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. 2023 Feb 2;20(3):2670.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph20032670.

The Role of Cognition and Social Factors in Competition: How Do People with Intellectual Disabilities Respond to Opponents?

Kandianos Emmanouil Sakalidis  1 , Stein Gerrit Paul Menting  2 , Florentina Johanna Hettinga  1
Affiliations

The Role of Cognition and Social Factors in Competition: How Do People with Intellectual Disabilities Respond to Opponents?

Kandianos Emmanouil Sakalidis et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

Exploring pacing behaviour in people with intellectual disabilities (ID) in competition will help to better understand the impact of cognition and social environment in sports, providing support for the shaping of proper inclusive sports environments. The present experimental study aimed to (1) compare the pacing behaviour and performance between people with and without ID who are inexperienced in cycling and (2) investigate how these are influenced by an opponent. Participants with (n = 8) and without ID (n = 10) performed two randomised 4-km maximal cycling trials, alone and against an opponent. Non-parametric tests for repeated measures data (p ≤ 0.05) revealed that people with ID cycled slower, but with higher inter-individual variation (both conditions) and paced themselves differently compared to people without ID when competing against an opponent. In contrast to the previous literature in athletes without ID, the presence of a faster opponent resulted in a decrease in the performance in the participants with ID. The negative influence of the opponent highlights the potential difficulties people with ID experience to adequately use their opponents to enhance their self-regulatory processes and optimize their pacing and performance in maximal exercise trials. Coaches who want to offer inclusive sports environments for people with ID could take these findings into consideration.

Keywords: head-to-head trial; pacing; self-regulation; sports performance; time trial.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Individual pacing strategies of the ID and non-ID group at the ‘alone’ condition (a) and the ‘head-to-head’ condition (b).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Relative effects and 95% confidence intervals for the velocity and power output of the ID and non-ID group during the ‘alone’ (a,b) and ‘head-to-head’ condition (c,d).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Box plots with the velocity and power output differences per condition (‘alone’ and ‘head-to-head’) for the ID (a,b) and the non-ID groups (c,d) at different distance points (° = outliers).
Figure 4
Figure 4
Line graphs with the median velocity differences (+ interquartile ranges) and the relative effects (+ 95% confidence intervals) in the ‘against an opponent’ condition between the participants with (a,b) and without ID (c,d) and their virtual opponents (avatars).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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