This study explored the subjective interpretations of five adolescent athletes who experienced a sport-specific version of the Mindfulness-Acceptance-Commitment (MAC) approach. The MAC approach is an alternative sport psychology intervention to more traditional control-driven approaches, such as Psychological Skills Training (PST). An in-depth qualitative study was conducted at the High Performance Centre (hpc) of the University of Pretoria (UP). The sport-specific MAC programme was developed for the sport of athletics. The programme was facilitated to five adolescent athletes who participate in the sport of athletics. Semi-structured interviews were conducted after the participants experienced the programme. The interviews were based on written reflections provided by participants during the programme. The research position for this study was phenomenology, and specifically Interpretive Phenomenology (IP). Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was used to analyse the material. The results revealed that there was only one theme that was common to all five participants. Furthermore, the results portrayed diversity amongst the participant experiences and subjectivity in their interpretations of the MAC approach. The results displayed how some themes are consistent with MAC-related literature, and how other themes contradict the literature. Additionally, some themes have not been reported in MAC literature before. Thus, the study contributed to the expansion of literature on the MAC approach. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / lk2014 / Psychology / MA / Unrestricted

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Extensive research on the psychological benefits of psychological skills training in sport has been conducted in Sport Psychology, with unambiguous positive results. However, psychological skills training has not yet been fully applied in the Psychology of Music. Mindfulness training, and specifically the mindfulness, acceptance and commitment (MAC) approach, has been applied in sport, but thus far no MAC intervention on musicians has been published. The combination of Psychological Skills Training (PST) and mindfulness (the MAC approach) training is more rare and has not yet been used in music studies. The configuration of mindfulness (MAC) and PST has been applied in a sport setting, but has never been tested in a proper intervention programme for music students. This study fills this gap. The primary aim of this research was to implement and evaluate the effect of PST, in combination with mindfulness, on undergraduate music students. The second aim was to determine whether the intervention programme had an impact on the students’ psychological well-being and the management of music performance anxiety. The third aim was to evaluate whether the students’ psychological skills and mindfulness have improved. The fourth aim was to determine whether the combination of PST and mindfulness training was successful. The fifth aim was to evaluate whether the cross-over from Sport Psychology to the Psychology of Music in terms of the knowledge base, intervention PST protocols and psychometric measuring instruments was meaningful. The sixth aim was to determine whether the correlations between the psychological constructs (subscales) of the pre-intervention test measurements on all the respondents were meaningful. A convenience sample of 36 undergraduate music students from the Department of Music at the University of Pretoria was selected. The students were asked to participate voluntarily. The experimental group consisted of 21 students, and the remaining 15 students formed the control group. A quasi-experimental design was implemented in this research to address problems that might occur because of the voluntary selection method employed. Voluntary participation was adopted to ensure that the participants were fully engaged in and committed to this study. The aspects of motivation and commitment were essential prerequisites for this research to be successful, because full commitment and maximum attendance of the intervention sessions were crucial to be able to determine the impact of this intervention programme. The results indicated a significant improvement in positive relationships with others within the experimental group, as measured by Ryff’s Psychological Well-being Scale. Pre- and postintervention test results within the experimental group indicated a statistically significant improvement in all three subscales of the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 (cognitive state anxiety, somatic state anxiety and self-confidence). A statistically significant improvement on five of the seven subscales of Bull’s Mental Skills Questionnaire (self-confidence, anxiety and worry management, concentration ability, relaxation ability and levels of motivation) were reported, and on the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire, the subscales of “describe” items and “non-judge” items improved significantly from the pre-intervention test to the postintervention test in the experimental group. Interestingly, the growth mindset within the experimental group also increased significantly, while the fixed mindset decreased significantly. This significant positive increase in the scores of the experimental group might be an indication that the intervention programme had a moderately significant impact on important psychological dimensions of the participating undergraduate music students. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2014 / Psychology / unrestricted

This research study took place at the High Performance Centre (hpc) at the University of Pretoria (UP) in South Africa (SA). The sport psychologists/sports counselors at the hpc mainly deliver performance development services to the athletes. The sport psychology services at the hpc are conducted to the athletes via the Psychological Skills Training (PST) approach and Mindfulness-Acceptance-Commitment (MAC) approach. These two approaches are individualistic in nature and the aim of my study was to move away from a more traditional individualistic perspective to an ecological perspective that takes into consideration other role players such as sport scientists. This was achieved by developing a sport science specific MAC programme for the sport scientists, which was facilitated through experiential learning. The goal of the MAC programme was to explore the sport scientists’ experiences with reference to what they discovered and how they applied their learning. Eight in depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with four sport scientists at the hpc after their participation in the programme. Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was used to analyse the semi-structured interviews. The findings were mainly related to difficulties and advantages that the sport scientists experienced when they applied the MAC principles. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2016. / Psychology / MA / Unrestricted

Mental toughness is accepted to be an important component of sporting performance, especially so in the domain of cricket. It has been called many names, such as Big Match Temperament, bottle, and mettle and it is widely believed that it plays a role in how successful a cricketer may be, although very difficult to define and explain. James Loehr described it as one’s ability to consistently perform to the upper limit of your talent and skill and numerous researchers have since tried to define the construct based on more empirical research. This research project consists of three articles on mental toughness. The first focuses on the consideration of extra-personal influences on the development and implementation of mental toughness programmes. The second focuses on examining the psychometric properties of the paper-and-pencil versions of the Sports Mental Toughness Questionnaire (SMTQ) and the Psychological Performance Inventory-Alternative (PPI-A). The third examines the differences in the demographic characteristics of a sample of cricketers on the online versions of the SMTQ and the PPI-A. The results suggest that extra-personal influences are exceptionally important in the development and implementation of mental toughness programmes for school level cricketers, especially motivational climate and social support. While the PPI-A and the SMTQ displayed some promising psychometric properties in the current study, researchers should apply these mental toughness inventories with circumspection, taking into account questions regarding dimensionality, item formulation and variation in sample characteristics (e.g., age and sporting code), until more research can be conducted using these inventories with larger and more varied samples and the understanding of the mental toughness construct improves. The examination of the demographic differences on scores of the SMTQ and PPI-A revealed inconclusive results on age, sex, and ethnicity, while competitive level was the only distinguishing characteristic in which respondents at high levels produced higher mental toughness scores. The three studies comprising this “by articles” format PHD dissertation will be referred to as Article 1, Article 2, and Article 3 and can be found in Chapters, 2, 3, and 4 respectively. / Psychology / D.Phil. (Psychology)