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Treatment Effects
Hrycaiko and Martin (1996) advocated visual inspection of the plotted data to establish if the treatment had an effect based on the following five guidelines. Although this research has found an increase in the means of the participants, caution has to be taken due to limitations of the present study meeting the criteria set out by Hyrcaiko and Martin.
(a) Stable baseline performance. In general, the baseline data did not show stability. As the data was collected from competitive golf situations it is possible that the baseline would never have been stable. This is because the golfers played different courses under varying whether conditions. However, the use of a longer baseline period might have been beneficial in creating a more stable baseline, in particular for the flow data. Thirdly, the selection of just one performance indicator might have contributed to relatively unstable baselines for golf performance.
(b) Replication of effect within and across participants. Inspection of the data points suggests that a replication of the treatment effect occurred for three out of the four participants for golf performance (Tom, Andrew and John). Although, only Tom’s improvement was of substantial magnitude (8%). Furthermore, there is also tentative support for a replication effect for three out of the four participants for flow intensity and flow frequency (Tom, Andrew, and John). Again, as for the golf performance scores, most of these improvements were relatively small in magnitude and it is unclear if these are the result of the imagery intervention or variability in the data set.
(c) Number of overlapping data points. Due to the way in which this study was conducted (ecologically valid setting, as opposed to a laboratory) it was expected that there would be overlapping data points. Although Vicky’s mean golf performance increased from Baseline 1 to the intervention, all 20 of the data points overlapped. For Andrew, between Baseline 1 and the intervention there were 11 overlapping data points for golf performance. The number of overlapping data points for John’s performance, between Baseline 1 and the intervention was 19 (although his performance actually increased by 2.7%). The number of overlapping data points for flow intensity and flow frequency between Baseline 1 and the intervention ranged from 7 to 19. Generally, the fewer the number of overlapping data points between baseline and treatment phase the more likely there will be a treatment effect. The relatively small effects observed in combination with the frequent overlapping data points makes it unclear whether the changes in either performance or flow are due to the imagery intervention.
(d) Timing of effect following introduction of treatment: The sooner an effect occurs the more likely this is due to the intervention or treatment. Following the introduction of the imagery intervention there were relatively prompt improvements (i.e., after three rounds) for global flow frequency in all of the participants. Swift improvements were also observed for two of the four participants in golf performance (Tom and Andrew), and for three of the four in global flow intensity (Vicky, Tom, and Andrew).
(e) Size of effect in comparison to baseline: The size of effect for one of the participants (Tom) for golf performance was relatively large. Tom improved his Baseline 1 performance by 8.6% of fairways hit. There were no large effects for the other participants with regard to performance. Moreover, although improvements were found in flow intensity and frequency they were relatively small in magnitude. However, the participants in this study were high-level golfers. It was therefore anticipated that the effects of the intervention would not be large (social validity argument). Hence, improvements of only a few percentage points in performance or flow frequency would potentially make enormous difference to the participant’s success. This is particular true for the sport of golf where performance is often measured over multiple rounds of golf.
Perceived Negative Effects of Intervention
Vicky thought that the intervention actually interfered with her game in some ways. She said, “I was constantly thinking about the study, and writing the scores down after each round constantly reminded me.” If Vicky did not hit the ball to within 15 feet she felt as though she had “failed, regardless of whether I holed the subsequent putt [because] I should have been hitting the ball closer.” Vicky commented that it was “very rare that I would experience any of the feelings very strongly.” With regards to the intervention tape, Tom thought “it would have been good if the tape was longer as I was really starting to imagine clearer pictures.”
Andrew experienced certain extremes of performance during the intervention period, and it appeared that the intervention somehow intensified Andrew’s emotional responses to his performance. He said, “Throughout the intervention my good days were very good in both feelings and performance. However, on my bad days they seemed to be lower than before. So my good days were higher in terms of the intensities of my feelings but [my feelings were] lower than usual on the poor days.” Andrew suggested that “I did not need the tape to be as long to experience the same feelings. I felt the long gap should have been shorter the more I listened to the tape.”
Although John’s intervention was designed to improve his short game, He said that “It didn’t particularly affect my chipping, it was more with my whole game.” He thought this may have been because “I was trying to be too focused and thinking of one specific thing… So I took it a bit out of context.” John felt that the structure of the recorded instructions could have been improved. He said “there was no break between this is what you should do and then straight away another point [i.e., there should be a break].”
