a symbol or representative for something else (Potter 1996; Semino 2008). Both metaphors and metaphorical expressions are highly conventional, in the sense that we are not always aware of their metaphoricity when (re)producing them (Semino 2008). In addition, the use of metaphors in scientific vocabulary can be both pervasive and essential for producing scientific facts. For example, discussing scientific phenomena using phrases like ‘the greenhouse effect’, ‘black holes’ or ‘the brains library’ are not only pervasively appealing, but are also a way of creating an out-there-ness, in that they also establish scientific facts (Potter 1996; Semino 2008).

Methodology and Analysis

In this article we analyze the production and popularization of cognitive executive functions (CEF) as a scientific fact and an identifiable function. Based on an ongoing debate about the role of neuroscience in talent selection in Sweden, the empirical material comprises one popular science book and three research articles at the very core of the debate. Analyzing a specific case can provide examples from contemporary discussions and showcase debates in a dynamic context (Cohen, Manion, and Morrison 2007). This enables studies to illustrate ideas in a real life context more clearly than simply presenting evaluations or abstract principles. Accordingly, case studies can provide unique illustrations from a more extensive area and contribute to a wider debate (Meyer 2015). Our selection of empirical material includes the popular science book, Hjärnboll: fotbollsspelares okända intelligens [Eng. Brain ball: the unknown intelligence of football players] published in 2018 and written by Vestberg, Petrovic and Lerner. As previously stated, this book has gained a lot of attention in the national and international media. That makes the inclusion of this book in the empirical material highly relevant in this case study. Moreover, the sample consists of three research articles on which the book and its findings are based. The articles are: i) Verburgh, Scherder, van Lange and Oosterlaanii (2014), Executive functioning in highly talented soccer players, PLoS ONE, ii) Vestberg, Reinebo, Maurex, Ingvar, Petrovic (2017), Core executive functions are associated with success in young elite soccer players, PLoS ONE, iii) Vestberg, Reinebo, Maurex, Ingvar, Petrovic (2017) Executive functions predict the success of top-soccer players, PLoS ONE. At the same time, we believe that this is not only an important issue in the area of sport research, but also in the wider discussion about neuroscientific discoveries and the government of human conduct in general. To clarify, we have no intention of evaluating or criticizing the robustness of the methods stated in the book or the articles or the research that has been conducted. Rather, we are interested in the rationalities produced by neuroscientific testing and how these rationalities are constructed and made relevant in context. In addition, the findings in a case study with a small sample like this are necessarily limited, which means that they cannot be generalized (Meyer 2015). The study nevertheless provides an understanding of how scientific fact are produced and translated in a popular book for launching and establishing CEF. Even though the findings cannot be generalized, they may be applicable to similar cases (Meyer 2015).

In these examples we analyze how the tests claim to measure the CEF of young sporting talent and how they guide the selection. Building on the concept of inscription (Latour and Woolgar 1979), we analyze the material using interpretative repertories (Gilbert and Mulkay 1984). In doing so, the article also builds on the extensive works of Rose and Abi-Rashed on the implications of a neuroscientific ontology in various fields (Abi-Rashed and Rose 2010; Rose 1996; Rose and Abi-Rashed 2013) and Latour’s work on the construction of scientific facts (Latour 2005, 1987; Latour and Woolgar 1979). The analysis was conducted in three steps in order to identify how repertoires are part of the construction and popularization of facts. First, the texts were read through in their entirety and all the sections concerning CEF and figures illustrating where behaviour is located in the brain were marked. The analyses focused on the recurrent language used to explain CEF and its arguments in selection and/or in identification (Potter 1996). Secondly, recurrent patterns in the text were identified, initially conducted by a thematic content analysis were themes of text and figures were labelled and themed in a separate document. In the third step, the themes were clustered as interpretative repertoires based on the rationale for explanation and argument for selection—as different interpretative repertoires (Gilbert and Mulkay 1984; Potter 1996). Each repertoire was exemplified with quotes and figures from the data to support the specific interpretation of the repertoire, thus making it possible to analyze recurrent expressions, images, metaphors and arguments connected to the theoretical framework of interpretative repertoires and inscriptions (Latour 1987; Potter 1996; Potter and Wetherell 1992; Semino 2008). The translations from the Swedish popular science book presented in the results section are those of the authors.

