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Sport and Exercise Psychology

  • 26 subtopics
  • 69 things to know
  • Component 03
  • Component 03 applied option, two chosen from four

What Sport and Exercise Psychology covers

Sport and Exercise Psychology is examined on component 03 of OCR Psychology, Applied psychology. It is one of the four applied options, of which a student studies two. 309 recall questions across 26 subtopics.

Where it is assessed

Component 03

Applied psychology, the third paper.

Check the OCR specification ↗

The 26 subtopics

Each one has its own page.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Evaluation

Give one strength and one weakness of measuring competitive anxiety with a self-report questionnaire.

Study

Who made up the control group, and how were participants recruited?

Key term

What happened to the short cycle results once the Bonferroni adjustment was applied?

Evaluation

Give two limitations of using exercise as a mental health intervention.

Key term

How does self-confidence differ from self-efficacy?

Key term

Which source of self-efficacy is the most powerful, and why?

Key term

Why is a demonstration by a team-mate of similar ability more useful for building self-efficacy than one by an international star?

Process

Why must a goal be difficult as well as achievable?

Key term

How could a coach use vicarious experience to motivate a squad member who doubts she can make the first team?

Study

Who was included in the analysis?

Key term

Why were some athletes who completed the questionnaire excluded from the analysis?

Study

Give two weaknesses of Kroll and Crenshaw's study.

Process

Why does cohesion matter more in netball than in archery?

Study

Who were the coaches in the study?

Key term

What differences were found in the players' attitudes?

Key term

How does increasing a coach's use of reinforcement improve team performance in the long run?

Key term

How does Zajonc's drive theory explain social facilitation?

Key term

Why does a crowd help an expert but hinder a novice?

Evaluation

Give four explanations for home advantage.

Study

What were the variables in the first experiment?

Study

Give three controls used in the procedure.

Key term

Distinguish between trait anxiety and state anxiety.

Key term

A beginner and a county champion both play a match in front of a large, noisy crowd. What does drive theory predict for each?

Key term

Why does a snooker player need a lower optimal arousal level than a weightlifter?

Key term

Name three aspects of mental health that regular exercise has been shown to improve.

Key term

Why should the goals in an exercise programme be based on attendance and effort rather than on weight or speed?

Key term

What has research generally found when comparing the personalities of athletes and non-athletes?

Key term

How can knowledge of an athlete's personality be used in deciding their position or role in a team?

Evaluation

What does Fiedler's contingency model say about effective leadership?

Key term

Explain the difference between role clarity and role acceptance.

Key term

Why should a beginner learn a new skill without spectators present?

Key term

In the cusp catastrophe model, what roles are given to cognitive anxiety and to physiological arousal?

Key term

What does the model predict when cognitive anxiety is high?

Key term

What is meant by the prediction of hysteresis?

Process

How does a centring or breathing-control routine work?

Key term

How can imagery be used to reduce competitive anxiety?

Key term

What does the endorphin hypothesis claim?

Key term

How is a total mood disturbance score obtained from the Profile of Mood States?

Who and when

How did the baseline mood of the Parkinson's group compare with published norms?

Numbers

How many players were in each level of play, and why was the analysed sample smaller than the number recruited?

Who and when

What did the correlations between imagery and the confidence measures show?

Key term

Were there differences between boys and girls, or between the two levels of play?

Key term

Define personality.

Who and when

How accurately did the personality profiles predict which sport an athlete played?

Key term

What is athlete profiling?

Who and when

On which behaviours did players' perceptions of trained and untrained coaches differ?

Key term

What was found for starting latencies in the first experiment?

Evaluation

Give two strengths of Zajonc et al.'s research.

Key term

How do cue words help a performer manage a noisy crowd?

Key term

How does a pre-performance routine help in front of spectators?

Key term

Define arousal.

Key term

What happens to performance when an athlete is under-aroused?

Who and when

Which two further variables did Fazey and Hardy add in their higher-order butterfly model, and what does each do?

Key term

Explain the technique of thought stopping.

Key term

How does exercise affect the body's stress response?

Key term

Which single mood subscale remained significant after the correction for multiple testing?

Key term

Why does enjoyment matter when selecting the type of exercise for a mental health programme?

Evaluation

Give two strengths of Munroe-Chandler et al.'s study.

Process

Distinguish between outcome, performance and process goals.

Who and when

Which dimensions of personality did Eysenck identify?

Who and when

What problem with earlier personality research did the study set out to address?

Key term

Which group was identified most accurately, and which least accurately?

Key term

An extraverted sprinter looks flat in a low-key training session. What would you suggest?

Key term

What distinguishes a team from a mere collection of individuals?

Key term

Which children benefited most from having a trained coach?

Key term

Name three ways a coach can reduce social loafing.

Key term

Define social facilitation.

Key term

Why were a bright floodlight and a darkened goal box used?

Evaluation

Give one limitation of simulation training.

Take Sport and Exercise Psychology further

The same content, four other ways.

