Cognitive Factors in Athletic (Swimming) Performance: A Re-Examination

Summary

A 2 × 2 factorial design was used to analyze the effects of self-instruction and arousal strategies on 24 swimmers' performances in a 50 m and 100 m freestyle time-trial at posttraining and follow-up testing. There were no significant main effects at either testing session nor any interactions at post-testing. However, the self-instruction × arousal interaction approached significance on the 50 m follow-up trial (p = .06), but not the 100 m trial. Two factors may account for this phenomenon. First, the impact of cognitive factors may decrease as the influence of extraneous variables increases. Second, idiosyncratic rather than group-oriented cognitive strategies may be more effective, as they are likely to have been more pronounced at follow-up than at posttesting.