Perceived Positive Effects of Intervention
Vicky said that after a mistake she has been able to “get one back, which was what the tape encouraged.” Vicky also thought that her “images were stronger” as a result of listening to the tape and that she was able to imagine “different types of shots and playing in front of other people.” Vicky also reported that during the second baseline period that she would “subconsciously stand over the ball and imagine.”
Tom reported that the imagery helped him to relax and focus. He said, “There have been several times where I have been very worried and doubting myself when I have stood on tees that require long and accurate shots. I have felt myself tensing up and have used the imagery to see in my mind where I am going to hit the ball. This helped me focus and forget about things which are not important while I am playing golf.” More specifically Tom thought that the intervention had a positive effect on his driving. He said that “using the imagery when I am just about to hit the ball allowed me to kind of feel the swing that I need to hit the ball where I want it to go… I have generally felt more confident and seemed to swing with more conviction, which has seemed to work.” He also provided a specific example of how the imagery helped him during a competition after he had missed the fairway. He remembered that “I started to feel a little worried over where the ball was going to finish. I took a deep breath and imagined the swing that I wanted to make and the flight of the ball, which seemed to ease my worries. I then stood up to the ball and hit it making the swing that I had imagined.” He said that this type of response “seemed to occur on a number of occasions whilst listening to the tape.”
Andrew said that after his practice swing he would “almost see a kind of line in the ground whilst saying to myself ‘I feel confident and mentally strong.’ I then hit the ball.” He recalled that the imaginary line was “only something that I have noticed towards the later part of listening to the tape.” He also thought that the tape helped him to manage competitive anxiety because by “concentrating on how the tape said I should feel I would forget any worries that I may have had.”
Despite perceiving that the intervention did not serve its intended purpose (i.e., improving chipping performance), John thought that “it definitely helped with concentration to some extent, because it was the case of it actually giving me something to focus on. It was like ‘concentrate. Focus on the shot. Hit the shot’ instead of thinking of other things.” Additionally, John said that his “actual images of the flight of the ball improved… In the past I have never tried to image the everything about the ball.” Finally, he thought that the instructions on the tape became almost automated, and he said “I am sort of concentrating on the same sort of way that you said on the tape without specifically thinking about the tape. It’s like ‘oh yeah I have just done that.’”
Discussion
The primary aims of the present study were to investigate whether individualized imagery interventions had an effect on the intensity and frequency of flow, and selected aspects of golfing performance. Inspection of the mean scores revealed that three of the four participants showed an increase in global flow intensity, and all four golfers showed an increase in mean global flow frequency during the intervention and post intervention period in comparison to baseline 1. However, the increases in magnitude of both flow intensity and frequency were relatively low. Taking in consideration the social validity argument that small alterations in behavior could have dramatic effects on success for the population under investigation, we would suggest that the results of the present study indicate that the strategic use of psychological skills training may increase personal control over the flow experience (Munroe et al., 2000; Pates & Maynard, 2000; Pates et al., 2001; Pates et al., 2002). This study provides preliminary evidence for practitioners who wish to employ imagery interventions to enhance flow and performance in golf.
Although flow is generally associated with performance in the sport psychology literature, flow experiences do not always result in optimal performances (Jackson & Csikszentmihalyi, 1999). For example, Vicky reported similar flow frequency and intensity scores when she had performed poorly or well. This indicates that high performance can occur in the absence of flow. Although all four participants improved their average performance from baseline to intervention, and performance remained at a higher level after withdrawal of the imagery intervention most of these improvements were relatively small in magnitude. We believe that this study provides preliminary support for the relationship between flow and performance in sport (Jackson et al., 2001). Furthermore, the findings demonstrated some support for the efficacy of an imagery intervention for improving performance in a competitive sport setting (cf. Biddle, 2000; Nicholls, Holt, & Polman, 2004; Nicholls, Holt, Polman, & James, in press).
