Sport Psychology

AASP Ethical Principles

-Competence - What you know -Integrity - are you honest - Professional and Scientific Responsibility - Respect for peoples rights and dignity - Concern for other welfare - Social Responsibility

Competence

-Multipele discipline -continuing education -mentorship- support group -relationships- athletes, parents -Referrals

Active Listening

-Pay attention -Keep an open mind -show that your listening -provide feedback, asking questions -defer judgment -respond appropriately -eye contact - Honesty -Avoid defensiveness -consistency -Empathy -Avoid sarcasm-takes you away from the elements of trust -Praise/Criticize Behavior -Respect Integrity -Positive Non-verbal cues

Boundaries

-athletic content... accommodations -conflicts of interest -multiple relationships

Ways to use imagery

-learning and practicing sport skills, correcting mistakes, learning and practicing performance strategies, preparing and mental focus for competition, building and enhancing mental skills.

Confidentiality

-organizational system -consent and classification

Techniques used to deal with negative thoughts

-thought stoppage -changing negative thoughts to positive -countering -reframing -cognitive restructuring of irrational and distorted thoughts -constructing affirmation statements

Name all of the phases of motor skill learning and briefly describe the coach's role in each.

1) Cognitive- develop initial motor program much conscious attention. High cognitive activity. Coach should provide verbal instructions, demonstrations, and encouragement. 2) Associative- fewer errors, increased speed, accuracy, and coordination. Can devote attention to environment. Refining motor program. Coach should plane appropriate practice opportunities, teach visual strategies, provide feedback to reinforce, motivate and correct performance. 3) Autonomous -Highly proficient, automatic, focus directed on environment and decision making. Coach should plan appropriate practice, provide feedback, motivate.

List the three parts of the Sandwich Approach for feedback in order and give an example of a coach using the technique with an athlete

1) positive statement - reinforcement: "Good shot!" 2) Feedback - error correction: "Next time you shoot try squaring your hips to the basket for better accuracy" 3) Compliment - motivation : "your doing great keep it up!"

What are two factors that effect the optimal level of arousal needed for a given sport situation

1. Trait Anxiety levels different for individual performances 2. different arousal levels needed for different sports.

Mental Skills Training Program

1.Self-Regulation: goal setting, planning, observing, and evaluating behaviors. 2.Discuss your approach: What you do and what you don't do. 3.Emphasize the importance of mental training 4.Assess psychological strengths and weaknesses. 5.Analyze Demands of the Sport. 6. Determining what skills to include: Foundational skills, Performance skills, Personal Developmental Skills, Team skills.

Zone of Optimal Functioning

A practical tool for helping athletes establish his/her optimal levels of pre-performance anxiety, within which performance levels are proposed to be greatest. If anxiety levels are outside of the optimal zone, performance will not occur at maximal levels.

What are similarities and differences between assertive and aggressive behaviors in sport.

Aggressive behaviors are responsive actions to inflict pain or harm on someone. Intention to meet a performance goal. Assertive behaviors: performing acts that are still forceful but they are not harming.

The Arousal/Performance Relationship

Athletes thoughts and feelings often explain poorer performance when arousal is too high.

Describe the difference between whole- verses part- practice and give an example of a time where coaches would choose to use part practice.

Bowling Example: Part Practice: 1. Approach 2.push away 3.pendulum swing 4. delevery Whole Practice: 1. Approach+push away + pendulum swing + delivery= every skill taught as a whole.

Describe the purpose and technique of stress inoculation training

Circumvent unpleasant effects of training and build up immunity to stress. 3 Phases: 1) Conceptualization: understand the effects of positive and negative thoughts on sport performance 2)Rehearsal: learn to use skill to avoid self defeating thought and anticipation of failure, positive thoughts, imagery and positive self talk. 3)Application: practice application of skill in low stress environments, slow build up the stress and practice skills, positive restructuring and relaxation.

What are the different specializations in sport psychology?

Clinical Sport Psychologist: Ph. D degree Educational Sport psychologists Research sport psychologists/specialistsApplied sports psychology focuses on teaching skills to enhance athletic performance such as goal setting and imagery. Clinical sports psychology involves combining mental training strategies from sports psychology with psychotherapy to help clients who suffer from mental health problems including eating disorders and depression. Academic sports psychologists teach at colleges and universities and also conduct research

Team Dynamics

Coach-Team Coach- Staff Coach- Athlete Athlete- Athlete

Individual Zone of Optimal Functioning

Consists of an optimal state of arousal unique for each individual athlete. Hanin predicts that athletes whose state anxiety level falls with in their IZOF would perform better than athletes whose sate anxiety was outside their IZOF.

Shifting attention

Depends on: sport, position, current play. Requires continual readjustment: where athlete needs to focus, athletes' strengths and weaknesses are. Individual differences: can athlete concentrate, is the athlete motivated, have they been trained to focus, can they control arousal appropriately. What happens when arousal exceeds optimal level?

Cusp Catastrophe Model

Describes the effect of cognitive anxiety and psychological arousal ( as apposed to somatic anxiety) on performance. Cognitive anxiety determines whether the effect of psychological arousal on performance will be smooth and small, large, and catastrophic, or somewhere in between. Suggests that elevations in cognitive anxiety can have positive performance consequences dependent upon the levels of psychological arousal.

In general, psychology is the study of human behavior. What is the purpose of sport psychology?

Describes, expalains, and predicts the attitudes, feelings, and behaviors of sport participants- including athletes, coaches, and crowd members.

Describe an example of an incident of aggression within a sport situation. Use two aggression theories to explain why the incident in your example may have occurred.

