0000000000205208
AUTHOR
Christoph Hindel
Anxiety, cognitive interference, and sports performance: The cognitive interference test—table tennis
Abstract Task-irrelevant cognitions manifested by athletes engaged in competition may interfere with the course of an ongoing contest. The self-confrontation method was applied to 18 table tennis players ranging from intermediate to expert level. By means of this method, various types of interfering cognitions present during competition were registered and then tentatively assigned to content-related categories. Based on the content of these cognitions, a sports-specific questionnaire was developed and administered to 149 table tennis players of various levels. Employing principal component analysis, three components could be interpreted: (a) worry, self-doubt, and distraction, (b) emotiona…
Trait anxiety, state anxiety, and coping behavior as predictors of athletic performance
Abstract Employing the data of 36 top table-tennis players the present study analyzes the relations between general and sport-specific trait anxiety, coping dispositions, use of “naive” self-regulatory techniques, emotional and cognitive anxiety reactions in situations of varying stress, and success in athletic competition. The study is based on the cognitive theory of evaluative anxiety, Spielberger's trait-state anxiety model, Lazarus' theory of coping, and the concept of person-specific coping modes. The interaction between trait anxiety and degree of stress, postulated by the trait-state model, could be verified empirically for both, emotional and cognitive anxiety. This result, however…