Enrichment programs of various kinds might be even more American than apple pie. From bread to milk to orange juice, from educational programs to prenatal music, from youth sport camps to oxygen on pro sidelines, Americans believe in enrichment. However, this widespread acceptance of enrichment often involves fundamental errors and, uncritically embracing enrichment can cause several problems.
First, neglect or deprivation produces harm that can often be avoided or repaired by remediating the deficiency. This differs fundamentally from any attempt to improve upon the results of an environment that is already adequate or sufficient rather than deficient. Consider a couple illustrations. Deprivation of Vitamin C causes scurvy - which timely remediation prevents. However, a body enriched with Vitamin C beyond adequacy flushes the excess, has irritable bowels, etc. Insufficient intake of water causes first a decrement in performance and eventually dehydration. In contrast, athletes who are already adequately hydrated reap no benefit from hyper-hydration, but their bodies do face additional work as they rid themselves of the excess. For another example, consider the effects of complete inactivity on a muscle. The rapid result is atrophy - the muscle shrinks, loses strength, etc. However, taxing that same muscle by lifting more weight, more times, everyday in order to enrich it will cause overtraining and eventual injury.
Such reactions occur not only in numerous biological systems, but many of us have first hand experience with comparable psychological, cognitive, and social situations. The youngster deprived of language stimulation fails to develop normal language skills. However, beyond the type and amount of language stimulation needed for normal development, being talked to more often, by more people, saying more different things does not produce superior language development. in fact, how many of us have experienced boredom, a desire for respite, reprieve, or other relief in situations of such over-stimulation?
In the case of someone deprived of normal stimulation, remediation can produce amazing results. However, problems arise when people mistakenly reason: if remediation of deficiencies can produce such profound, positive change, then enriching other youngsters who have not suffered deprivation should produce comparable gains beyond their normal development. Neither is the logic sound or empirical evidence convincing. Because someone deprived of all music develops an impoverished appreciation of music and deficient skills, it does not follow that enriching someone already exposed to a normal range and amount of musical stimulation will make him/her the next Mozart.
Sport presents a slightly more difficult situation because some notable exceptions seem to exist. However, such apparent exceptions generally involve procedures that cause long-term harm (i.e., steroids), yield questionable benefits (i.e., protein supplements), or raise ethical or legal issues (i.e., growth hormones, erythropoeitin). In contrast, excellent documentation exists for the harm done by overtraining, the harm of too much training at too high levels of intensity and frequency at too young an age, etc. The psychological consequences of confusing remediaton of deficiencies with enrichment of sufficient stimulation may be more ambiguous than the physiological, but are no less important.
To illustrate such confusion, consider the relationship between arousal and performance. For decades, this relationship has been described as following an inverted-U: both too low and too high arousal are associated with higher performance (the curve is thus an inverted-U).
Recent research shows that the smoothness of this inverted-U is misleading because after sufficient or adequate arousal exists, even small increases can cause precipitous performance declines. In a more recent catastrophe model the exact point at which some new, small increase (enrichment) will impair performance is unclear, but once reached, performance drops suddenly and steeply, not gradually.
Despite the lack of extensive, clear research and a few notable exceptions who thrive on training regimens that harm others, athletes, coaches, and parents would seem well advised to avoid the danger of confusing enrichment and remediation. Of course, the most challenging task in accomplishing this is determination of where sufficient / adequate stimulation stops and enrichment beyond sufficiency begins.
Although a dehydrated person's thirst might not match his/her degree of deprivation, the deficiency is clear to anyone who understands it and pronounced longing for the insufficient resource is apparent. In athletes, deficiency would be marked by developmental tag and skill development definitely would be retarded. Such indications should alert anyone to a condition of deprivation.
In contrast, it is hard to argue that a participant who needs to be regularly prodded or even goaded or bribed into absorbing more practice, more coaching, etc. is suffering deprivation - boredom perhaps, and overtraining seems likely, or even burnout, but not deprivation. More likely, such a situation indicates a need for respite rather than remediation, no matter how well intentioned the enrichment.
Someone who is developmentally precocious and shows advanced rather than delayed skill development is unlikely suffering from deprivation - and is unlikely to benefit from simple enrichment. Instead an unusually talented athlete needs opportunities to compare him/herself with similarly skilled and motivated others. Such opportunities are not enrichment, but are the sufficient condition for the kind of social comparison with similar others without which optimal growth will be difficult if not impossible because of the absence of adequate challenge.
Developing new opportunities for both practice and performance that involve gradually increasing demands illustrate sufficient support, not inappropriate enrichment. When the goal and objectives of the athlete, driven by his/her internal needs, axe the focal point, free from external pressures and expectations driven by the needs of others, sufficiency is likely. In contrast, when decisions about practice, training, etc. are driven by the goals and needs of others, then inappropriate enrichment becomes more likely and intrusion, domination, or even abuse can occur.
Sufficient / adequate support for any sport activity should first involve safety, followed by intrinsic fun and enjoyment by the participant, with social approval and support from others last. Parents and coaches who keep practice secure, attend regularly, and model enjoyment illustrate sufficient support. However, putting attendance at one person's activities ahead of everyone else's activities, modeling anger or aggression at small provocations such as a referee's error, diverting limited resources (money, time, etc.) from other equally enjoyable and worthy activities, and similar decisions illustrate inappropriate enrichment.
People being deprived look and act differently than people receiving adequate support and stimulation. Concerned parents, coaches, and friends need to be careful that they neither confuse remediation of deficiency with unnecessary enrichment beyond sufficiency nor see in someone else only a mirage of their own construction.