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Within the milieu of athletic talent development, a multitude of physiological, psychological, social, educational, and biomechanical demands interact to create a complex and challenging environment. This paper set out to identify the psychological characteristics that practitioners from different disciplines look for in their charges with the aim of providing clear direction for interdisciplinary development of an elite youth athlete's mentality. Eight professionals, practicing at international elite youth level, across multiple disciplines were interviewed to discuss the key psychological attributes required to successfully progress in elite adult sport. Our analysis identified three key psychological characteristics as being important to success from the perspective of practitioners: resilience, self-regulation, and commitment to develop. These findings help to characterise the key psychological characteristics talent development staff deemed important for elite youth athletic success: characteristics that have a shared value across different disciplines, which can facilitate an interdisciplinary approach to psychological support within talent programmes. Keywords: talent; sport science; multidisciplinary; holistic development, Elite performance is the result of a multitude of interacting factors supported by a range of individuals and groups (Buekers et al., 2017; Piggott et al., 2018). Many of these [...]

Background: Two goal perspectives predominate in achievement settings such as physical education (PE), namely task involvement, focused on self-referenced effort and improvement, and ego involvement, focused on normative ability comparisons. A task (mastery) involving motivational climate is associated with adaptive motivational responses, whereas an ego (performance) involving climate is associated with more maladaptive motivational outcomes. The task, authority, recognition, grouping, evaluation, and time (TARGET) structures of achievement situations have been found to influence motivational climate. It is possible to manipulate the TARGET structures in PE to create a mastery involving climate and enhance pupils' motivational responses. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to develop a mastery intervention programme for teacher education, based on self-observation of filmed PE lessons, and assess its effect on the TARGET teaching behaviours that influence motivational climate, pupils' perceptions of the motivational climate, and their cognitive and affective responses. Participants and setting: Four PE student teachers from the same UK university and a total of 80 (37 boys and 43 girls) pupils from two state comprehensive secondary schools in a large city in South Wales. Intervention: A six stage mastery intervention programme was designed based on self-evaluation of the TARGET structures from filmed PE lessons. Research design: Student teachers were each filmed teaching one pre- and one post-intervention lesson to the same class. Data collection: Teaching behaviours were assessed through an observational measure of TARGET behaviours. A questionnaire was administered to measure pupils' pre- and post-intervention perceptions of the motivational climate and cognitive and affective responses. Data analysis: Pre- and post-intervention mean percentage "mastery", "performance" and "neither" teaching behaviours were calculated for the TARGET behaviours. A series of repeated measures ANOVAs was conducted to determine whether any significant differences existed between pre- and post-intervention teaching behaviours. A repeated measures MANOVA was used in order to assess the effect of the intervention on pupils' perceptions of the motivational climate and their cognitive and affective responses. Secondary analysis involved a series of repeated measures ANOVAs for both high and low affect pupils on perceptions of the motivational climate and their cognitive and affective responses. Findings: The mastery intervention programme was successful in fostering more mastery involving teaching behaviours and higher perceptions of mastery involving TARGET behaviours. Contrary to the hypothesis, pupils' perceptions of a performance involving climate increased and there were no significant changes in their cognitive or affective responses. In accordance with the hypothesis, secondary analysis revealed that the more disaffected pupils significantly improved their motivational responses as a result of the intervention programme. Conclusions: A mastery intervention programme based on self-evaluation of teaching behaviours can increase mastery teaching behaviours and improve more disaffected pupils' motivation in PE. When given publicly to individual pupils, teacher feedback on effort and improvement may be perceived as performance rather than mastery involving. (Contains 6 tables.)

This study investigated the effects of different teaching styles on the teaching behaviours that influence motivational climate and pupils' cognitive and affective responses in physical education. Four (two male, two female) initial teacher education (ITE) students and 92 pupils (47 boys, 45 girls), from two schools in the UK, participated in the study. The student teachers were filmed teaching three lessons each, adopting a different teaching style for each. The teaching styles (command/practice, reciprocal and guided discovery) were selected from Mosston and Ashworth's (2002) spectrum. The teaching behaviours were measured using a computer-coding system devised for Ames's guidelines on how to create a mastery climate. Focus groups were conducted to examine the pupils' cognitive and affective responses. Results revealed that the reciprocal and guided discovery styles resulted in more mastery and less performance-focused teaching behaviours and more adaptive cognitive and affective responses than the command/practice style. (Contains 8 tables.)

