Advanced Sport & Exercise Psychology

Dr. Victor Pendleton

Sem2, 2004

Project-Related Example

•Presenting problem: overweight

•Why bother? Buy clothes off rack

•Behaviours req’d: diet & exercise

•Personal rating on beh: D(-), Ex(+)

•Identify barriers preventing progress: late-night binging (boredom)

•Interventions: TC, reframe, evening ex

•Evaluate and modify if appropriate

Example - interventions

•TC – meditation to develop ability to think on purpose

•Reframe – boredom is a state of mind. Catch self being bored and focus on other thoughts: powerful reasons?

•Evening exercise – many people are not hungry after exercise. Moving exercise to evening may correct binging problem.

Example (cont)

•Justify interventions

•Be sure interventions are being done properly

SMART the Goals

•Everytime I start to eat something I will ask myself if it is supportive of my goals

•I will keep a log of my responses

•If not supportive, I will do ten minutes of meditation followed by another ten minutes of reflection on my goals

–reflecting on a successful model?

•I will keep a log of calorie intake & TOD

•I will do this for 4 weeks

Evaluate & Adjust

•Outcome measure: program adherence!

•Is it working: diet and exercise

•If working, continue

•If not, adjust

Education & Practice Phases

Treatment Selection

•What is the basis for selecting an intervention?

•What sort of improvement is expected?

•How long will it take?

Select/Design Intervention

•Stage – respond according to TTM

•Attitude – info, dialogue, meaning,…

•Efficacy – facilitative goal setting,..

Commitment & Contracting

•Motivation and commitment is assumed by most interventions

•Contracting attempts to confirm ownership by athlete

Contract With Client

•Operationalize success criteria

–how will we know if we have been successful?

•Solicit clients commitment to intervention

•Begin intervention

Education Phase

Learning the skills needed to address the

issues identified in the assessment phase

•The need for education phase: individual differences, confusion about method

•Other barriers to correct execution of intervention?

•Be sure they are performing the intervention properly

Practice Phase

–Crucial component of the process

–Specific instruction - Use knowledge of skill acquisition & maintenance to facilitate the design of practice & the structuring of feedback for optimal benefit.

–Mental skills practice integrated as part of regular training if possible.

–Use mental skills in simulated competitive situations

–Athletes must practice with the intent to improve Techniques assume adequate levels of athlete motivation. How do you train this? What can possibly stand in the way of athlete motivation?

Phases of Motor Skill Learning

•Cognitive phase (few minutes – months)

–Learning the mechanics of the movement

•Associative phase (few hours to several years)

–Developing skill (practice phase)

•Autonomous phase – expert level

Teaching vs Practicing Several Skills: Blocked vs Random Practice

•Blocked – learn one form completely before starting the next.

•Random – practicing multiple techniques within a single practice period in a random order.

Teaching Several Variations of a Skill – Variable (vs constant) Practice

•In forms, facing different directions, different lighting, different footing, different venues.

Whole vs Part Practice

Breaking up long complicated forms into

smaller more manageable chunks.

•Whole vs part vs progressive-part method

Why is it Important to Understand Research?

Evidence-Based Practice (EBP)

•Categories -

•Consuming research

Evidence Categories (NIH)

What Does It Mean?

Pearson’s Correlation

(degree to which X&Y vary together)
r = --------------------------------------------
(degree to which X&Y vary separately)

a measure of the relation between two variables.

Interpretation

•Correlation (r)

– 0.0 trivial
0.1 small
0.3 moderate
0.5 large
0.7 very large
0.9 nearly perfect
1.0 perfect

Effect Size

•ES = (m₁-m₂)/s

•Depression - ES = 2.15

–(Dobson, 1989)

•Anxiety - ES = .53

–(Jorm, 1989)

Evaluation, Outcome, & Research Quality

Evaluation

•Proper operationalization

–Motivation/adherence implications: novice vs. elite athlete

•How long should it take?

•How much improvement should be expected?

•Any issues related to required skill level or other individual differences?

–Evaluate on performance vs. adherence vs skill acquisition?

Outcome Research

•Outcome of major sport psych interventions

•Driven by call for evidence-based practice

–Outcome evaluation is required for ethical practice

Types of Interventions

•Cognitive

•Cognitive-behavioural

•Literature is evidence of the historically myopic application of sport psychology

Reviews of Literature

•Restricted to studies using athletes in actual sport situations

–no non-athletes

–no contrived settings

–sport performance as an outcome variable

Reviews of Literature

•Greenspan & Feltz, 1989. Review of psychological interventions. The Sport Psychologist, 3.

•Vealy, 1994. Current status & prominent issues in sport psych interventions. Medicine & Science in Sport & Exercise, 26.

