Goal orientation and the modeling process: an individual's focus on form and outcome

Motivation in tennis

Motivation underpins successful tennis performance, representing one of the game's foremost psychological skills. This paper elaborates on its role in tennis play, and takes an overview of the current state of motivation research applied to tennis. First, the importance of motivation in player and coach performance is explored. The body of evidence pertaining to players' motives for participation and the relevance of goal achievement motivation in tennis is then examined. Finally, the efficacy of motivational climates created by significant others is discussed in light of current practice.

Observational modeling effects for movement dynamics and movement outcome measures across differing task constraints: a meta-analysis

The authors conducted a meta-analysis of the observational modeling literature to quantify overall between-participants treatment effects obtained when movement behaviors are acquired. Effects were obtained and reported separately for movement dynamics (MD) and movement outcome (MO) measures. The overall mean observational modeling treatment effects (delta(u)Bi) were 0.77 and 0.17, respectively, for MD and MO measures. The effects reflected a significant advantage of observational modeling over practice-only control conditions. Most important, the magnitude of the obtained effects was far stronger for MD than for MO measures, confirming a distinctive response to observational modeling during motor learning. The advantage for MD measures over observational modeling measures was replicated for different types of tasks. Observational modeling was particularly beneficial for serial tasks (delta(u)Bi = 1.62 and 0.61, respectively, for MD and MO). There were slightly reduced effects for continuous tasks (delta(u)Bi = 1.01 and 0.51, respectively, for MD and MO) and smaller to medium-sized effects for discrete tasks (delta(u)Bi = 0.56 and 0.10, respectively, for MD and MO). The authors discuss those findings with reference to the visual perception perspective on observational modeling, i.e., that demonstrations primarily convey relative motions required to approximate modeled movement behaviors.

What goes around comes around: re-emerging themes in sport and exercise psychology

Sport and exercise psychology research appearing in Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport (RQES) over the past 75 years can be characterized by re-emerging themes-hot topics in the 1930s remain hot topics now. Re-emerging themes include sportsmanship/moral development, social development/significant others, self-perceptions, attitudes/motivation, modeling/observational learning, emotion/arousal/anxiety, competition/achievement orientations, and gender roles. Although research paradigms and methodologies have changed, these topics have endured. We also identified dominant emergent themes appearing in RQES over the last 25 years: measurement development and validation; physical activity adoption and adherence; and multidisciplinary approaches to psychological issues. Given the many specialty journals and trends toward integrating models and methods from multiple disciplines, we suggest that RQES adopt a multidisciplinary focus for research in the field of kinesiology.

Situational interest in physical education: a function of learning task design

Situational interest is the appealing effect of unique characteristics students recognize in a learning task during interaction with the task. It occurs when a learning task gives the learner a sense of novelty and challenge, demands high attention and exploration intention, and generates instant enjoyment during the person-task interaction. In this study, a repeated measure research design was used to examine the effects of task design on situational interest and the extent to which the effects were mediated by gender, grade, personal interest, and skill levels. Middle school students (N = 242) evaluated situational interest of four learning tasks with different cognitive and physical demands after having experienced the tasks in their physical education classes. Analyzed data showed that cognitive demand of a learning task played a critical role in generating situational interest. Grade levels, gender, and personal interest mediated the effects of task design on situational interest. But these mediation effects seemed rather limited. Physical skill levels had little influence on the effects of task design on situational interest. The findings seem to suggest that to enhance interestingness of a physical activity task, an option for physical educators may be to increase cognitive demand rather than reduce physical demand.