The development of expertise has been a popular topic of investigation across several performance domains, including sport. An increasingly sophisticated knowledge base regarding both the nature of sport expertise and the factors that facilitate its development has begun to emerge, however, many questions remain to be answered. The purpose of this study was to examine the factors that contributed to the development and maintenance of performance of highly accomplished athletes. During the first phase of the study, 10 athletes having won at least two Olympic gold medals or two World Championship titles, or a combination of both, were interviewed using an in-depth, open-ended, and semi-structured approach (Patton, 1987). In order to complement and authenticate the data elicited from the athletes, their parents (n = 9) and coaches (n = 4) were also interviewed. The data were analyzed both inductively and deductively using Cote, Salmela, Baria and Russell's (1993) procedures for organizing and interpreting unstructured qualitative data. Results revealed that the athletes progressed through four stages throughout their career: the Sampling, Specializing, Investment, and Maintenance Years. Several factors were perceived to be important across these stages and they pertained to the athletes' context, personal characteristics, training, and competition. Although there were differences in the athletes' perceptions, common findings were that parents and coaches were extremely valuable resources throughout their career. Furthermore, the athletes manifested certain attributes that contributed to their development, which included a love for sports, self-confidence, determination, perseverance, a strong work ethic, and natural talent. As the athletes moved to a higher level in their sport, training required more hours, intensity, and quality. Competition also became more demanding but through their preparation, they developed strategies that enabled them to enjoy the process of performance and to cope with pressure and distractions. In the second phase of the study, 3 of the 10 athletes participated in a concept mapping activity (Huberman, 1989; Miles & Khattri, 1995), in which they created a holistic map that profiled the factors deemed important in their development, using the categories that emerged in the first phase of the study. Although their maps were structured in different ways, the athletes identified several common factors that concerned their context, personal characteristics, training, and competition. They also depicted similar relationships between these factors. Overall, the data collected from the concept mapping activity confirmed the analysis that was completed during the first phase of the study. They also corroborated the information the athletes provided during their interviews. This study is significant because it made several theoretical, methodological, and practical contributions regarding the development and maintenance of expert performance in sport. It demonstrated that although several factors contributed to the athletes' expertise in sport, various paths led them to become World and Olympic champions. Extensive information can be used to guide future studies and to enhance the experience of athletes, parents, and coaches. Researchers should continue investigating the factors affecting the development of expertise in sport, particularly at the maintenance years level, because empirical information is still lacking.

Au cours des deux dernières décennies, un nombre considérable de chercheurs en pédagogie du sport ont étudié le processus enseignement-apprentissage dans la pratique sportive. Dans plusieurs des études rapportées, les chercheurs ont tenté de comprendre l'interaction entraîneur-athlètes en utilisant l'un des trois instruments suivants: les grilles d'observation, les entrevues et les questionnaires. Règle générale, les chercheurs ont accordé très peu d'importance à l'athlète, ce qui est problématique lorsque l'on considère qu'il existe une littérature en éducation qui démontre que l'élève est le lien médiateur dans le processus enseignement-apprentissage. La présente étude a porté sur une composante centrale du processus enseignement-apprentissage: la communication. En suivant une approche inductive, une première phase de la recherche a permis au chercheur de se familiariser avec le contexte de la pratique du karaté et de faire ressortir les éléments qui caractérisaient le plus la communication instructeur-athlètes dans un club de karaté traditionnel. L'analyse des données recueillies lors d'entrevues et d'observations non-participantes a fait ressortir les points suivants: (a) l'adoption des valeurs enseignées, (b) l'importance de l'humilité, (c) la non-valorisation des compétitions et (d) une fixation d'objectifs qui ne correspond pas à ce que l'on retrouve dans la littérature. Afin de répondre aux questions soulevées durant la phase I, des séances d'observation et des entrevues ont été réalisées avec les athlètes débutants du club de karaté et avec les instructeurs et les athlètes d'un programme de sport-études. L'analyse de ce nouveau corpus de données a permis de relever les points suivants: (a) les débutants sont conscients de la philosophie du club, (b) les athlètes débutants ont sensiblement les mêmes objectifs que les athlètes de niveau avancé et (c) dans le programme sport-études, les instructeurs et les athlètes ont des objectifs de performance à des compétitions.

