The Role of Cognitive and Somatic Anxiety in Athletic Performance

The objective of the present study was to review the role of cognitive and somatic anxiety in athletic performance. The statistical sample comprised a group of 60 indoor football players participating in the footsal matches of the Social Security Organization in Tehran in 2009-2010 using a random method. In this study, the cognitive and somatic anxieties are the predicting variables and athletic pressure and heartbeat, Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 (CSAI-2) and player's performance questionnaire were used. In order to analyze the data, the Pearson correlation and regression were used as two variables employing Enter method and SPSS software. The results showed that, there is a meaningful negative relation between the cognitive and somatic anxiety and the athletic performance of the players. The cognitive and somatic anxiety also define each about 12% of the athletic performance; whereas, 32% of the athletic performance of the players is defined by self-confidence.According to this study, anxiety at an average level results in the best athletic performance, whereas anxiety at low or high level is detrimental to athletic performance.Keywords:Cognitive anxiety, somatic anxiety, athletic performance, Indoor footballInvestigating the effectiveness of positive self-talk on increasing the women’s general self-efficacy beliefsTayebeh Dehghani FiroozAbadi (MA)Sayedeh Khadijeh Aryan(PhD)AbstractThe purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of positive self-talk training on increasing the women’s general self-efficacy beliefs. In this study, Sherer’s General Self-Efficacy scale (GSE, 1982) was used, the reliability of which from Cronbach’s coefficient Alpha is 0.86 and 0.71 for general and social self-efficacy subscales respectively.Subjects were married women who referred to family training center of Imam Khomeini Relief Committee in west of Tehran Province. Volunteers for training sessions were interviewed and 24 persons were randomly selected and assigned into 2 groups each with 12 persons. All answered to the self-efficacy questionnaire. The control group didn’t receive any treatment. The experimental group received training for 8 sessions of 1.5 hours based on techniques of cognitive therapy and positive self-talk. At the end, both groups answered again the GSE scale and the data were analyzed with t-test for means of the 2 independent groups. Results indicated that this training was effective on increasing the women’s general self-efficacy beliefs.