In a book Dr. Pierro wrote on Achievement Testing, he insisted that the conditions in which his children were taking the achievement test had to be as close as possible to the conditions in which the information was learned - Preferably In their own classroom with their own teacher in charge. Catherine E. Myers, in her book, Memory Loss and the Brain, reports on her research in State-Dependent Memory that seems to support his concern.
Here are some of her findings:
➨ Environmental context: Subjects who learn information in one room are able to remember more when tested in the same room than in a different room. Other environmental influences may include the time of day and the people who are present.
➨ Emotional state: Subjects who are sad are better able to remember unhappy or unpleasant memories; subjects who are happy are better able to remember happy or pleasant memories.
➨ Sensory modality: Subjects given information in verbal format may be more able to answer verbal questions about the information, while subjects to whom the information is presented in a visual format may be more able to recognize the same information again when presented visually.
Applications to Sports Psychology
When you take your team to an “Away” game, your players are in an environment that is different from their comfortable, “used-to” home environment. The sounds, the lighting, the floor, the feelings, etc. are different. Perhaps your players who learn their sports tactics in one venue are able to remember more when they are later playing in the same venue or a similar venue. Is this what we call the “home-court advantage”?
I wish that Memory Loss and the Brain had been in my library back in my coaching days. Let’s see how we could make use of her findings in our sports situation:
Make conditions in the away gym and locker room as close to the home environment and activity as possible. If you can get there early, have your players visit the gym and their locker room – just wander around and get the “feel” of things.
Periodically, use your visiting pre-game warm-up as the beginning of your regular practice program.
Have your players wear their visiting game uniforms and colors in your regular home practices in order to get used to dealing with these different uniforms.
Have some of your practice sessions with your “regulars” dressed in their away uniforms competing with your reserve players dressed in nameless uniforms. The practice should be as real as an “away-game” with officials, time factors, etc.
What are your thoughts on this issue? Is this really an issue? If so, what other activities could you use? We’d like to hear from you on this.
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