Sport And Exercise Psychology: A Critical Introduction

To explain, as Murphy and Martin (2002) observed, research on the symbolic rehearsal of
movements and skills may blind us to the many other ways in which athletes use imagery
in sport. Put differently, MP research “offers little guidance regarding the many uses of
imagery by athletes beyond simple performance rehearsal” (p. 417). I shall return to this
last point in the fourth section of this chapter.

Measuring mental imagery skills in sport

Research on the measurement of mental imagery has a long and controversial history in
psychology. It may be traced back to the earliest days of experimental psychology when
Galton (1883) asked people to describe their images and to rate them for vividness. Not
surprisingly, this introspective, self-report strategy proved contentious. In particular, as
we explained earlier in the chapter, Behaviourists like Watson (1913) attacked it on the
grounds that people’s imagery experiences could neither be verified independently nor
linked directly with observable behaviour. Fortunately, theoretical advances in cognitive
psychology (see Kosslyn, 1994) and the advent of brain imaging techniques in
neuroscience (discussed earlier in this chapter) overcame these methodological objections
and led to a resurgence of interest in imagery research. Thus imagery is now measured
via a combination of techniques that include experimental tasks (e.g., asking people to
make decisions and solve problems using imagery processes), timing of behaviour (e.g.,
comparing imagined with actual time taken to execute an action), neuroscientific
procedures (e.g., recording what happens in brain areas activated by imagery tasks) and
psychometric tools (e.g., for the assessment of imagery abilities and imagery use in
athletes). Arising from these empirical strategies, two questions are especially relevant to
the present chapter. First, how can psychologists measure people’s private experience of
mental imagery? Second, what progress has been made in assessing imagery processes in
athletes? In order to answer these questions, a brief theoretical introduction is necessary.
Earlier in this chapter, we learned that although mental images are ephemeral
constructs, they differ from each other along at least two psychological dimensions:
vividness and controllability. Over the past century, these two dimensions of imagery
have been targeted by psychologists in their attempt to measure this construct.
Throughout this period, two different strategies have been used to assess these imagery
dimensions. Whereas the subjective approach is based on the idea of asking people about
the nature of their images, the objective approach requires people to complete
visualisation tasks that have right or wrong answers. The logic here is that the better
people perform on these tasks, the more imagery skills they are alleged to possess.
These approaches to imagery measurement can be illustrated as follows. To begin
with, the vividness of an image (which refers to its clarity or sharpness) can be assessed
using self-report scales in which people are asked to comment on certai aspects of their
mental representation. For example, close your eyes and form a n image of a friend’s
face. On a scale of 1 (meaning “no image at all”) to 5 (meaning “as clear as in normal
vision”), how vivid is your mental image of this face? Similarly the clarity of an auditory
image might be evaluated by asking people such questions as: “If you close your eyes,
how well can you hear the imaginary sound of an ambulance siren?” Unfortunately,
subjective self-report scales of imagery have certain limitations (see Moran, 1993). For

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