Embodied Cognition in Physical Activity and Sport Science

The embodied turn or practice turn, however you want to call it, elicited by the embodied cognition perspective, is starting to involve also physical activity and sport sciences. The physiological and biomechanical aspects related to the specialized performance, hither to dominating the space for the new cognitive approaches highlighted by neurosciences. The centrality of the person his embodiment in the environmental conception of the action, is shedding light on the mind-body-environment relationship as an integrated scenario, in which the different cognitive processes adapt to the sensory-motor processes as and integral part of the executive functions. New scientific discoveries help outline educational strategies, approaches and planning of the physical exercise in physical activity, physical education and sport domains. A vision in which exercise intensity, together with the coordinative complexity and the situational variability, elicit all the physiological and cognitive factors supporting the development of the child's executive functions. At the same time, thanks to the person's unitary involvement, attention is paid also to the emotional and relational aspects, in support of a motivation for the physical and sporting practice able to generate the acquisition of active lifestyles over time. From the reference to the approach of neurosciences to the embodied cognition, with a transversal analysis concerning physical activity in general, the chapter mentions some elements of reflection in the specific areas of physical activity, physical education and sports. These three domains, for their peculiarity of body and motor involvement, represent interesting and intriguing fields of study. In the declination of physical and sporting activities, in fact, it is difficult non to integrate the different orientations that are guiding research in the field of cognitive functions. The concepts of situate action, time pressure, subservience of cognition to action, are declined in the continuous reference between on-line and off-line cognition, making us foresee their convergence on the sensorimotor aspects guiding action, in the first case, or the mere reference to them, in the second case. To think of the action or to put what we think into action serve as an integrated mechanism alternating and penetrating into all the activities affecting everyday life or particular moments, such as those referred to physical and sport activity.