ABSTRACT
The purpose of this study was to examine the trainability of anticipation in intermediate tennis players. In particular, the study examined whether video presentations could improve on-court tennis serve returns. A series of separate A-B designs across 6 participants was implemented, with baseline and intervention scores for on-court serve-return performance being recorded. Intervention consisted of 2 phases: a training phase and an on-court testing phase. The training phase, which employed a changing criterion design, consisted of a series of tennis-serve video presentations that were replayed with gradually increasing speed. All serves were occluded on racquet/ball contact, and participants were asked to predict the type, depth, and width of the serve. Following completion of the training phase, participants were again tested on their ability to return tennis serves on the tennis court. On-court results suggested that anticipation ability and performance did improve as a result of the intervention.
Subject(s)
Behavior Therapy , Motor Skills , Tennis/psychology , Adult , Aptitude/physiology , Attention , Decision Making , Female , Humans , Male , Reaction Time , Tennis/physiology , Videotape RecordingSubject(s)
Imagination , Sports/psychology , Task Performance and Analysis , Humans , Models, PsychologicalABSTRACT
The study examined the coaching preferences of 80 male and 80 female athletes, as measured by the Leadership Scale for Sports (Chelladurai and Saleh, 1978, 1980). In addition, it attempted to assess the applicability to sport of the Life-cycle and Path-goal theories of leadership. Comparisons between groups were made on the basis of sex, age, and type of sport. A MANOVA indicated that athletes in independent sports preferred more democratic behaviour (p less than .001) and less autocratic behaviour (p = .028) than athletes in interdependent sports. No differences in coaching preferences were found which could be attributed to the age or sex of the athlete, or the variability of the sports task. These results partially supported the Path-goal theory, but did not support the Life-cycle theory. Athletes of all groups tended to favour coaches who displayed training behaviour and rewarding behaviour "often", democratic behaviour and social support behaviour "occasionally", and autocratic behaviour "seldom". This consistency may be a useful finding for those organizations and institutions interested in preparing coaches.
