Is What You See Really What You Get? Athletes’ Perceptions of Imagery’s Functions

Abstract

Imagery in sport has been studied extensively (for a review see Martin, Moritz, & Hall, 1999). Researchers have described the what, why, where, when, and how athletes use imagery (e.g., Martin et al., 1999; Munroe, Giacobbi, Hall, & Weinberg, 2000). Most of the current research in this area has supported Paivio’s (1985) conceptualization of imagery into cognitive and motivational functions that operate on specific and general levels. These functions are Cognitive Specific (CS: imaging skills), Cognitive General (CG: imaging strategies), Motivation Specific (MS: imaging goal oriented responses and activities), and Motivational General (MG: affect and arousal). Based on this framework, the Sport Imagery Questionnaire (SIQ; Hall, Mack, Paivio, & Hausenblas, 1998) was developed to assess the frequency with which athletes use these imagery functions. In contrast to Paivio’s original model, the SIQ contains 5 subscales as a result of the splitting of the MG function into MG-Mastery (MG-M: imaging being confident, for example) and MG-Arousal (MG-A: imaging physiological and emotional arousal). Researchers have suggested that for imagery to be an effective performance enhancing technique, the imagery content must match the function (cf. Denis, 1985). Martin et al. (1999) also highlighted the importance of using different types of images to achieve different outcomes. In short, the premise behind imagery use Brief Report