To what extent will arousal influence preformance in netball.
AROUSAL
Arousal,
"A general physiological and psychological activation that varies on a continuum from deep sleep to intense excitement."
(Gould and Krane 1992)
The relationship between arousal and performance has been a largely researched area over many years. Due to the diverse nature of this subject, many theories have been written in attempt to explain possible influences of arousal on an athlete's performance. Even to this day, research continues and new theories are being thought of. As there are so many theories to choose from, I decided to concentrate my study on only one - Yerkes and Dodson's Inverted-U Hypothesis (1908).
In a game of netball, there are seven positions and each position differs in playing zone and purpose. In my study, I have taken two positions to compare - Centre and Goal Shooter. I chose these two positions as they are quite opposite in terms of playing zones and purposes. As each of these positions are different to each other you would expect differences in the factors affecting their performances. So, to explore this I have researched literature to do with netball and the Inverted U Hypothesis from various sources and will discuss my findings later in this study.
LITERATURE REVIEW
I have gathered my information from a range of sources.
Firstly, I did a lot of research on the Inverted U Hypothesis itself by using various textbooks. Nearly all of the information I found had some kind of explanation as to what the hypothesis is and what it means.
I started with our recommended A-level textbook - Advanced Physical Education & Sport for A-Level (Honeybourne, Hill & Moor - 2000). It stated what is typical in the other sources of information I gathered. It basically says that the Inverted U Hypothesis shows that every athlete has an optimum level of arousal that needs to be reached in order to achieve peak performance.
If you exceed the optimal arousal level then your performance will decline in proportion to how much over aroused you are.
The Foundations of Sport and Exercise Psychology (Weinberg & Gould) was more technical and made arousal links to performance. It gives detailed explanations of each theory starting from the earliest one and then smoothly transitioning into the next, showing how they develop from each other. It had no direct links to netball, but gave enough material to apply to my study.
A chapter titled 'The Arousal -Athletic Performance Relationship: Current Status and Future Directions' written ...
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If you exceed the optimal arousal level then your performance will decline in proportion to how much over aroused you are.
The Foundations of Sport and Exercise Psychology (Weinberg & Gould) was more technical and made arousal links to performance. It gives detailed explanations of each theory starting from the earliest one and then smoothly transitioning into the next, showing how they develop from each other. It had no direct links to netball, but gave enough material to apply to my study.
A chapter titled 'The Arousal -Athletic Performance Relationship: Current Status and Future Directions' written by D. Gould and V. Krane in another textbook was similar to The Foundations of Sport and Exercise Psychology book in terms of the range of information i.e. they had the same theories. However, the explanations were much more advanced and complex, probably too complex for the nature of this study.
The article named 'Clarifying Semantic Confusion in Health and Physical Education' by Dr. Ann W. Garvin was found on the UWP Online Journal of Teaching Excellence. Basically, she does a lot of criticising of the Inverted U Hypothesis.
Although a lot of research has been carried out relating arousal and athletic performance, I have been unsuccessful in finding material directly linked to netball. Nevertheless, I did find the official All England Netball Association (AENA) coaching manual, which was bound to have relevant information. It had a whole chapter on the influence of psychology in netball contributed by Jim Golby, which I will discuss in the next part of my study.
'Competitive Fire' by Michael Clarkson is a very informative and addictive book. Nearly everything it states is related to an actual scenario of an athlete in the past or present. It goes in very deep as to why athletes behave like they do and it goes as far as discussing athletes' upbringing. Only downfall was that it is an American book written by an American sportswriter so once again, no reference to netball.
I also tried to find information by searching in Australian run websites, as netball is quite a big thing there. There was either nothing there on arousal or there was, but you had to pay a subscription fee.
DISCUSSION
Netball is a fast-moving and tactical game. In high level games, decision are to be made very quickly and carried out very quickly, so an optimum level of arousal should enable you to do so efficiently. However, it is not yet definite how optimum levels of arousal are decided, although there are theories to suggest so like Yerkes and Dodson's Inverted-U Hypothesis.
The Inverted-U hypothesis was devised in 1908 by Yerkes and Dodson. They predicted the relationship between arousal and performance to be curvilinear rather than linear like Hull's Drive Theory. Performance is supposed to increase as a performer's arousal/anxiety levels increase up to a certain point (optimum). Apparently, when a performer is considered to be at this optimum level they will perform their best, but any further increase in arousal will cause their performance to decline in proportion to how much over the limit they are.
In netball, the Goal Shooter and Centre have two different roles. The role of the Centre is to initiate attack throughout the game and be the link between the defending and attacking players. The playing area is very large - almost the whole court except the two D's either side. The Goal shooter has a much smaller playing zone compared to the Centre. The position is confined to only the shooting third and more often only the shooting D. The role of the Goal shooter is to obviously shoot the goals, but so much more is involved into establishing a comfortable shooting position in the D.
The A-level textbook by Honeybourne, Hill and Moor explains how the type of activity being undertaken can determine arousal levels. For example, a fine skill like putting in golf will require lower levels of arousal than compared to a 100m sprinter. It also talks about the level of skill. The higher skilled a performer is the more likely he or she will be able to cope with higher levels of stress as the motor skill is so well learned that they do it without conscious thinking.
In terms of playing space and skills involved, I would say that Centres would require higher levels of arousal. They are physically running from one end of the court to the other receiving and making passes in all directions, so they need to be alert and very aware of the changing situation around them. Low levels of arousal would probably make them slower in speed and decision making, thus not being able to keep up with the game. I think could it be possible to be over aroused, causing the player to be dis-orientated, confused on decision making and generally being slower. Goal Shooters are confined to their space and not moving around as much as the Centre. However, they still need to be very alert and ready to move to get free when the ball is coming their way. So, I would think lower levels of arousal than the Centre would be sufficient, but not so low that they are not at 'ready' state.
One skill that the Goal Shooter has to perform which the Centre never will, is the actual shooting. Shooting can be argued as a fine skill. It requires a great deal of concentration and focusing. Would high levels of arousal caused by pressure cause the player to 'choke'? In the book 'Competitive Fire' it states that more and more sports psychiatrists are promoting high levels of stress to sportspeople undertaking finer skills saying that it helps them concentrate and focus, whereas lower levels would allow them to get distracted by the crowd and interactive co-actors.
So in conclusion, the two different positions are very likely to require different levels of arousal to achieve optimum performance, but the actual level of arousal required is arguable. It is also believable that optimum performance requires optimum arousal, and exceeding that level could have detrimental effects, but more evidence through research is needed. To put it visually,
APPRAISAL
Arousal is a very diverse subject with many theories and many other influencing factors. Because of this, I found it quite hard initially to find a suitable title relating to netball. There is a vast amount of information about arousal, stress and anxiety and it would probably take me many years to come to a justified conclusion to my original problem.
Another problem I had was that I couldn't get hold of any relevant information linking directly to netball. What I could have done is get hold of research in another team sport and applied it to my case.
I feel that I did not use my research to the best of my ability as I have missed out many points, which could also link in with this issue, but due to the time constraint I had to cut a lot out
Throughout my study, I did not refer back to my introduction as much as I could have and I didn't refer to my sources much in my discussion. This has sort of made my study drift away from my point and it did not link in together as well as it could have.
To extend this project I could conduct tests with various netball teams to get real results and by analysing these results make a real conclusion. I could compare different levels to see if skill level affects performance under pressure, if so then how.
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