Discriminant Analysis Projected Onto The Standard Metric As A Method For Determining Differences In Intellectual Abilities Between Track- And-Field Athletes And Basketball Players

The research was conducted in order to determine the structure and differences in cognitive dimensions of track-and-field athletes and basketball players. For the purpose of determining the structures and their differences in the manifest and latent cognitive spaces, 100 male respondents aged 14 and 18 was tested. This sample can be considered representative of athletes of those ages. For the assessment of cognitive abilities, the researchers used 6 measurement instruments selected so that the structure analysis could be performed on the basis of the cybernetic model designed by (Das, Kirby & Jarman 1979) and by (Bosnar & Horga, 1981), (Momirovic, Bosnar & Horga 1982), taking into account the fact that the selected tests measure three types of cognitive processing . To assess the effectiveness of the input processor, or perceptual reasoning, CF-2 and GT-7 were selected, to assess the effectiveness of the parallel processor, or identification of relations and correlates - IT-2 and D-4S, and to assess the effectiveness of the serial processor, or symbolic reasoning, ALPHA-7 and G-SIN were selected. All the data in this research were processed at the Multidisciplinary Research Center of the Faculty of Sport and Physical Education, University of Pristina, through the system of data processing software programs developed by Popovic, D. (1980), (1993) and Momirovic, K. & Popovic, D. (2003).To determine differences between the groups, canonical discriminant analysis was applied. The researchers calculated the discriminant coefficient values, canonical correlation coefficients, percentage of the explained group variability, Bartlett`s chi-square test values, degrees of freedom, Wilks' Lambda values, and error probability in the rejection of the hypothesis that the actual canonical correlation value is equal to zero. They also calculated the standardized coefficients of the participation of the tests in the formation of significant discriminant functions, as well as centroids of the groups on the significant discriminant functions. The results of the discriminant analysis of cognitive variables show that athletes of different sports differ from each other significantly. By means of condensation of variables in cognitive space, two discriminant variables, which maximally separated the groups of athletes based on the discriminant coefficients, were isolated.