Results

Legitimizing Cognitive Executive Functions in Selection

Cognitive executive functions are described as the process in which individuals coordinate impulses and process information in the brain, make decisions and then act on them (Vestberg, Petrovic, and Lerner 2018). It is explained as a function that can allow humans to stay focused in the face of distractions, control emotional stimuli and direct actions towards a specific goal. It is argued that these functions are vital in, for instance, academic performance. These brain functions are not however, limited to the educational area but are also a central part of sports science and talent identification. In sport, the concept of executive cognitive functions is often used, even though it is still subject to debate. There are significant controversies about the concept and the possibility of measuring through tests. The concept, the primary tool in the research studied in this article, has also been questioned for being unclear, ambiguous and difficult to assess. Despite this critique, executive cognitive functions have been put forward as the most important of all the neurobiological elements for understanding sporting success (Vestberg, Petrovic, and Lerner 2018). Primarily, studies of football players have highlighted these abilities as crucial. The functions are not only assumed to predict why some people are better footballers than others, but also to predict which youngsters have the potential to become world stars (Vestberg et al. 2017). It is emphasized that the ability to measure cognitive executive functions among young people in sports, will change talent development globally and it is suggested that by using a few simple tests, this can become part of the sports selection apparatus (Vestberg et al. 2017; Vestberg, Petrovic, and Lerner 2018):

In a unique study, the brain researchers Torbjörn Vestberg and Predrag Petrovic´ have been testing players in Barcelona, the US national soccer team, Allsvenskan [Swedish first division soccer] and Swedish youth national teams. The tests show that brain functions have a decisive effect on who succeeds at the absolute elite level. It is even possible to predict who will produce the most goals and assist. It is called executive functions and is the key to explain the concept of game intelligence. (Vestberg, Petrovic, and Lerner 2018, back cover)

Vestberg, Petrovic, and Lerner (2018) underline how these functions can be decisive in the management of young talent by suggesting that this scientific discovery will revolutionize our understanding of sporting success and the identification of young talent. The following three excerpts show the production of fact claims:

The study was divided in two parts and our approach was to use well-known neuropsychological assessment tools and assess the soccer players’ executive functions such as the chain of creativity, working memory, multitasking and inhibition. We chose the Design Fluency test from the D-KEFS executive test battery as our primary test since it does not have a verbal component but include a creativity/planning aspect that we believe is important in team sports [6]. (Vestberg et al. 2012, 2)

The present study replicated our previous findings suggesting that general executive functions are important for success in soccer. Moreover, the results were extended from a senior elite level to a junior elite level and shown to be independent from factors such as general intelligence and physical differences. (Vestberg et al. 2017, 7)

The correlation tasks suggest that both CEF (represented in our study by the encoding skill of the working memory; dWM) and HEF (represented by DF) could be predictive of soccer success in adolescent soccer players in terms of scored goals. (Vestberg et al. 2017, 7)