In terms of examining the treatment effects, with the exception of Tom, there were many overlapping data points throughout the different phases of the study for all of the variables measured. For example, between Baseline 1 and the intervention all of Vicky’s golf performance measurement data points overlapped. Fewer overlapping data points between treatment, and intervention indicates a greater experiment effect (Hrycaiko & Martin, 1996). It must be noted that in some cases (e.g. Vicky) participants recorded particularly high performance scores in Baseline 1, which leaves less room for improvement in the intervention period. Hence, the selected dependent variables have a ceiling effect. For example, the participant could theoretically hit all fairways in his round of golf. Secondly, relatively large variability was observed for some of the subjects. This was particularly true for the performance data. We would suggest that future studies either use an extended baseline period, use a multiple baseline approach or alternatively select multiple performance indicators. In particular the last point might be of important in the game of golf, because some shots are only played a limited number of times during a round of golf.
When there are overlapping data points Hrycaiko and Martin (1996) suggested utilizing the other guidelines to demonstrate an experimental effect. In the current study, all of the participants showed relatively swift improvement in their global flow frequency score, three of the participants showed a prompt improvement in global flow scores, and two of the participants showed an immediate improvement in golf performance. There was a replication of the treatment for three out of the four participants for golf performance, flow intensity, and flow frequency. However, the magnitude of this experimental effect especially performance, with the exception of Tom, was relatively small.
We believe that there are a number of reasons for this small increase. Firstly, some of the participants scored relatively high during the baseline phase allowing not much room for improvement. Secondly, the participants in the present study were high-level performers. Interventions with high-level performers may result in small percentage improvements, but such improvements may have significant performance outcome effects (social validity argument) (cf. Hrycaiko & Martin, 1996). In elite golf, reducing individual round scores has vast implications for total tournament outcome. Additionally, the conditions in which the performance measures were taken may have also contributed to the high number of overlapping data points (i.e., during competition, which leads to fluctuations in shot difficulties). It could be that a visual inspection of overlapping data points might not be a sensitive measure of experimental effects in ABA designs, especially with high-level performers in ecologically valid situations as opposed to laboratory conditions. Also, weaker experimental effects may be one of the consequences of conducting research in competitive sport settings with high-level performers.
In the ABA design, reversal of the dependent variables after the intervention has been withdrawn is important for demonstrating the experimental treatment condition. After the withdrawal of the intervention, the subjects tended to experience a continued improvement in their golf performance, global flow intensity, and global flow frequency (except for Tom’s golf performance and Andrew’s global flow intensity scores). The absence of reversal to baseline may be partially explained by the nature of the intervention employed. That is, despite the withdrawal of the intervention during Baseline 2, subjects may either consciously or unconsciously continue to use imagery while performing. This notion was supported by the qualitative data, which revealed that all of the participants’ thought that their imaging ability improved as the intervention continued. In such cases, the withdrawal of the intervention (i.e., the imagery tape) does not ensure that the participants no longer use imagery. Indeed, Vicky actually reported that during the second baseline period she would “subconsciously stand over the ball and imagine.” Similarly, Pates and Maynard (2002) suggested that participants might have continued to use hypnotic triggers following an intervention (and this resulted in their adoption of an AB research design in contrast to the ABA design used here).
The secondary purpose of this investigation was to examine athletes’ experiences of the delivery of the intervention. Such qualitative information has implications for improving aspects of sport psychology intervention delivery (cf. Poczwardowski, Sherman, & Henschen, 1998). During the post-intervention interview, Andrew reported that he experienced extremes of emotion during the intervention phase (which is corroborated, by his global flow intensity [Figure 7] and global flow intensity [Figure 11] scores). Similarly, Pates and Maynard (2000) found that one participant experienced extremes of emotion during their hypnotic intervention. This finding highlights that caution is warranted when delivering psychological skills training programs to athletes.
During the interviews, all participants reported positive outcomes from the imagery intervention. Vicky commented that she was more confident in her abilities to recover whereas Tom stated that his increased confidence reduced pre-round anxiety levels and allowed him to have more positive swings. Confidence is a construct that can facilitate the flow experience (Jackson, 1995). All participants indicated that their imagery ability had improved significantly and there were able to imagine clearer, stronger, and more controllable images. On the negative side, two of the participants found some of the gaps on the tape too long and two participants indicated that they would have liked more variation in the imagery instructions.