Commonly confused

Pairs that lose marks when they are blurred together.

  • Arousal vs Cognitive anxiety

    Arousal: the general level of physiological and psychological activation. Cognitive anxiety: the worrying, negative thoughts a performer has about an event.

  • Individual zone of optimal functioning vs Hysteresis

    Individual zone of optimal functioning: the band of activation within which a particular performer does their best. Hysteresis: the prediction that performance falls by a different path than the one it rose by.

  • Self-efficacy vs Attribution retraining

    Self-efficacy: a person's belief in their capability to carry out a specific task. Attribution retraining: teaching a performer to explain outcomes in more helpful ways.

Questions from this topic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    Define arousal.

    Model answer

    Arousal is a general state of physical and mental activation that varies along a continuum from deep sleep to intense excitement.

  2. 2

    How does anxiety differ from arousal?

    Model answer

    Arousal is a neutral state of activation, whereas anxiety is a negative emotional state of worry and apprehension that accompanies that activation.

  3. 3

    Distinguish between trait anxiety and state anxiety.

    Model answer

    Trait anxiety is an enduring feature of personality that makes someone interpret many situations as threatening, while state anxiety is the temporary apprehension felt in one particular moment.

  4. 4

    What is somatic anxiety, and give two signs of it in a competitor.

    Model answer

    Somatic anxiety is the bodily component of anxiety, shown for example in a racing heart and clammy, sweating hands.

  5. 5

    What is cognitive anxiety?

    Model answer

    Cognitive anxiety is the mental component of anxiety, made up of worrying thoughts, expectations of failure and difficulty holding concentration.

  6. 6

    According to drive theory, what is the relationship between arousal and performance?

    Model answer

    Drive theory claims the relationship is linear, so that as arousal rises performance rises with it and the athlete's dominant response becomes more likely to appear.

What is inside Levo

Six ways to work the same material.

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Answer cold, learn it, then prove it stuck. Levo tracks the jump between your first attempt and your last.

Research Methods and Techniques
Planning and Conducting Research
Data Recording, Analysis and Presentation
Report Writing and Scientific Communication

Cram a whole paper in one sitting

Sort every topic into what you know and what you do not, then drill only the weak ones.

The tests are a old.
centurydecadeyear

Blank Blitz makes facts automatic

Rapid timed gap-fills on the terms and numbers you need to recall without thinking.

APunishment requires deprivation, loss of autonomy and stigma.
BReform requires trust, responsibility and self-respect.
CThe regime that achieves one tends to undermine the other.

Build It gets the exam shape right

Assemble a full-mark answer from its marking points, in the order an examiner wants them.

Range means the highest score minus the lowest score.
TrueFalse

Test It catches misconceptions

Spot the fault in a statement. The traps are the mistakes students actually make.

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Brain Breaks between sessions

Short focus games to reset attention, so the next set lands better than the last.

Sport and Exercise Psychology revision questions

What does Sport and Exercise Psychology cover in OCR A-Level Psychology?
26 subtopics: arousal, anxiety, drive theory and the inverted-u hypothesis, optimal arousal and measuring anxiety in sport, fazey and hardy (1988) catastrophe model: criticisms of the inverted-u and the cusp model, fazey and hardy (1988) catastrophe model: predictions, conclusions and evaluation, techniques for managing arousal and anxiety in sport, benefits of exercise to mental health, lewis et al. (2014) dance and mood in parkinson's disease: background and procedure, lewis et al. (2014) dance and mood in parkinson's disease: results, conclusions and evaluation, exercise strategies to improve mental health, self-efficacy, sports confidence, sport orientation and imagery, munroe-chandler et al. (2008) imagery and confidence in youth football: background and procedure, munroe-chandler et al. (2008) imagery and confidence in youth football: results, conclusions and evaluation, strategies for motivating athletes, personality, its measurement and its relationship to sport, kroll and crenshaw (1970) personality profiles of four athletic groups: background and procedure, kroll and crenshaw (1970) personality profiles of four athletic groups: results, conclusions and evaluation, using knowledge of personality to improve sports performance, teams, cohesion, coaching and leadership, smith et al. (1979) coach effectiveness training: background and procedure, smith et al. (1979) coach effectiveness training: results, conclusions and evaluation, strategies for improving team performance, how an audience can facilitate or inhibit sports performance, home advantage and audience effects in sport, zajonc et al. (1969) social facilitation in cockroaches: background and procedure, zajonc et al. (1969) social facilitation in cockroaches: results, conclusions and evaluation and training for and playing in spectator sports. Each one has its own page with questions and model answers.
How is Sport and Exercise Psychology organised?
By the OCR H567 specification, subtopic by subtopic, so it matches the order you are taught it in.

Every question in Sport and Exercise Psychology, on a schedule.

Attempt a question from memory, write the correct version, then attempt it again. Levo records the jump between your first attempt and your last, and brings each question back on the day you are due to forget it.

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