The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of evaluation apprehension and achievement on subjects' internal causal attributions in a physical skills task. One hundred and twenty private school male students, aged 12 to 19, were assigned to one of two conditions of evaluation. Feedback on level of achievement was given upon completion of the task and the students asked to complete a seven item attribution questionnaire. A 2 x 2 (evaluation x achievement) multivariate analysis of variance was used to examine differences across conditions among the four internal attributions. The results indicated that the subjects' attributions were affected by evaluation, as well as different levels of achievement. The predicted interactive effect of evaluation and achievement on attribution was not found. It was concluded that there was a flaw in the logic which suggested that internal attributions would be affected by an interaction of evaluation apprehension and achievement.

No description available.

An extensive review of the literature of the phenomenon of mental rehearsal (MR), or the act of imagining oneself performing a behavior in anticipation of eventually doing so, indicated that MR could facilitate improved performance on varied motor skills. An experiment which drew from previous studies in MR, incorporated suggestions from.the literature, and used a novel measurement task was conducted. The present study compared MR to physical practice (PP), no practice (NP), mental rehearsal/physical practice combined (MR/PP), and interference mental rehearsal (I). Five groups of twenty subjects (N=100) played a hand-held video computer game in a pre- and post-test design. The present study hypothesized that MR would improve performance scores in the video game task. A second hypothesis based on more recent trends in MR literature predicted that an MR/PP group might demonstrate more improvement than the PP group. A final hypothesis was that should MR/PP not exceed PP in improved performance, the rank order outcome from greatest to least improvement would be: PP, MR/PP, MR, NP, and I. The results of the present study were in conflict with reports in the literature and the pilot study, and did not support the three hypotheses. Subjects in all five treatment groups improved performance significantly between the pre- and post-test periods, however, none of the five treatment strategies demonstrated a statistically significant improvement in performance. The I group improved more based on mean percent improvement than either the MR/PP or PP groups. The rank order prediction was not supported in that the results of greatest to least mean percent improvement were as follows: I, MR/PP, MR, NP-, and PP. It is concluded that lack of significant improvement in performance using MR is most probably due to task related variables of complexity, unpredictability, difficulty, and the external pacing of performance that the video game task demands. The data are most consistent with literature reports which used complex and difficult tasks and ones which were paced by external task demands (i.e., the subject had to respond according to task demands rather than pacing his or her own performance). Further, the data are consistent with reports that suggest MR is less effective in unpredictable, difficult, and externally paced tasks than in ones which are predictable, leas difficult, and self-paced.

No description available.

No description available.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of mood lability on anticipation timing performance. The influence of gender and stimulus speed on timing error was also analysed. Spectral analysis was used to quantify frequency of mood change. The within-subjects standard deviation was calculated as a measure of intensity of mood change. Thirty-eight physical education students (18 men; M = 23.8 yrs, SD = 2.1 and 20 women; M = 20.4 yrs, SD = 1.6) participated in this study. Mood changes were measured along the Pleasantness and Energetic dimensions of the Affect Grid. Performance was assessed using the Bassin Anticipation Timer. It was hypothesized that: the fast mood changers would incur greater timing errors than the slow mood changers, men would perform with less error than women, and stimulus speed would have a significant influence on timing error. / Mixed factorial ANOVAs with repeated measures on the last factor were utilized to compare mean timing error scores: constant error, absolute error, variable error, and total error, over two levels of frequency of mood change (fast/slow) and intensity of mood change (high/low) groups, two levels of gender (men/women) and four levels of stimulus speed (5/10/15/25 mph). Alpha was set at the.05 significance level for all statistical comparisons. Results showed that intensity of mood change had a significant influence on anticipation timing performance, frequency of mood change factor did not have a significant effect on timing error, men performed with less variability than women and stimulus speed had a significant influence on anticipation timing. The Profile of Mood States (POMS) results, showed that women scored lower on the negative mood states than men. Total mood disturbance for both men and women showed no significant relationship to the timing error scores.

No description available.

No description available.

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1986 D86 / Master of Science / Physical Education, Dance, and Leisure Studies