During a basketball game I was dribbling down the court and my defender stole the ball from me. I got very frustrated and grabbed her jersey; frustration aggression. The Referee game me a foul and I got more frustrated and so I kicked the ball off the court. Initially m aggression is he result of the frustration aggression theory and then when the ref called a foul, I heard from another player to kick the ball when Im angry; social learning theory.

Drive Theory

Hull's drive theory predicts that arousal increases the dominant response, whether or not the dominant response is the correct one. If the dominant response is correct than higher arousal will lead to better performance. If the proper response is not mastered or if the skill is complex, than more arousal will lead to incorrect response. Arousal must be controlled if sport skills are to be performed with optimal effectiveness.

Why is it important for psychologists who specialize in sport to have more than just clinical psychology training?

It is important for psychologists to have multiple types of training to be familiar and up to date with all of the many psychological factors that underline sport competition.

Communication in Sport

Leadership style and motivation Miscommunication

Multidimensional anxiety theory

Makes distinctions between competitive state cognitive anxiety on the premise that they have different relationships to performance. Somatic anxiety is predicted to display an inverted-U relationship with performance and cognitive anxiety a negative linear relationship. As cognitive anxiety increases, performance progressively deteriorates.

Sport psychology practitioners

Must be prudent about claiming credit for anything about the athletes success. Have a professional and ethical obligation to know the research evidence supporting a particular technique or treatment before making such claims.

Reversal Theory

Persons are capable of interpreting their arousal level into one of two categories: Excitement (pleasent) or anxiety (unpleasant): low arousal may be interpreted as relaxation(pleasant) or boredom (unpleasant). It is important that athletes are able to interpret their current and changed arousal states in order to explain and predict the effect of emotion on sport.

Catastrophe Theory

Predicts that further physiological arousal and cognitive anxiety will result in a large and dramatic decline in performance. "Chocking"

How could aggression impact performance according to the three mechanistic explanations presented in the chapter on arousal. Be sure to relate aggression to each of the explanations.

Processing efficiency theory: when a person is anxious, a proportion of their attentional capacity for the task is filled by task-irrelevant cognitive worry, effectively reducing their working memory capacity, impairing cognitive processing efficiency and potential, performance. Attentional control theory: anxiety impairs the efficiency of attention because it causes a shift in attention to threat-related stimuli rather than toward task and goal relevant information, thereby negatively affecting performance. Conscious processing hypothesis: a high-anxious performer starts to use excessive thinking, which leads to the execution of skills with an inward attention that in turn an lead to a failure to execute the skill successfully, paralysis by analysis.

Give an example of each of the following techniques describing hen a coach might employ each to help a performer attain the optimal level of arousal.

Raiser : Energizing imagery, transferring of energy, when the athlete is feeling fatigued or tired before a game. Reducer: Breathing exercise, visualization when the athlete is too hyped up before a race. Restructuring: confidence management, goal setting during half time when the team is getting worked by the other team.

Using Imagery as a Mental Training Tool

Re-creating or creating performances in your mind Controllability, Vividness, External imagery perspective: seeing the image from outside your body Internal Imagery perspective: seeing as if your performing the image from within Using imagery immediately before performance can help athletes perform better.

Attention Control Training Principles pg 307 Williams, 2015.

Requires a minimum of 4 different types of concentration Focus: -Broad- basketball, hokey -Narrow- sprints, shooting Direction: -External- ball, opponents, Internal- problem solving, muscle tension

In the discussion of the effect of arousal on performance, two dimensions of response characteristics (stress) are engaged.

The dimension dealing with the mind is COGNITIVE (mental) and the dimension dealing with the body is SOMATIC (perceived physical components).

The Inverted-U Hypothesis

The relationship between arousal and performance is curvilinear with best performance occurring at an intermediate point with in the range of arousal being examined. Arousal is a factor influencing performance.

What is the significance of appraisal to a performer in terms of stress? How could a sport psychologist use appraisal and the Reversal Theory to help an athlete perform better?

The significance of appraisal to a performer in terms of stress is it can be seen as a challenge, there or irrelevant. By using the reversal theory and appraisal we can interpret the athletes arousal level and if their response is pleasant or unpleasant we can use this to improve their performance.

Describe a situation where an individual "chokes" during a performance. Use one of the theories about arousal, explain what might have taken place to cause the underperformance to happen?

Using my volleyball example in college. I went to a game for the first time to serve. I as so nervous, I was thinking of all of the threat-related stimuli rather than toward my task ( serving the ball over the net), and I completely "choked" and hit the ref with my serve. This is an example of conscious processing hypothesis.

Psychologist

an individual educated and university-trained in the field of psychology may refer to themselves as psychologists, and state licensing boards have traditionally supported this position.

Communication

effective communication is critical to success Sending-> Receiving-> Interpreting -> Feedback Impacted by situational and individual factors

Biological or instinct theories

human aggression is inevitable because it is a component of our survival

The frustration-aggresson hypothesis

human aggressive tendencies will be lowered if there are outlets for expressing the so called "normal" predisposition to aggress.

Agression

intentional response a person makes to inflict pain or harm to another person -Instrumental aggression: When athletes intention is to meet a performance goal. -Goal, or reactive aggression: purposely injuring or harming an opponent.

Social learning theory

modeling a child-rearing experience markedly dictate the extent to which a person possesses aggressive tendencies.

Arousal

often synonymous with the term drive, activation, readiness, or excitation- a requisite for optimal sport performance

Proactive assertion

performing acts that are forceful yet acceptable

Ethics

provide the moral component of professional practice, forming a system of principles that suggest a particular code of conduct.

Instrumental aggression and or proactive assertion instead of goal or reactive aggression is when

sport aggression is useful and more likely to increase performance in sport.