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Sport is an important part of many athletes' lives, but the search for
physical perfection and a strong desire for success, allied with the econom-
ic and political interests involved, have brought sport to a level that re-
quires participants to expend a great deal of effort and involvement, lead-
ing to anxiety and stress. Perhaps the most frequent concern is whether
athletes can withstand the stress of intense competition. Consistent infor-
mation about methods which may lessen anxiety and stress in their lives
is valuable. One of these methods is imagery, which according to Williams
(1994) is thought of as a mental process which programs the mind to re-
act optimally. It is the use of senses to reconstruct an experience mentally.
The use of imagery as a psychological tool seems effective in pro-
moting self-efficacy (Beauchamp, Bray, & Albinson, 2002), self-confidence
(Carter & Kelly, 1997), as well as improving athletic and learning perfor-
mance (Paivio, 1985; Feltz & Landers, 1993; Gammage, Hall, & Rodgers,
2000; Jones, Bray, Mace, MacRae, & Stockbridge, 2002; Taylor & Shaw,
2002).Imagery is also widely applied as an intervention method in sport
to reduce stress. Jones, et al. (2002) investigated the effect of imagery in-
volving motivational general-mastery (MG-M) on stress and performance
in female rock climbers. They found the Imagery intervention led to low-
er stress and higher confidence than a control situation. Martin, Moritz,
& Hall (1999) proposed that MG-M, which refers to effective coping and
mastery of challenging situations, may be used to modify cognitions and,
'Address correspondence to Ricardo Weigert Coelho, Lappes Laboratory of Federal
University of Paran State, Centro Politcnico, J. Americas, Curifiba, Paran 81531-980,
Brazil or e-mail (coelhoricardo@ufpr.br).
TABLE 1
MEAN AND STANDARD DEVIATIONS FOR MEASURES OF ANXIETY AND STRESS IN THE STUDY GROUPS
TABLE 2
LEVENE'STEST OF EOUALITY OF ERROR VARIANCE
TABLE 3
MULTIVARIATE AND FOLLOW-UP ANALYSES OF VARIANCE OF IMAGERY
TREATMENT EFFECTS FOR PERCEIVED STRESS AND ANXIETY MEASURES
DISCUSSION
The purpose of this study was to investigate whether multimodal im-
agery intervention would affect scores on perceived stress, cognitive anxi-
ety, somatic anxiety, and confidence by tennis athletes. Analysis partially
supports the hypothesis that building athlete's self-confidence using mul-
timodal imagery intervention would lower pre-competitive anxiety and
stress. A positive outcome for the imagery-intervention group was noted
relative to the control participants.
Before addressing any conclusion, some limitations in this study must
be considered. Firstly, imagery ability differs from athlete to athlete. How-
ever, this limitation was controlled by the kind of sample used (elite ath-
letes), which according to Barr and Hall (1992), possess well-developed
imagery ability; they do not differ much in their imagery ability. Second-
ly, the intervention used was multimodal (relaxation, behavior model-
ing video, and MG-M imagery) not imagery only. Thirdly, even the entire
control and experimental groups were from different tennis clubs and no
guarantees are certain that some players from both groups did not have
contact with each other during the intervention phase.
Scores on stress and the two anxiety subscales of cognitive anxiety
and self-confidence indicated that the multimodal imagery intervention
represents a useful tool to build self-confidence and to lower cognitive
anxiety and perceived stress of these tennis athletes. These findings are in
accord with previous study of Callow and Hardy (2001) and Jones, et al
(2002) in the area of sports psychology.
Another important finding is the specificity of the situation must be
considered when using imagery. The psychological benefits conferred by
imagery are specific in nature. Imagery cannot be viewed as a general pro-
cedure and not all imagery intervention is applicable for every situation
426 R. w. COELHO, ETAL.
efficient and specific imagery method for coping with somatic anxiety
should be explored. Such a method would teach players to feel and iden-
tify somatic symptoms of anxiety and stress in order to control them. We
also suggest that it is important for future researches to consider the use
of a direct measure of anxiety and stress, such as salivary cortisol. Present
results indicate that negative perceptions of a threaterng event is a state
of mind which can be controlled by mental practices such as multimodal
imagery.
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