Athlete burnout symptoms are detrimental to athlete well-being. Obsessive passion has been identified as an antecedent of athlete burnout, with basic psychological need satisfaction potentially mediating this process. The aim of the current research was to extend on previous work and examine whether the relationship between passion and athlete burnout was mediated by psychological need satisfaction in a heterogeneous sample. Participants were 120 competitive athletes (Mage = 22.04, SD = 5.83) from 21 different sports. Each participant completed the Passion Scale, Basic Psychological Needs in Sport Scale, and the Athlete Burnout Questionnaire. Multiple regression and bootstrapping procedures were used to analyze the data. Passion (harmonious and obsessive) was found to share a significant relationship with sport devaluation but shared no significant relationship with emotional and physical exhaustion and reduced sense of accomplishment. Bootstrapping results suggested that the basic psychological need of autonomy was the only significant mediating variable in the relationship between passion (harmonious and obsessive) and burnout (sport devaluation). Potential antecedents and consequences of athlete burnout, alongside applied and conceptual implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fostering a constructive motivational climate is an important contributor to an individual's motivation (Ames, 1992a), yet research within elite sport remains limited. The purpose of this study was to use the task, authority, recognition, grouping, evaluation, and time—or TARGET—framework to explore the motivational climate in an elite youth football academy. Sixty-four academy training sessions were observed. Findings suggested that the task, authority, recognition, and evaluation structures are most important in predicting a mastery motivational climate. Task organization parameters and coach behaviors influential in promoting adaptive and less adaptive psychological environments are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined temporal changes in sources of sport-confidence during the build up to an important competition. Elite individual athletes (N = 54) completed the Sources of Sport-Confidence Questionnaire (SSCQ) at five precompetition phases (6 weeks, 4 weeks, 3 weeks, 2 weeks and 1 week before competition). A two-factor (gender x time-to-competition) MANOVA revealed no significant interactions, but highlighted both time-to-competition and gender main effects. Time-to-competition main effects indicated the importance placed upon demonstration of ability, physical/mental preparation, physical self-presentation and situational favorableness sources of sport-confidence changed during the precompetition phase. Gender main effects revealed that female athletes demonstrated a significantly greater reliance on sources associated with mastery, physical self-presentation, social support, environmental comfort and coach's leadership than male athletes. These findings emphasize the benefit of considering sources of sport-confidence as competition approaches; they may have implications for the design and timing of confidence based interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the levels of hierarchical catastrophic drop in performance. Application of inductive and deductive analyses; Types of catastrophic performances; Explanation anxiety-performance relationship.

Burnout in sport settings is commonly described as a multidimensional syndrome explained through a variety of antecedents. The present study aims to investigate the predictive relationship of psychological (motives, satisfaction, fatigue, anxiety, self-esteem) and situational (hours of training per week and perceived volume of training) determinants with athlete burnout symptoms (reduced sense of accomplishment, emotional/physical exhaustion, and sport devaluation). Participants were 142 Greek talented competitive athletes, aged 14–18 years, from various individual and team sports. Canonical correlation (CC) analysis indicated that the lack of satisfaction with performance, amotivation, and dysfunctional personality traits undermines athlete perceptions of accomplishment, while those less fatigued, less overloaded, and with a variety of motives protect themselves from feelings of emotional and physical exhaustion. Devaluation factor showed low reliability (.57) and thus was not included within CC analysis. Additionally, multivariate analysis of variance showed that "high burnout" athletes (n = 7) had elevated levels of amotivation, fatigue, and trait anxiety, but lower satisfaction with performance, less self-determined motivation, and lower self-esteem compared to "low burnout" athletes (n = 26). The present results highlight the need to take into consideration a combination of factors to understand burnout occurrence in adolescent athletes. Further, such athletes need to be supported in acquiring strategies to mitigate against threats to amotivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the effectiveness of goal setting in various sports. Factors which influence persons to perform well in tasks; Examination of empirical literature; Details on long-term goal setting training programs.