These three excerpts show the building of confidence in the test in order to produce objective facts about human behaviour. By using accounts such as ‘our approach was to use well-known neuropsychological assessment tools’ and ‘we chose the Design Fluency test from the D-KEFS executive test battery as our primary test’, the test results appear to be beyond human agency. This is a recurrent way of constructing descriptions as independent of the researcher, where the researcher becomes a passive observer of the fact ‘uncovering itself’ (Potter 1996). In other words, they use an empiricist interpretative repertoire (Gilbert and Mulkay 1984; Potter 1996) when making truth claims—showing an absence of bias as one way of displaying legitimacy. For example, it is underlined that the results are cleared from disturbing context and ‘shown to be independent from factors such as general intelligence and physical differences, see the second excerpt (Vestberg et al. 2017, 7). Thereby, the test results are presented as more robust, rather than understood out of context. This way of reducing and fragmenting a wider context to a small sample is recurrent in the empirical material, turned into an advantage and used as a scientific strength. Finally, the use of replication is underlined as a way of increasing the reliability of the test. The use of replication as an argument for the construction of legitimacy for scientific facts is central to creating scientism as part of a discourse of science (Hardes 2017; Kerr 2018). However, Latour (2005) argues that repeating a test or an experiment in itself does not make the outcome or the implications of an experiment more valid or true. Rather, it is about making the outcomes appear to be true, thereby making them more difficult to question.

Transforming Cognitive Test Results into Brain Activity

A central aspect in the construction of facts through testing is to equate the results from tests using pen or paper, or by clicking on a computer to reveal brain activity. These tests are supposed to be direct representations of brain activity and the previous tests are re-redefined in a new context. Accordingly, these inscriptions (e.g. translation of tests to brain activity) are re-translated, used by other researchers and given new meaning. The empirical material shows many examples of this. As we will see, this translation is not problematized and the re-translation is not considered, as illustrated in the following two excerpts.

The task involved go trials and stop trials. Go trials consisted of a drawing of an airplane presented in the centre of the computer screen either pointing to the right or to the left and requiring a spatially compatible response on one of two response devices. (Verburgh, Scherder, van Lange and Oosterlaan, 2014, 2)

[…] participants were asked to reproduce a sequence of yellow circles that was presented in a 4 × 4 grid on a computer screen. (Verburgh, et al. 2014, 2)

The tests, which involve seemingly simple tasks, are described in brief and legitimized through their context, for example as part of a larger test battery, being standardized or having a long history of use. The following excerpt illustrates an archetypical test description:

The primary test used was Design Fluency (DF), a standardized test which measures on-line multi-processing such as creativity, response inhibition, and cognitive flexibility [17], [18] and thus simulates the executive chain of decision making in a similar way as in real sport situation. DF is a non-verbal psychomotor test in which the participant uses the hand and a pen to combine all dots in a square with one line. The task is to find as many different combinations as possible of binding together the dots under time pressure (60 sec) and the participant is not allowed to use a solution twice. (Vestberg et al. 2012, 3)

This excerpt describes the primary test to find cognitive executive functions in sport. The procedure of the test is described, together with what it measures. This inscription is then used by other researchers and, in this process, acquires new meaning. This formulation makes the test appear as though natural facts are empirically tested, neutral and impersonal. As illustrated by Potter (1996) and Latour (2005), by highlighting an empirical discourse in which test results are constructed as ‘natural’, researchers become passive responders to nature showing itself. Thereby, the results appear as objective facts that are difficult to question, in that they have been translated into scientific facts. This fact-production can also be used in a specific way of governing. In the following excerpt, the importance of CEF is argued for.

The executive functions have also been described as a fundamental part of the working memory as the central executive component [24] interacting with the phonological loop and visual spatial sketchpad [22]. (…) The ability to use and update memory in order to predict future actions is a key aspect of the executive functions [25]. (Vestberg et al. 2012, 6)

This excerpt emphasizes the importance of this function. This way of legitimizing the importance of the function, by making the test results equal to the function, is a recurrent way of producing an inscription of a scientific fact. Thereafter, the liaison between this inscription (translations of test results) and the importance of the function (CEF) is interwoven and re-translated and serves as proof in a new meaning. This illustrates how cognitive executive function tests become inscriptions and are understood, translated and redefined as functions amongst young players.

