Arousal, stress, and anxiety

Question 1

What is arousal?

Answer 1

A state of activation that varies on a continuum from deep sleep to intense excitement

Question 2

Is arousal good or bad?

Answer 2

Arousal is neither positive or negative - depends on situation. E.g. can experience high arousal when winning a game, and when you’re in a car crash

Question 3

What is anxiety?

Answer 3

Negative emotional state with feelings of nervousness and worry, associated with activation or arousal of the body

Question 4

What are the four types of anxiety?

Answer 4

Cognitive, somatic, trait, and state

Question 5

What is cognitive anxiety?

Answer 5

What we think

Question 6

What is somatic anxiety?

Answer 6

What we feel. E.g. elevated heart rate, sweating, butterflies, shaking. Typically due to release of adrenaline

Question 7

What is trait anxiety?

Answer 7

Personality characteristic; general tendency to perceive situations as anxiety-provoking; can be somatic and cognitive; typically those who suffer from trait anxiety will have high state anxiety too

Question 8

What is state anxiety?

Answer 8

Transient, situation-specific feelings of worry and tension; often relate to importance or difficulty; cognitive state is degree to which one worries or has negative thoughts; somatic state is moment-to-moment changes in perceived physiological activation

Question 9

How is anxiety recorded?

Answer 9

Measure physiological indicators, or self-reports

Question 10

What are physiological indicators of anxiety, and how they are measured?

Answer 10

Less theta waves and more beta waves, measured by EEG; increased heart rate, measured by EKG; increased muscle tension, measured by EMG; increased respiration and decreased tidal volume; increased blood pressure; increased sweating and decreased skin resistance; increased adrenaline and noradrenaline

Question 11

What are advantages of measuring physiological indicators?

Answer 11

Is objective and unbiased; can provide helpful information to athletes and coaches; can help demonstrate effectiveness of interventions

Question 12

Why are physiological indicators rarely used to measure anxiety?

Answer 12

Is very time consuming and inconvenient; is very expensive; results take a long time and highly trained technicians to interpret; athletes differ in their responses; athletes differ in their interpretation of anxiety

Question 13

What are types of self-report measures?

Answer 13

Global measures, e.g. rating how anxious you feel; multidimensional measures, e.g. rate how worried and activated you feel, can measure both state and trait; competitive state anxiety inventory-2, measures state cognitive and somatic, and self-confidence, 27 items sub-divided into 3 subscales and on a 1-4 scale, e.g. I feel nervous/I am concerned about losing/ I feel self-confident

Question 14

What are disadvantages of self-report?

Answer 14

Subject to social desirability; inability to articulate thoughts/ feelings; limiting response scales

Question 15

What is anxiety intensity?

Answer 15

How much anxiety one feels

Question 16

What is anxiety direction?

Answer 16

One’s interpretation of anxiety as being facilitative or debilitative to performance. Interpreting as facilitative leads to superior performance

Question 17

How is faciliative and debilitative anxiety measured?

Answer 17

Modified version of CSAI-2: intensity and direction questioned

Question 18

How does anxiety change over time?

Answer 18

Increases closer to competition; dramatic increase at 2 hours before and further increase at 30 minutes before

Question 19

How does anxiety differ between elite and non-elite athletes?

Answer 19

Intensity very similar between somatic and cognitive for elite and non-elite, likely die to frame of reference as it is situational; elite view as facilitative, whilst non-elite view as debilitative

Question 20

What is stress?

Answer 20

A substantial imbalance between demand and response capability, under conditions where failure has important consequence