Whereas the ABA research design we employed does not allow for an examination of external validity across different settings (Hrycaiko & Martin, 1996), it does allow for greater experimental control than multiple-baseline designs. Verification of the baseline prediction made for each behavior within a multiple-baseline design does not tend to be directly demonstrated by that behavior but is in fact inferred from the lack of change in other behaviors (Cooper, Heron, & Heward 1987). A possible limitation of the current study was the relatively short baseline period (four rounds of golf). Kazdin (1992) has suggested that the ABA design requires an assessment of stable baseline performance of the dependent variable or a trend in the opposite direction. The results in the present study revealed relatively unstable performance scores for Baseline 1 whereas the global flow intensity and frequency scores tended to be more stable. The fact that the present study, only used one particular aspect of the golfers performance as dependent variable might have contributed to this. Future studies might consider multiple aspects of golf performance as dependent variables. Furthermore, the flow scores obtained for the present study consisted of retrospective analysis of a whole round of golf which can take up to four to five hours of play and included only a single performance parameter. With regard to the latter, golfers could perform relatively well on the selected performance variable but play poorly for the rest of the round. These issues highlight some of the difficulties of investigating the flow experience in real-life competitive sport settings. However, research in ecologically valid settings has the potentional to add to both the literature and the applied work of sport psychology practitioners. Future evaluative studies that employ a range of methodological approaches (including group-based designs) will be useful in developing the applied knowledge base underpinning sport psychology interventions.
The findings of the current study provide initial support for the notion that an individualized MG-M imagery intervention can have a positive influence on performance and the intensity and frequency of flow among high-performance golfers. At high levels of competition, relatively small performance improvements may have dramatic outcomes (especially for golf competitions played over several rounds). By tailoring imagery interventions to a client’s needs, sport psychology consultants may be able to improve performance as well as increasing the probability of achieving flow experiences.
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Appendix A
Imagery Script
* = insert individual golf performance here
Get into a comfortable position and close your eyes. Focus on the center of your body and take several slow deep breaths. With each inhalation imagine that you are pulling all the tension from your body into your lungs. With each exhalation, imagine that you are releasing all of the tension and negative thoughts from your body. Continue this breathing, becoming more focused and confident. (30 seconds)
That’s fine, now imagine that you are reaching into your golf bag and pulling out the club that use for * shots…….. Look at the bag……. Notice where this club is…… feel its shape as you grab it. As you partially exhale let your shoulders drop and arms relax….. Feel the bend in your knees as your as your club head drops into position for the practice swing. Look ahead to the position to where you are going to hit the ball……… As you look back to your ball take an easy centering breath. When you have exhaled to the point where you feel comfortable remind yourself that you feel mentally tough and confident. ………….. As you look back to your ball take an easy, breath. When you have exhaled to the point where you are comfortable remind yourself that you feel mentally tough and confident. Imagine the feeling of confidence in your hands and notice how smooth the swing feels and you are feeling the distance during these swings…. Imagine a sense of ease and lightness in the swings……. As hitting this shot is almost becoming effortless. Take your practice * shot.
Good, rehearse a few * shot, rehearse every aspect of the * shot……. Try * of different lengths with different breaks…. Make some of them easy and some more difficult…… Imagine that other golfers are present, but don’t let them rush you……Notice how the focus of your concentration shifts from a broad focus as you are looking around to a very narrow focus, as you line up the chip and hit the ball. Imagine feeling that you have the ability to meet any challenges you are faced with on your round. (3 minutes)
Good, imagine you are about to hit a * shot, you are feeling a little tight……. You want this one…….. you start to worry about dropping a stroke after a poor shot……. You can stop your worrying by taking breath. On the exhale remind yourself that you feel relaxed and confident. Imagine the shot that you want to play, feeling the distance and seeing the shot. You are confident and successfully recover by staying focused and in control of your emotions. Hit the * shot…… (20 seconds)
Now imagine yourself arriving at the golf course feeling confident in both your mental and physical preparation, feeling good. (20 seconds)
You feel the nervous anticipation of the competition and remind yourself that it is exhilarating to play golf. You are motivated to perform. (10 seconds)
You feel confident in your preparation and clearly focused on your up coming round. Your breathing is calm and controlled. Your muscles feel warm and elastic ready to explode with intensity and precision. You are ready. (20 seconds)
Your pre-round warm-up goes well and you remind yourself that your are ready for any unexpected obstacle as you are confident in your refocusing ability and remind yourself that you are mentally tough. You feel optimally energized and ready to go. Enjoy it.
Correspondence concerning this article should be sent to Adam Nicholls, Department of Sport, Health, and Exercise Science, The University of Hull, North Humberside, HU6 7RX. Telephone number: +44 (0)1482 466682, e-mail: A.Nicholls@hull.ac.uk
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