Transforming Out-Of-Context Testing into Guidelines for Social Practice

The test results are not only used to prove the level of CEF among children and adults in sports, but can also be used as tools for selection in social practice. Once the facts have been established as true and relevant to performance, the importance of using these tests in the selection process is emphasized. Thus, the earlier arbitrary and unscientific process is transformed into a scientific and objective process. Despite the tests being limited and requiring translation to fit into the actual activity, the results are understood as central to the process of selection. The test as exemplified in the above excerpt, with its simplicity and clear absence of soccer skills, is not problematized, but is rather taken for granted as a solid ground for sorting out talent. This is also illustrated in the following excerpt.

We suggest that although cognitive training may improve EF that are used in soccer and may be complement for elite soccer players, it is even more important to find player with the right cognitive profile from the start. (Vestberg et al. 2017, 9)

This excerpt illustrates how CEF testing can not only guide the identification of young talent, but can also be used as a tool in the process of selection. This is an important argument and claims that instead of making a selection based on ‘subjective assumptions’ about talent or human ability, this new paradigm can supply test methods and, accordingly, implement selection based on neuroscientific evidence. Additionally, it is emphasized that cognitive executive functions are something you develop and keep for ever, even when you are no longer active as a player. For example, a former Swedish professional soccer player, Anders Limpar, was tested some twenty years after ending his career. His result turned out to be above average and was used as an additional argument (Vestberg, Petrovic, and Lerner 2018). The former elite player was interviewed and gave legitimacy to how the researcher was able to in retrospect analyze his skills as a soccer player, even though the test did not involve playing football. The player stated:

I was of course surprised and astonished by how much Torbjörn could read from my test results. None of the tests were about or had any links to football. Yet he could categorize me as a player. (Vestberg, Petrovic, and Lerner 2018, 106)

In this excerpt a former elite player acts as a ´witness´ when the authors´ claim concerning the importance of CEF in discerning young talent in soccer. But the excerpt does not only convey the significance of CEF. It also legitimizes that the out-of-context test can be translated into skills in soccer. The identification can also be done in retrospect to confirm that a successful player indeed was talented, or in advance to detect talent, which invigorates the test as valid and reliable. This out-of-context testing is not problematized, though. Rather, the CEF is once again framed as objective facts, underlining that: ‘(…) the human’s behaviour is equal to her cognitive performance ability, we are what our brain can perform. Knowing the brain´s performance ability within different cognitive domains one knows also how the human will or will not act’ (Vestberg, Petrovic, and Lerner 2018, 106).

Visualizing Brain Functions in Soccer

A pictorial repertoire (Gilbert and Mulkay 1984) can also be used to conceptualize and present scientific findings. Researchers can use various forms of visual display, such as diagrams, tables, drawings and photographs to communicate the findings and make truth claims in different contexts. In this sense, the images are context-dependent and are likely to differ regardless of whether they are published in a reviewed article or a popular textbook. This means that researchers produce different coherent versions in order to legitimize their claims. Thereby, images both illustrate and summarize what is conveyed in words and serve to legitimize a specific logic (Gilbert and Mulkay 1984). In this article, the ways in which executive functions are connected to abilities in soccer are repeatedly visualized in the written text and in figures and illustrations. For example, the figure below shows a recurrent pictorial repertoire Figure 1.

Figure 1. An illustration of the brain’s ‘library’ of memory (Vestberg, Petrovic, and Lerner 2018, 153).

Rose and Abi-Rashed (2013) emphasize that the visualization of the brain has become central in the development of neuroscience. Showing where brain activity occurs entails a strong legitimization of the research results. Thus, neuroscience has moved from an abstract science that examines the human psyche to a science that can show where human behaviour takes place. In doing so, the possibility of directly influencing, controlling and changing human behaviour is assumed to be increased. This is also an important component in the empirical material used in this article. The above figure is an example of a recurrent repertoire being used to support scientific truth-claims by visualizing cognitive executive functions in images of the brain (Gilbert and Mulkay 1984). By using such images and showing where behaviour is actually located, actions can be proved to exist. Test results therefore become inscriptions of human behaviour (Rose and Abi-Rashed 2013). Moreover, this image has a visual language and an explanatory logic recognizable from phrenology, where mental traits and human desires also could be localized in the brain (see Gall and Spurzheim 1809 [2012]).