The present research, comprised of two affiliated studies, specifically tested the Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Romer (1993) framework for the acquisition of expertise in Canadian middle distance running. The conceptual framework posited that performance level was a monotonic function of accumulated amounts of deliberate practice. Ericsson and colleagues initially defined deliberate practice as domain-specific training activities that were highly relevant to improving performance, highly effortful in nature, and not inherently enjoyable. Study 1 tested this definition according to the runners' own perceptions of training. Contrary to the original conception of deliberate practice, results indicated that the most relevant and the most effortful training activities were also perceived as inherently enjoyable. Findings indicated that the definition for deliberate practice was not transferable from music to sport, but, rather, a modified conception of deliberate practice was required for athletics. Study 2 retrospectively compared accumulated amounts of deliberate practice between national, provincial, and club level runners across the initial nine years of their careers. Results indicated that attained performance levels were governed by a monotonic relationship with accumulated practice variables according to an inverse power law. Trends demonstrated that the national level runners began to invest more time into practice after nine years. Early in their careers, accumulated practice proved to be the primary predictor of running performance and the amount of supervised practice with a coach differentiated between the elite and club level athletes.

The primary purpose of this study was to examine Hardy's (1997) hypothesis that external visual imagery is the most beneficial imagery perspective for tasks that focus on form and body shape. A secondary purpose was to test whether a short-term imagery training program would result in improvements in imagery ability. Eighteen synchronized figure skaters participated in a five week imagery training program that focused on imaging the form and body position of skating skills in practice and competitive situations. Analysis of the results provided support for Hardy's hypothesis because skaters who adopted an external imagery perspective benefited the most from the imagery training program. This was demonstrated by a significant increase in the use of the cognitive functions of imagery as measured by the Sport Imagery Questionnaire. In comparison, skaters who adopted an internal perspective made no significant improvements. Significant improvements were made on both general imagery ability and a skating specific scale. The results are further discussed in terms of an athlete's preference for a particular imagery perspective, as well as the implications for sport psychology consultants.

The purpose of this study was to describe the traditional and modern beliefs and the actions of judo coaches and how these beliefs were represented in their actions during training. In-depth, open-ended interviews were conducted with six male and one female expert judo coaches of Canadian, Japanese and European origin working in Canada. Three principal issues were addressed with expert judo coaches who worked within the Canadian context: (1) how these coaches conceptualized their beliefs regarding traditional values and behavior in judo, (2) how they differed in their beliefs with regarding traditions and modern judo orientations, (3) whether these beliefs that ranged from traditional and modern perspectives, translated into the actions of judo coaches in actual training session. The means used to respond to these questions was the use of qualitative analyses based on in-depth interviews, participant observation, field notes, and stimulated recall with the coaches' actions that were videotaped during training sessions. The analyses revealed that the Canadian context for the sport of judo significantly shaped the coaches' evolution both as athletes and coaches, in the development of their personal philosophies with respect to the practice of judo in this country. The inductive analysis revealed that these coaches conceptualized their sport in a manner analogous to the mental model of gymnastic (Cote, 1993) and team coaches (Bloom, 1996). Six components emerged from the analysis. These included the three central components of the Coaching Model (Cote, Salmela, Trudel, Baria, & Russell, 1995) organization, training and competition, and three additional peripheral components representative of the contextual factors, and the coaches' and athletes' characteristics. While conceptually similar to the findings of Cote (1993) and Bloom (1996), the results indicated that the contextual factors of the Canadian judo environment were more complex than in the gymnastics Cote, 1993). Secondly, coaches who originated from other countries, appeared to have different beliefs regarding the traditions of judo and were required significantly to adapt these philosophies, and coaching styles due to the constraints of practicing judo in Canada. They appeared to develop a hybrid of beliefs regarding judo training in Canada which included Japanese-based traditional methods, and science-based procedures that had to be adapted to the particular mentalities of Canadian judokas. These coaches also developed a set of modern beliefs especially regarding training and international competition. Thirdly, the beliefs of the coaches recorded during the interviews appeared to be congruent and consistent with their videotaped actions observed during the stimulated recall procedures. It was apparent that considerable adjustments were required in order to carry out in their practices, especially in terms of whether the coaches' viewed "judo as art" or "judo as competition". The coaches also revealed that a number of their behaviors, especially those related to creating the training atmosphere, were necessary for Canadian judokas, although it was clear that such practices were not the most effective means of making Canada a world power in judo. In sum, the present study has contributed to the understanding and conceptualization of the factors which affect the mental model of coaches and their evolution across their career. It also has added significant elements to the understanding of a variety of the traditional and modern beliefs and actions, and their adaptations in the Canadian judo.