•Weinberg & Comar, 1994. The effectiveness of psych interventions in competitive sport. Sports Medicine, 18(6)

Greenspan & Feltz(23)

•Intervention categories:

–relaxation training (9),

•imagery and mental practice

–behavioural interventions (3), and

•reinforcement, self-monitoring, & feedback

–cognitive restructuring (11)

•systematic desensitization & stress inoculation

Vealy(12)

•Intervention categories:

–cognitive(7)

•development or restructuring of ideas

•the impact of the content of the idea is not considered

–cog-beh(3): includes systematic practice

–beh(2): systematic feedback to shape performance

Weinberg & Comar(10)

•Interventions were categorized as:

–cognitive (4) &

–cog-beh (6)

Categorization

•Interventions may be difficult to categorize. For example, is relaxation a cognitive restructuring intervention? A behavioural intervention?

Outcome

•9/12 intervention studies had positive effects (Vealy, 1994)

–Vealy offers no details of effectiveness

•Imagery – “hundreds of sports-specific research studies supporting the efficacy of imagery for performance enhancements” (Vealy, 1994)

Outcome

•Goal-setting – supported in org psych lit, equivocal in sport psych lit (Vealy, 1994)

•Cognitive restructuring – 11/11(GF review) studies reported positive results

•Cognitive interventions – 5/7 reported positive results (Vealy, 94)

•Cog-beh interventions – 2/3 reported positive results (Vealy, 94)

Outcome - Summary

•45 studies employed psych interventions with athletes in sport settings and 38 had positive results. (Weinberg & Comar, 1994).

•Details of the interventions and of the effect size are not provided in the review articles.

Research Quality

•Some points to:

–Illustrate the need to consider quality-related issues

–Provide ideas to assist you in the evaluation of research reliability.

Benefit of Moderate Exercise Challenged

•Paul T. Williams, 2003 (Challenger)

–Medicine & Science in Sport & Exercise

•Steve Blair, 1995,

–Journal of the American Medical Association

• publication nirvana: a very prestigious journal

–Article informed US Gov’t policy:

•30mins of moderate activity most days of week.

Blair, et al. 1995

•Blair looked at data on 9,777 men who had taken two treadmill exercise tests almost 5 years apart. The scientists then followed the men for more than 5 years. Adjustments were made for age and other risk factors. Men in the least-fit 20% on both tests were more likely to die. The study found that those who had improved enough on the second test to pull themselves out of the least fit group had a lower risk of death: a 44% reduction in their risk of death.

Benefit of Moderate Exercise Challenged

•Failed to control for good day – bad day problem

–Treadmill times will vary from day-to-day for any given level of fitness

–Entire ‘benefit’ could be attributed to measurement error

•Other studies used similar designs and are therefore similarly suspect

Falsification of Data 1

•The case of Dr. Stephen Bruening

–Very prolific medical researcher

–In 1983 he admitted to fabricating data concerning the effects of psychotropic medication on mentally retarded patients

–Pressure to publish or perish, often in the context of competing job requirements

Falsification of Data 2

•The case of Dr. John Darsee

–Rising-star young Harvard research cardiologist.

–Guilty of fabricating data in 1981

–Questionable research practices extending over a 10-year period.

Ripple Effects

•Collaborators

•Supervisors

•Institution: pay back money

•Follow-on research

•Effects on patients: treatments based on questionable research

Issues Related Specifically to Sport Psychology

•Atheoretical approach:

–fishing expedition, likelihood of results being due to chance alone

–especially important when few studies exist (MS)

Dominance of Trait Research

•Myopic view of sport psychology

•Introduction of theories based on existential-phenomenological concepts: individual choice and personal construction of meaning (Morris & Summers)

Elite/Non-Elite Distinction

•Studies sometimes fail to differentiate players that are basically the same. (MS)

Transferability

•Research conducted in laboratories or contrived settings, tasks, or dependent variables, or that use non-athletes in place of athletes, are not necessarily transferable to competitive settings (Greenspan & Feltz, 1989)

Gender Bias

•Mostly males (16/23GF)

• Mostly college aged subjects

•3/23(GF) interventions used national or elite-level athletes

•2/23(GF) used athletes under 18 yrs of age

Long-term Effects

•Lack of follow-up data: long-term effects on athletes are not known

Lack of Manipulation Checks

•Were the athletes really doing what they were supposed to be doing?

Publication Bias

•Authors are less likely to submit manuscripts reporting negative results (Olson, et al. JAMA, 287(21), 2002)

•No editorial bias?

“There are lies, damned lies and statistics.”

•Reporting for effect (Nuovo, et al. JAMA, 287(21), 2002)

•Reporting relative risk reduction vs absolute risk reduction:
5.1% of placebo treated had heart attacks vs 3.7% of drug treated
absolute risk reduction = 1.4%
relative risk reduction = 1.4/5.1 = 27.5%

Reporting Statistics to Impress

•Use of complicated statistical methods

•HLM – nested models. Omnibus test. Interpretation complex. Option of using simpler statistics.

•Goal is communication?

•Manuscript rejected on basis that the statistics were “beyond the reach of our typical reader”

Conflicts Between Co-Authors are Not Reported