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Paper short abstract:

Free divers hold their breaths up to eight minutes. Divers maintain breath holds past the ‘breakpoint,’ through the ‘struggle’ phase, and into serious hypoxia. Developmental systems analysis finds different stages of skill acquisition, using resources internal and external to the nervous system.

Paper long abstract:

Free divers develop the ability to hold their breath for up to eight minutes. Developmental systems analysis of stages in the acquisition of the skill reveals a series of different transformations in which the system undergoing change and the resources in play fundamentally reconfigure. Breath-hold divers, or “apnoeists,” make use of a variety of resources, both internal and external to the nervous system. As apnoeists learn to maintain breath holds past the normal ‘breakpoint,’ through the ‘struggle’ phase, and into more serious hypoxia, the skill acquisition process requires varied social, practical, perceptual, and neurological elements at different stages.

The example of learning to hold the breath for long periods clearly illustrates broader patterns of enculturation and skill acquisition, including how regimes of training involve quite distinctive stages where the ‘system’ producing greater expertise fundamentally varies. No single factor reliably drives each stage. Increased performance requires a sequenced set of processes, some in which cause and effect appear to alter significantly. The ongoing guided canalization of developmental neuroplasticity obviates the divide between the biological and cultural over time and shows the usefulness of a fine-grained developmental systems approach for examining how the nervous system can be encultured. This case study is part of a broader attempt to strengthen developmental systems analysis in biocultural approaches to issue in psychological anthropology, in this case, to skill acquisition and bodily enculturation.