As the above image shows, it is not only limited functions that are visually located in the brain. Complex and composite actions, such as game perception or passing skills, are also shown. The identification and measurement of vital capacities in the brain are likely to create interest amongst sports coaches, parents and young players. Accordingly, using such a pictorial repertoire and claiming to be able to visualize the brain’s functions during a game of soccer creates an out-there-ness and is appealing to the public (Grant 2015; Potter 1996). Thereby, the complex relations between individual behaviour and context are simplified. How individual actions are actually influenced by fellow players, opponents, substrates, equipment, the weather, motivation, training background and mental states are unexplained, or reduced to pictorial images. Furthermore, how these factors interact and affect each other is also not elaborated on.

Figure 2 shows another illustration of brain activity and portrays the previously mentioned former elite player Anders Limpar and his test results.

Figure 2. An illustration of Anders Limpar’s executive functions. (Vestberg, Petrovic, and Lerner 2018, 103).

Anders Limpar was a former international elite player until 2002. During his career he played for clubs like Arsenal FC and Everton FC in the UK and Colorado Rapids in the USA. He also represented the Swedish national team from 1987–1997.

This figure visualizes the former elite player’s CEF in relation to average players. This pictorial repertoire consists of a scientific vocabulary such as short-term memory, impulse control and cognitive flexibility, which are understood as central aspects of a high performing soccer player. The figure is clear and the test results are marked with a black line, which makes them stand out. The potential talents of children and young people can also be discerned by pictorial repertoires (Gilbert and Mulkay 1984). This is appealing in the search for young sporting talent and helps to produce objective measurements of talent, which is a central part of the production of ‘out-there-ness’ − constructing an objective reality beyond subjective assessment (Potter 1996).

Pictorial repertoires contribute to simplifying complex relations where complex neurological networks appear as simple linear relations. Moreover, written texts can reinforce pictures and vice versa:

An area in the brain’s frontal lobe that continuously optimizes what we are doing (…) and thus part of our executive functions. (…) We can understand it as a library, where the information is sorted out and provided with a code (for example football match; left footed opponent) and then stored into different bookshelves in the brain. When you are out of options and need new action options the brain decides from which shelf to pick up relevant information. Switching between these shelves requires cognitive flexibility as everything happens ceaselessly and within a few milliseconds. (Vestberg, Petrovic, and Lerner 2018, 152–153)

This use of metaphoricity is significant in constructing logic and making complex relations appear simple and includes everything from foreign policy to child development (Semino 2008). In the above excerpt the brain is compared to a library, where knowledge and competence are books provided with codes and stored on shelves. First, the objective facts are underlined in the account: ‘an area in the brain’s frontal lobe that continuously optimizes what we are doing’ and ‘part of our executive functions’. Thereafter the text addresses a soccer player using the pronoun you and uses metaphorical expressions (Semino 2008) to create pedagogical lessons for young players. Departing from the metaphor brain as a library simplifies the complexity that occurs in the brain and makes it easier to understand. Metaphorical expressions such as ‘information is sorted out and stored into different bookshelves in the brain’ and ‘the brain decides from which shelf to pick up relevant information’ create an understanding of the process in the brain and produces an out-there-ness (Potter 1996)—it is actually the brain itself that acts in ‘milliseconds’. This way of (re)producing and establishing scientific facts, visualizing the brain with bookshelves and the metaphorical expressions in the text reinforce an out-there-ness and a pervasive understanding of CEF. Due to this pervasiveness and clarity, scientific facts are likely to be recognized and legitimized as important in sporting contexts. Moreover, the metaphorical expression ‘the brain’s conductor’ (Vestberg, Petrovic, and Lerner 2018, 52) is used. Illustrating cognitive executive functions as ‘head of brain activity’ legitimizes CEF as a primary source in the understanding of human abilities and actions. Thereby, CEF are supposed to hold the keys to finding talent and the search for upcoming sporting stars.

