exercise for learning more about the timing of real and imaginary skills. Imagine that you
are about to write down your name, address and phone number on a sheet of paper.
Before you begin this mental task, make sure the second hand of your watch is at the zero
position. Then, make a note of how long it took you to write the three pieces of
information in your mind’s eye. Next, find another piece of paper and repeat the writing
exercise. Now, compare the two times that you recorded. If you were to repeat this
exercise several times, you would find that the time it takes to write down your name,
address and phone number is about the same as it takes to complete this task mentally.
Robertson (2002) also suggests that if you were to repeat this experiment using your non-
dominant hand, the “mental” and “physical” task times would also be similar—even if
both times would probably be slower than when performed with your dominant hand.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the temporal congruence between actual and imagined
movements seems to be affected by intervening variables such as the nature of the skill
being performed and the level of expertise of the performers. For example, Reed (2002)
compared physical execution times for springboard dives with the time taken to execute
this skill mentally. Three groups of divers were used: experts, intermediate performers
and novices. Results revealed that, in general, visualisation time increased with the
complexity of the dives. Also, by contrast with the experts and novices, visualised dive
execution time was slower than physical dive execution time. A further complication
within this field of mental chronometry emerged from a study by Orliaguet and Coello
(1998). Briefly, these researchers found little or no similarity between the timing of
actual and imagined putting movements in golfers. Until recently, most research on the
congruence between actual and imagined movement execution used skilled tasks (e.g.,
canoe-slalom, diving) in which there were no environmental constraints imposed on the
motor system of the performer. However, Papaxanthis, Pozzo, Kasprinski and Berthoz
(2003) conducted a remarkable study in which cosmonauts were tested on actual and
imagined motor skills (e.g., climbing stairs, jumping and walking) before and after a six-
month space flight. The specific issue of interest to these researchers was the degree to
which a long exposure to microgravity conditions could affect the duration of actual and
imagined movements. Results showed that, in general, the cosmonauts performed the
actual and imagined movements with similar durations before and after the space flight.
Papaxanthis et al. (2003) interpreted this finding to indicate that motor imagery and
actual movement execution are affected by similar adaptation processes and share
common neural pathways. In summary, the fact that the timing of mentally simulated
lengthy actions tends to resemble closely the actual movement times involved suggests
that motor imagery is functionally equivalent to motor production. Let us now return to
the issue of how to assess the veracity of athletes’ imagery reports. Another possibility in
this regard is to validate such experiences through “functional equivalence” theory
(Kosslyn, 1994). Briefly, according to this theory, mental imagery and perception are
functionally equivalent in the sense that they are mediated by similar neuro-psychological
pathways in the brain. As Kosslyn et al. (2001) concluded, current cognitive
neuroscientists believe that “most of the neural processes that underlie like-modality
perception are also used in imagery; and imagery, in many ways, can stand in for (re-
present, if you will) a perceptual stimulus or situation” (p. 641). If this theory is valid,
then interference should occur when athletes are required to activate perceptual and
Sport and exercise psychology: A critical introduction 134