The Ericsson framework (1996) for the acquisition of expertise describes deliberate practice as the most relevant training for the improvement of performance within a domain of expertise. The framework describes deliberate practice as highly relevant, highly effortful forms of training that are inherently non-enjoyable. Subsequent studies seeking to apply the framework in the domain of sport (Starkes et al., 1996; Helsen et al., 1998; Young & Salmela, 1998) found that many subjects described highly relevant, highly effortful forms of practice to be enjoyable. Following the findings of previous deliberate practice studies in the sport setting, this study sought to seek out swimmers who were currently training and who described deliberate practice as being enjoyable and to discover the sources of this pleasure. A questionnaire was administered to 237 male and female competitive swimmers from three different performance groups to identify how they rated swimming specific deliberate practice activities regarding the relative relevance, effort, concentration and enjoyment of each. Subsequently, 18 subjects who had rated deliberate practice as enjoyable, were interviewed regarding the nature of their enjoyment of the deliberate practice. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

The purpose of this experiment was to examine the influence of peer mastery and peer coping models on children's self-efficacy beliefs, perceptions of task difficulty and diving performance. Thirty children (M age = 7.7, SD = 2.3) who did not yet know how to dive and who were identified as having low feelings of self-efficacy towards diving and high perceptions of diving task difficulty were randomly assigned to peer mastery, peer coping or control model conditions. The experiment took place over 4 days. On the first three days the participants were exposed to their assigned modeling condition and then received diving instruction. After the last intervention session there was an immediate-retention test and the following day there was a delayed-retention test. Prior to intervention and for both retention tests, two psychological dimensions and one physical performance measure were evaluated. As well, recognition performance was evaluated during the delayed-test only. Data were analyzed by four separate one way analyses of variance for Group. Results revealed that the peer coping group increased their self-efficacy beliefs more than the peer mastery group in the delayed-retention test F = (2, 29) = 3.9, p = 0.03. The small sample size and the large variance in each group resulted in the inability to find other statistical findings. Effect sizes were then calculated. This analysis revealed that there were no significant effects between groups in the recognition performance test. The analysis did show that the peer coping group was the better model group for increasing children's perceptions of task difficulty and self-efficacy beliefs towards diving. For diving performance, peer mastery group showed the greatest increases. These findings suggest that a peer mastery model provides more information to the learner about how to do the skill correctly, whereas a peer coping model benefits a learner's psychological responses to observational learning.

The purpose of the present study was to identify the meanings of stress, the stressors, experienced, the coping strategies used, and the development of coping strategies by female adolescent team sport athletes. The research questions are: (a) What does stress mean to female adolescent athletes? (b) What everyday or ambient stressors do female adolescent athletes encounter in sport and in their daily lives? (c) What coping strategies do female adolescent athletes use when faced with ambient stressors in their sporting context and in their everyday lives? and (d) How did the athletes develop these coping strategies? With respect to the first research question, results showed that athletes in the present study stated that stress held a variety of meanings for them. They cited examples of being stressed in situations where they were nervous, anxious or worried, but noted that they also became stressed in situations where they were frustrated, upset or angry. Thus, the present study supports the need for researchers to move away from defining stress for their athlete participants and instead examining the athletes' own perceptions of stress (i.e., in their own words). The five athletes experienced a range of stressors related to soccer competition as well as from sport stressors considered to fall outside of the competitive arena. The athletes were found to also experience stress in their lives outside of sport. The fact that the athletes experienced significant stress due to their participation in a team sport context is a unique finding and makes a significant contribution to the literature. Furthermore, the finding that many of the team dynamic issues were especially stressful for the three athletes in leadership roles is an interesting finding and one that warrants further investigation. The athletes used behavioral control strategies, task focus strategies, thought control strategies and emotional release strategies when dealing with stress. The use of emotional release strategies appears to be a relatively new finding and makes a unique contribution to the literature. Interestingly, emotional control strategies such as visualization or imagery and other relaxation techniques were important strategies for only one athlete. The question regarding the development of coping strategies provided information related to the origin of coping strategies, but not the process used in their development. The present study makes a contribution, however, by providing insight into the people thought to be important influences in coping strategy development. Parents, coaches and friends were cited as influential models and as the people with whom athletes shared learning experiences. Thus, future research could focus on the impact of these significant others when investigating the development of coping strategies. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

