| Athletes perform often in variable, high-stress environments that demand complex skills (i.e., cognitive and physical). These skills increase arousal and deplete the attentional resources of the athlete. The quantitative, experimental study utilized random assignment to determine how video feedback (VF) impacted anxiety (i.e., cognitive and somatic) and motor skill performance in athletes. The research questions emphasized whether VF significantly increased jump skill performance and reduced anxiety (i.e., cognitive and somatic) in a sport-specific, real-world setting (i.e., cheer gym). The 4-week VF intervention consisted of a control group (verbal feedback only) and an experimental group (verbal and video) that completed pretests and posttests. Sixty-six female subjects (11.0 +/- 2.42 y) were utilized. Each athlete was videotaped while performing a 10s tuck-jump. Two blinded evaluators utilized the Tuck Jump Scoring Instrument (TJSI) to analyze the jumps for a pre- and post-test analysis. This analysis would determine if motor-skill deficits decreased over the 4-week time intervention. The Competitive State Anxiety Inventory (CSAI-2) was utilized for the anxiety measure in the study. The mixed MANOVA determined that there was no significant main effect of group condition (p =.142). There also was no significant interaction of time and group condition for the VF intervention (p = .825). The results of the current study indicated that VF was not a statistically-significant intervention for increasing motor learning and reducing cognitive and somatic anxiety. The results during the 4-week intervention also indicated that VF statistically impacted anxiety more than motor learning. Keywords: Video feedback, anxiety, sports, athletes, motor skills, performance anxiety, cognitive anxiety, somatic anxiety, cheerleading. |
