Neurocognition and ­Action - Biomechanics

Holistic account to competitive state anxiety on perceptual motor task

Project duration: 2014/10 - 2017/09
Project funding: 80.000 Euro

Most unforgettable moments in sport have been those that have resulted in devastating, sudden decline in performance, when a win, or ultimate success, for a particular athlete or team was thought to be a surety. While competitive anxiety (CA) can result in athletes' significant performance decline, others have described CA to have contributed to performance gains when competing under intense anxiety-induced atmosphere. Although literature on CA in sport is very much documented, its holistic assessment and corresponding psychological skills on perceptual-motor task in one research design remains somehow untapped. Indeed, if CA is considered as an emotional experience that unfolds over time, then the purpose of these four interrelated longitudinal studies are to first, investigate symptom responses of CA by incorporating dimensions such as intensity, interpretation and frequency of intrusions before and during competitive fixtures among elite sample of table tennis players from Ghana. The implementation of Experience Sampling Method (ESM) will be done across within and between-subject variables of gender and skill in an ecologically valid environment. ESM allows for multiple repeated measurements of athletes? patterns of behavior, thoughts and emotions about how they think, feel and behave over a period of time. Second, the study also examines associated psychological skills deployed to combat anxiety intensity, interpretation, and frequency at pre-competition and under differing stressing situations during competitive fixtures. Significant predictors of these psychological constructs during high stakes in elite competition are also examined. It is expected that anxiety dimensions will fluctuate as time to competition get closer across gender and skill level. These emotional episodes are supposed to be related to deployed psychological skills during the same period. Competitive experience, gender and age are expected to be significant predictors of anxiety dimensions and psychological skills during high stakes in elite competition. The right structure, content, and timing of multi-modal culturally diversified psychological skills application are recommended to help reduce the negative impact of competitive anxiety.