The Ottawa Mental Skills Assessment Tool (OMSAT) was devised by Salmela and colleagues (1992) to measure a broad range of athletes' mental skills. Bota (1993) empirically tested the first and second versions of the OMSAT and recommended that the instrument be further revised. The purposes of this study were to create an enhanced version of the OMSAT (OMSAT-3), assess its psychometric properties, and determine the relative importance of each mental skill presented in the inventory. The OMSAT-3 was comprised of 85 questions, six of which measured social desirability, and 12 mental skills scales that were regrouped under the following three broader conceptual components: foundations skills, affective skills, and cognitive skills. It was administered to 462 individuals, however only 335 athletes' (175 males and 160 females) scores were included in the analysis. Subjects came from various sports, with hockey, soccer, water polo, basketball, swimming, and baseball being the most predominant ones. Results demonstrated that the scales had acceptable internal consistency, the mean alpha score being.80. Because of the behaviourally-related, situation-dependent nature of the inventory, most of the OMSAT-3 scales did not yield good test-retest reliability estimates. In terms of validity, the OMSAT-3 was found to significantly discriminate between competitive and elite level athletes. The best discriminating scales were Commitment, Stress Control, and Refocusing. When asked to list mental components that were most important and/or useful to their performance, athletes rated "belief/self-confidence" as being the most important one. Draper, Salmela, and Durand-Bush (1995) conducted a confirmatory factor analysis on the second version of the OMSAT and found that the proposed factor model fit the data well. Future researchers need to conduct the same type of analysis with the OMSAT-3 to determine the adequacy of its factor structure.

This investigation sought to examine expert-novice differences in metacognitive knowledge about action and metacognitive skill functioning, as they relate to the performance of the basketball foul shot. Twenty-four female undergraduate students served as subjects in this investigation. Twelve of the 24 subjects were classified as basketball experts (Group one) and 12 as basketball novices (Group two). Classification as either an expert or novice was dependent upon the total number of seasons having played competitive basketball. Both groups of subjects performed three tasks, each designed to assess a different aspect of their metacognitive functioning. Task one sought to identify group differences in the declarative component of metacognitive knowledge about action through the collection and comparison of instructional verbal protocols. Task two sought to identify both between group differences and the within group relationship between one's actions and the corresponding verbal description of those actions through the collection and comparison of verbal and visual protocols. It was believed that such a comparison would serve to identify group differences in the procedural component of metacognitive knowledge about action. Finally, Task three sought to identify group differences in metacognitive skill functioning as determined through each subject's ability to monitor her performance, predict performance outcomes, and explain the predictions made. When combined, the results obtained at these three tasks suggested that, specific to performance of the basketball foul shot, the level of metacognitive knowledge about action and metacognitive skill possessed by the subject within this investigation was a function of their level of expertise. The 'expert' subjects within Group one were seen to provide complete and accurate instruction in the proper execution of a basketball foul shot. Their ability to accurately describe the actions produced at Task two indicated that they possessed higher levels of the procedural component of metacognitive knowledge about action when compared to Group two subjects. Group one subjects were seen to make significantly more fouls hosts than Group two subjects at Task three and were also significantly better than Group two subjects with respect to their ability to monitor and successfully predict their performance outcomes. The results obtained at this investigation served to highlight the important, yet often overlooked, association between action and cognition.