GENERAL COURSE DESCRIPTION

Sport psychology is an emerging sub-field in psychology. It is interested in the effects of psychological and behavioral measures and mental training on sport performance. Although its roots can be traced back to the early 1900s only recently has it boomed in terms of generating major interest on the part of athletes, coaches, teams and practitioners. While this discipline is multifaceted in terms of its scope of application, ranging from the promotion of wellness through exercise psychotherapy to motor learning, it is most thought of in the context of the enhancement of sport performance through the use of mental training techniques. The evaluation of athletes and psychological testing are also an integral component of applied sport psychology.

This course will focus primarily on Applied Sport Psychology including the assessment of athletes and interventions that are used in attempts to improve athlete performance. It will also expose participants to motor learning and cognitive components of the performance equation as well as an overview of the theoretical underpinnings of methods and procedures that are commonly used by practitioners. Unique to this course will be a section on emerging Primary Higher Order factors that have been isolated in recent research as being not only central to predicting psychological performance in pressure situations but also to intervention amenability and compliance. In addition, the first systematized evidence-based approach to applied sport psychology will be presented as an epilogue. This last portion of the course lays out the American Board of Sport Psychology’s applied athlete assessment and intervention protocol in outline form in an effort to expose future practitioners to advances in the field that are leading to a major paradigm shift in the way applied sport psychology is being practiced.

Participants in this course will be entitled to a 10% discount on the tuition fee toward training and certification in sport psychology through the American Board of Sport Psychology (ABSP).

 
Educational Objectives:

This course will teach psychotherapists to
• Define central components of sport performance, including motor learning of sport specific skills and cognitive processing.
• Describe (especially for those participants who are not that familiar with sports) coaching or motor learning and gain awareness of physical and technical mechanisms that athletes must control centrally (psychologically) at a high level during training and competition.
• Review perspectives and issues in athlete assessment as well as review instruments that are commonly used to evaluate competitors.
• Cite critical perspectives in applied sport that contest status quo applied approaches and call for a major paradigm shift.
• Practice new evidence based approaches to athlete assessment and mental training that are designed to better predict athlete psychological tendencies and control for mental training efficacy.

Course Syllabus:

Introduction: A Brief History of Sport Psychology

I. Sport Performance

Cognitive Motor Learning Processes

Skill Representation: Schemata & Skill Representation: Production Systems

Contextual Interference & Direct Perception

Psychophysiological Processes

Inverted-U Theory & Zone of Optimal Functioning

Catastrophe Theory, Overintensity, Underintensity

Conscious, Unconscious and Attentional Processes

Psychologically Mediated Heart Rate Variability During Sports

Cognitive (Unconscious) Components of Self-Paced Skill Action

Attentional Processes & Research of Attentional Processes and Performance

Selective Attention, Divided Attention & Losing Concentration

Choking: Performance Anxiety

II. Assessment of Athletes

Advances and Controversies

Overlooked Primary Higher Order Factors

Psychophysiological Assessment of Intensity

Assessing Attentional and Cognitive Processes

Self-Report Measures of Attention

Psychophysiological Assessment of Attention

III. Enhancement of Sport Performance

Goal-Setting & Goal-Setting Principles

Problems Associated With Goal-Setting

Mental Imagery & Psychoneuromuscular Theory of Imagery

Symbolic Theory of Imagery & Informational and Motor Processing Theory of Imagery

Psychological States and Mental Imagery & Guidelines for Using Mental Imagery

Problems and Issues Associated With Mental Imagery

Cognitive Strategies, Identifying Irrational and Distorted Thinking & Self-Talk

Intensity Regulation & Controlled Breathing and Relaxation

Other Interventions for the Regulation of Intensity

Hypnosis & Biofeedback

IV. Integrative Evidence-Based Sport Psychology that Challenges the Status Quo: A Systematized Athlete Assessment and Intervention Protocol (The Carlstedt Protocol)

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