| Mental imagery is one of the most common psychological skills employed by athletes. With the development of the Sport Imagery Questionnaire (SIQ, Hall, Mack, Paivio, & Hausenblas, 1998) and the proposal of the applied model of imagery use in sport (Martin, Moritz, & Hall, 1999) a large body of literature has been accumulated. However, the results have been inconsistent. This is particularly true with regard to the relationship between imagery use and psychological constructs such as anxiety and confidence. Imagery direction is one possible explanation for these inconsistencies. Initially, imagery direction focused on the positive or negative outcomes contained in the content of an image (Powell, 1979, Woolfolk, Parrish, & Murphy, 1985). More recently, Short et al. (2002) proposed the notion of conceptualizing imagery direction in terms of facilitation and debilitation of performance similar to that found in the anxiety literature. The difference being that the content was not the key element, but the interpreted meaning of an image by an individual.; The current research was conceptualized as a two-part study. Experiment one involved the assessment of the validity of the directional extension of the SIQ. This was accomplished through a comparison with the similarly extended construct of anxiety. In experiment 2 the measurement and conceptual extensions developed in study 1 was applied to test the effectiveness of an imagery intervention aimed at regulating arousal levels and enhancing performance of a motor task.; Results of experiment 1 found support for previous studies that showed that each of the imagery types contained in the SIQ were used for multiple functions Relationships between imagery frequency and symptoms of anxiety were found to be opposite of those proposed in the applied model of imagery use (Martin et al., 1999). However, when paired with imagery direction, facilitative MGA resulted in the lowest reported somatic anxiety, while debilitative MGA imagery resulted in the highest reported somatic anxiety.; Results of experiment 2 were non-significant, but visual inspection of the performance trend supported the hypothesized predictions. Those screened into the facilitative group had higher mean performance scores on two of three intervention trial blocks than the control condition, while those screened into the debilitative group had lower mean performance scores across all three trial blocks than the control group. Recommendations for the development of effective imagery interventions are presented. |
