| An interdisciplinary approach including Counseling Psychology, Psychology, and Sociology was employed to test the effects of Restricted Environmental Stimulation Therapy (REST), and social facilitation on performance enhancement among female collegiate basketball players. Areas addressed included the sociological context in which the athletes competed, with or without social facilitation and the effects of imagery on free throw shooting scores in basketball. Restricted Environmental Stimulation (REST) has been demonstrated to be an effective mechanism for significantly increasing the performance of male athletes in the area of rifle marksmanship (A. Barabasz, M. Barabasz, & Bauman, 1993) and for intercollegiate basketball performance (Wagaman, A. Barabasz, & M. Barabasz, 1991) but no data has been available on the effects of REST using elite women athletes as participants. This was the first study to explore the effects of wet flotation-REST, chamber-REST and a control condition on Collegiate women basketball players. Data were recorded from free throw shooting scores in both a social facilitation and without social facilitation condition, using twenty seven women basketball players, who competed in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division III, National Association of Intercollegiate Association (NAIA) D-I and Northwest Athletic Association of Community Colleges (NWAACC), shot a total of 50 free-throws pre and post treatment conditions.;It was hypothesized that both wet flotation-REST and chamber-REST would increase free throw shooting scores compared to a control condition. A split-plot Analysis of Variance was conducted. The overall split-plot model was not significant at the .05 level for the treatment effects, F (2,24) = 3.14, p = .06. On average scores decreased from pretest to post-test in the two levels, with and without social facilitation. It was also hypothesized that participant's free throw shooting scores would be higher in a without social facilitation condition compared to a social facilitation condition. There was no significant difference between post test free throw shooting scores for the with social and without social facilitation conditions. Finally group cohesion as measured by the Group Environment Questionnaire (Carron, Brawley, and Widmeyer, 1985) was not a significant moderator of the REST-performance relationship. |
