ATI Comprehensive Exam Study Guide

ATI Comprehensive Exam Study Guide
1. Sport Psychology A (3)– PSP 5800A***
Study Guide From Final

What is the focus of the cognitive model?
 Perceptions (how you perceive things)
 Thought patterns
 Attention
 Attributions (explaining the reasons why we do things)

What does the NLP model focus on?
 How senses are used to create representations of the world
 Sensory info
 Language
 How you use your senses and then how we figure out what our perception of the world is

How does sport psych define confidence?
 Belief that you can successfully perform a desired behavior

Confidence vs. self-efficacy: Self-efficacy is for a specific task. Confidence is more general.

Confidence that can change as the situation changes = state self-confidence

Most popular model in sport psych = Cognitive-Behavioral Model (CBT)

The sources of self-confidence (in order):
1. Performance accomplishments << strongest + most dependable
2. Vicarious experience
3. Verbal persuasion
4. Imaginal experience (imagery)
5. Physiological states
6. Emotional states

In an evaluative situation (someone’s watching you / you’re being evaluated), an individual with high trait anxiety,
will tend to also exhibit what?
 High state anxiety.

Moment-to-moment change in perceived physiological activation = somatic state anxiety

If an athlete perceives control in a situation, and feels that the event or reward increases feelings of competence,
what happens to intrinsic motivation? INCREASES.
 Cognitive Evaluative Theory (CET)
 Key parts to theory = control + competence

The stress process involves what?
4 steps:
1. Demand on the individual
2. Cognitive appraisal
3. Perceived coping abilities
4. Negative stress symptoms (response)
a. Ex: feelings of anxiety

Multidimensional anxiety: Why is it multidimensional? Somatic and cognitive anxiety.
(not facilitative and debilitative in this particular model)

,Mastery/task focus vs. ego focus = goal perspectives/orientations

Motivation = direction + intensity of one’s effort

General level of anxiety that stays stable over time = trait anxiety

Pavlov, Watson, Thorndike, Skinner are associated with which model?
 Behavioral Model

Hardy’s Catastrophe Theory predicts what?
 LOW cog anxiety: inverted-U
 HIGH cog anxiety: predicts that catastrophe can occur
 as anx. increases, perf. improves to a certain point then plummets

Cog Eval Theory (CET), when an ath perceives control and has increased feeling competence, what increases?
Intrinsic motivation.

Who’s responsible for self-efficacy theory?
 Albert Bandura

What does Inverted-U theory predict?
 Arousal can either be too high or too low
 Top performance occurs at moderate level of arousal

Hanin’s Zone of Optimal Functioning suggests what?
 Each individual has a specific optimal level of efficiency

Focusing on performance, as opposed to outcome goals, during competition, has been shown to be associated with
____ anxiety and ___ performance.
 less anxiety / superior performance

Appropriate guidelines for applying arousal and anxiety knowledge:
1. Recognize signs (som + cog) of increased anxiety and arousal
a. Cog: inappropriate thoughts/worry
b. Som: Heart rate, sweaty, etc.
2. Recognize how personal + situational factors influence arousal and performance
a. Frequency of anxiety
b. Anxiety triggers, etc.
3. Tailor coaching and instruction to individuals.

Excess anxiety produces what?
 Inappropriate thoughts
 Inappropriate muscle tension
 Somatic reactions (increased heart rate, shallow breathing etc.)

T/F: Applied sport psychology can be defined as helping ath and coaches learn how to control the way they think,
feel, and act to help them reach their potential in sport. TRUE.

First person to conduct an experiment in sport psych = Norman Triplett
 Bike riders perform better in presence of others (social facilitation theory)
 Bicyclette (in French) → Triplett (way to help you remember this)

Father of American sport psychology = Coleman Griffith

AASP = Assoc for Applied Sport Psych

,To legally be called a sport psychologist (SP), must have:
1. Doctorate in psychology (PhD / PsyD)
2. Some academic SP training
3. Licensed in state you’re going to work in

Which of the following CAN’T mental training consultants do?
 Teach performance enhancement techniques
 Research why athletes behave as they do
 Teach students to become sport psych consultants
 Doing clinical or counseling work with athletes << NOPE
^^ Sport psychologist can do ALL of the above.

Participant motivation is usually a result of:
 Combo of personal and situational factors
If we are looking to understand students’, athletes’, and exercisers’ MOTIVES for involvement (i.e. assess their
motives), we need to do what?
 Observe participants to see what they like/don’t like about the activity.
 Periodically ask them to list reasons for participation
 Talk to others who know athletes and exercisers
 ^^ Take this with a grain of salt ^^

What are attributions?
 Reasons we give for our actions

In literature, with what other term is self-efficacy used interchangeably?
 Self-confidence

Improve confidence:
 Think confidently
 Act confidently
 Imagery

Which statement(s) are true?
Ind should image…
...only successful events.
...Mostly unsuccessful events.
>> ...Mostly successful events but also learn to cope with occasional failure <<

Research in the 1980s found all of the following:
 Physical practice (PP) is better than mental rehearsal alone
 Mental rehearsal (MR) is better than no physical practice
 MR and PP combined is most effective

Imagery should contain two elements:
1. Vividness
2. Control

According to bioinformational theory, imagery should contain what?
 Stimulus propositions and response propositions
 Particularly good for working with ath when they’re trying to change a habit
 Training yourself to respond a certain way to a stimulus



Relating to attention:

, If a golfer is focusing on length of fairway and direction of wind, and then shifts focus to only on ball, they’re going
from broad-external to narrow-external.
 Broad-internal would be: planning
 Narrow-internal would be: analyzing
 External are outside of yourself.

Telling myself to “focus” can be best defined as...
 Cue word for bringing you back to PRESENT focus.

Nideffer’s two dimensions of attentional focus are:
1. Width
2. Direction

What are four components of Nideffer’s model:
1. Broad
2. Narrow
a. ^^ width
3. Internal
4. External
a. ^^direction

Attentional cues can be what types of cues:
 verbal/auditory
 visual
 physical

Rogers and Maslow are advocates of which model?
 Humanistic

T/F: There’s little research on NLP in sport psychology literature. TRUE

In the Humanistic model, human experience is viewed as:
 Important
 Integral (a part of everything/the foundation)

If I’m a mental skills consultant, can I:
 educate on psychological skills training? YES.
 Life skill development? YES.
 Treat depression? NO.

T/F: Legally, anyone in the US can call themselves a sport psychologist. FALSE.
T/F: Legally, anyone in the US can call themselves a mental skills coach. TRUE.

• Coleman Griffith ‘The Griffith Era’- the Father of American Sport Psychology, Focused on reaction time
mental awareness, muscular tension, and relaxation. Founded the first Sport Psych lab in the USA. Actual
first lab was Carl Diem in 1920 in Germany
• Prep for the future era - 1939-1965
• ISSP founded in 1965, first official organization in Sport Psych
• Est of Academic Sport Psych 1966-1977
• Bulk of current sport psych. NASPSPA is their terrible acronym.
• Bruce Ogilive Father of APPLIED Sport Psych and Thomas Tutko - both taught at JFK wrote
Problem Athletes and how to handle them.
• Multidisc Science and Practice in Sport and Exercise Psych 1978-2000
• University of Illinois is important… Rainer Martens wrote 2 seminal articles and went on to be
the founder president and the publisher of Human Kinetics.