In-depth semistructured interviews were conducted with 14 male and female professional dancers from several dance forms. Interviews were primarily based in the 4 Ws framework (Munroe, Giacobbi, Jr., Hall, & Weinberg, 2000), which meant exploring Where, When, Why, and What dancers image. A dimension describing How the dancers employed imagery also emerged. What refers to imagery content, and emerged from two categories: Imagery Types and Imagery Characteristics. Why represents the reason an image is employed and emerged from five categories: Cognitive Reasons, Motivational Reasons, Artistic Reasons, Healing Reasons, and No reason - Triggered Imagery. There were also large individual differences reported regarding What images were used and Why. Many new insights were gained, including several imagery types and reasons not commonly discussed in sport and exercise.

The effects of imagery direction on self-efficacy and performance in a dart throwing task were examined. Two imagery types were investigated: skill-based cognitive specific (CS) and confidence-based motivational general-mastery (MG-M). Seventy-five novice dart throwers were randomly allocated to one of three conditions: (a) facilitative imagery, (b) debilitative imagery, or (c) control. After 2 imagery interventions, the debilitative imagery group rated their self-efficacy significantly lower than the facilitative group and performed significantly worse than either the facilitative group or the control group. Efficacy ratings remained constant across trials for the facilitative group, but decreased significantly for both the control group and the debilitative group. Performance remained constant for the facilitative and the control groups but decreased significantly for the debilitative group. Similar to Short et al. (2002), our results indicate that both CS and MG-M imagery can affect self-efficacy and performance.

The study investigated the impact of varying combinations of facilitative and debilitative imagery and self-talk (ST) on self-efficacy and performance of a dart-throwing task. Participants (N = 95) were allocated to 1 of 5 groups: (a) facilitative imagery/facilitative ST, (b) facilitative imagery/debilitative ST, (c) debilitative imagery/facilitative ST, (d) debilitative imagery/debilitative ST, or (e) control. Mixed-design ANOVAs revealed that performance, but not self-efficacy, changed over time as a function of the assigned experimental condition. Participants in the debilitative imagery/debilitative ST condition worsened their performance, and participants in the facilitative imagery/facilitative ST condition achieved better scores. These findings demonstrate that a combination of facilitative imagery and ST can enhance performance whereas debilitative imagery and ST can hamper it.

Aesthetic sport athletes are subject to pressures to be thin. Because such pressures may vary across different subtypes of gymnastics, differences between 3 gymnastics types (artistic, rhythmic, and sports acrobatics) on indices of eating disturbances were investigated. This was performed with a younger sample than has commonly been the norm. Fifty competitive female gymnasts, 10-15 years of age, completed subscales of the Eating Disorder Inventory. Rhythmic gymnasts scored the highest for Drive for Thinness and for total eating disturbance (both p < .01). Therefore, rhythmic gymnasts were identified as being more at risk for eating disorder development than artistic gymnasts or sports acrobats. Eating disturbance scores were unrelated to both age and hours of training but positively related to perfectionism. The lack of a relationship between eating disturbance scores and age is surprising: eating disorders commonly develop between 14-21 years and, in the current sample, 92% of the participants were under 14 years of age. In total, 7 gymnasts (14%) were considered at risk for an eating disorder. Sport-specific pressures in rhythmic gymnastics may contribute to a heightened Drive for Thinness, a risk factor for eating disorder development.

No abstract