Discussion and Conclusions

In this article we provide an example of how cognitive executive functions are translated into scientific facts, popularized and used in the argument for a specific way of governing talent selection in sport. Two interpretative repertoires have been identified in the analyses: an empiricist and a pictorial repertoire. By using an empiricist repertoire with phrases such as ‘the test result shows’ or ‘the tests measure’, the test results are perceived as ‘natural’ or ‘unbiased’ and become objective facts. That is, they construct a rationale that is independent from any subjective assessment by the researchers designing the test and thus show the true objective nature of individual capacity, which creates an out-there-ness (Potter 1996). In line with previous research, the empiricist repertoire is significant in the construction of facts, in that it produces a scienciness and, thereby, legitimacy for specific truth-claims (Collins and Bailey 2013; Kerr 2018; Latour 2005; Potter 1996). Our findings illustrate how test results are translated into abilities in sporting practices and how the CEF tests are legitimized as central to identifying young talent. Moreover, this article illuminates how these out-of-context test results can give the illusion of explanatory depth and as prerequisites for sporting success, when they actually are not.

In line with previous research illustrating how tests are used to provide accountability for the selection, we have provided empirical examples of how CEF, and especially CEF testing, uses a pictorial repertoire to produce a popularization of complex nexuses. Moreover, our findings illustrate the use of metaphors and images of the brain, such as visualizing the brain as a library, is part of a long history of pictorial repertoires to explain brain and behaviour. However, images construct a rationale that simplifies complex relations. There is an immediate attractiveness to neuroscience research that appeals to both the scientific community, coaches and the general public—which can be identified in the increased neuroscientific jargon in the explanatory framework of everyday sporting practice (Grant and Cavanagh 2007; Hardes 2017). This jargon is part of a neuroscientific inscription that guides how things are, or are supposed to be (Dean 2010). The popularization of research on brain activity has been underlined by previous research—arguing that the underlying mechanisms of a behavioural phenomenon are too reductionist and produce pseudo-insights from neuroscience (Grant 2015; Rhodes et al. 2014). Instead of highlighting important connections between out-of-context tests and possible social actions, they are often used as explanatory models for human development (Abi-Rashed and Rose 2010; Rose and Abi-Rashed 2013), e.g. to show where in the brain ‘the Cruyff-dribble’ or ‘game intelligence’ is located and stored, which creates a sense of scientific truth. Accordingly, these brain images can become accessible facts and inscriptions of undisputed facts in a new context (Latour 1987; Semino 2008). This is not to dismiss neuroscience as a valid research area in the field of sport, but rather to highlight that the mind-brain-behaviour relationship cannot be reduced to simplified pictorial images of the brain as explanations of human conduct. Understanding human behaviour or predicting the future success of young people involves more than just looking at tests out-of-context. In line with Grant (2015), we believe that analyzing future potential through out-of-context-testing, is to fall into a reductionist trap. These representations of human behaviour are rather superficial images of a complex weave of brain processes, working within a temporal and sociocultural framework. The complexity of the human mind and individual development needs a contextual understanding to be valid and applicable in everyday practice.

In conclusion, we have illustrated that facts and scientific truth-claims are part of a struggle for recognition and are made relevant in a specific context. In line with prior research, we emphasize that the construction of scientific facts does not mean that they are false, untrue or artificial, but that scientific truth-claims benefit from being studied in their production (Latour 1987; Latour and Woolgar 1979; Wittgenstein 1969). In line with Hardes (2017), Birch (2010) and Kerr (2018), we urge other researchers to direct a critical gaze towards neuroscientific truth-claims and critically review taken-for-granted facts in the area of sport in general and in talent selection in particular.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.