UGC NET Physical Education Sports Psychology Syllabus

Differentiate cognitive anxiety from somatic anxiety.

Cognitive anxiety is the mental component (worry, negative thoughts, fear of failure); somatic anxiety is the physical component (increased heart rate, sweating, muscle tension, butterflies).

Which questionnaire is widely used to measure multidimensional competitive state anxiety?

The Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 (CSAI-2), measuring cognitive anxiety, somatic anxiety, and self-confidence.

Define aggression in sport and state its essential features.

Aggression is any behaviour intended to harm another living being who is motivated to avoid such harm; key features are intent, harm/injury, and directed at a living being.

Differentiate hostile (reactive) aggression from instrumental aggression.

Hostile aggression aims primarily to inflict harm/injury and is accompanied by anger; instrumental aggression is goal-directed, used as a means to a non-aggressive end (e.g., a hard but legal tackle to win the ball).

Distinguish aggression from assertive behaviour in sport.

Assertive behaviour involves legitimate, forceful, rule-abiding effort with no intent to harm, whereas aggression involves intent to injure outside the rules.

What does the Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis (Dollard et al.) propose?

Frustration (blocking of goal-directed behaviour) always leads to some form of aggression, and aggression is always preceded by frustration; later revised to say frustration creates a readiness for aggression.

What does Bandura's Social Learning Theory say about aggression?

Aggression is learned through observation, imitation (modelling), and reinforcement; athletes copy aggressive behaviour that is rewarded and avoid it when it is punished.

Define stress and name Selye's three stages of the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS).

Stress is a substantial imbalance between perceived demands and perceived response capability under important consequences. Selye's GAS stages are: Alarm reaction, Stage of resistance, and Stage of exhaustion.

Distinguish eustress from distress.

Eustress is positive, motivating stress that enhances performance and well-being; distress is negative, harmful stress that impairs performance and health.

List the four stages of McGrath's stress process model.

(1) Environmental demand, (2) Perception of the demand, (3) Stress response (arousal, anxiety), (4) Behavioural consequences/performance.

Define self-confidence and Vealey's concept of sport-confidence.

Self-confidence is the belief that one can successfully perform a desired behaviour. Sport-confidence is the degree of certainty athletes possess about their ability to be successful in sport, comprising trait (SC-trait) and state (SC-state) components.

What is self-efficacy and who proposed the concept?

Self-efficacy is the situation-specific belief in one's capability to execute the actions needed to attain a given level of performance; proposed by Albert Bandura.

Name Bandura's four sources of self-efficacy.

(1) Performance accomplishments (mastery experiences), (2) Vicarious experience (modelling), (3) Verbal/social persuasion, (4) Physiological/emotional states; mastery experience is the strongest.

Define concentration (attention) in sport and its two key dimensions.

Concentration is the ability to focus attention on relevant cues and maintain that focus over time. Nideffer's dimensions are width (broad-narrow) and direction (internal-external).

Name Nideffer's four attentional styles formed by combining width and direction.

Broad-external (assess the situation), Broad-internal (analyse/plan), Narrow-external (focus on one or two cues, e.g., the ball), and Narrow-internal (mental rehearsal/cue word).

Define mental practice (imagery) in sport.

Mental practice is the cognitive rehearsal of a physical skill in the absence of overt movement, using imagery to mentally execute the action to improve learning and performance.

Explain the Psychoneuromuscular theory of mental practice.

Imagery produces low-level neuromuscular activity (faint muscle innervation) similar to actual movement, strengthening the neural patterns/motor programme used during real execution.

Explain the Symbolic Learning theory of mental practice.

Imagery aids performance by helping athletes mentally code, plan, and rehearse the sequence, timing, and spatial elements of a skill as a symbolic blueprint, especially benefiting cognitive (vs motor) tasks.

What are the two perspectives of imagery, internal and external?

Internal imagery is first-person, seeing/feeling the action from inside one's own body (emphasises kinaesthetic sense); external imagery is third-person, watching oneself perform as if on video.

What does the acronym SMART stand for in goal setting?

Specific, Measurable, Achievable (Action-oriented), Realistic (Relevant), and Time-bound.

Differentiate outcome, performance, and process goals.

Outcome goals focus on the end result/comparison with others (winning a medal); performance goals focus on personal standards (improving 100m time to 11.5 s); process goals focus on actions/technique (maintaining proper running form).

State Locke and Latham's central principle of goal-setting theory.

Specific and difficult (but attainable) goals lead to higher performance than easy, vague, or 'do your best' goals, provided there is commitment, feedback, and adequate ability.

Define personality and its commonly described three-level structure (Hollander).

Personality is the relatively stable, unique pattern of characteristics that make a person distinct. Hollander's structure: psychological core (innermost, stable values/self), typical responses (usual ways of adjusting), and role-related behaviour (most changeable, situation-driven).

Summarise the Psychodynamic (Freudian) theory of personality.

Personality is driven by unconscious conflicts among three structures: the id (pleasure principle), ego (reality principle), and superego (morality/conscience), shaped through psychosexual stages.

What are the core constructs of Trait theories of personality (Allport, Cattell, Eysenck)?

Personality consists of stable traits; Cattell identified 16 source traits (16PF), and Eysenck proposed dimensions of Extraversion-Introversion, Neuroticism-Stability, and later Psychoticism.

Name the Big Five (Five-Factor Model) personality dimensions.

Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism (mnemonic: OCEAN).

What is the central idea of the Interactional approach to personality in sport?

Behaviour is determined jointly by the person (traits) and the situation/environment: $B = f(P, E)$; neither traits nor situation alone fully predict sporting behaviour.

Differentiate the trait, situational, and interactional views as explanations of sport behaviour.

Trait view: behaviour driven by stable internal traits. Situational view: behaviour driven by environment/reinforcement (Bandura, Skinner). Interactional view: behaviour results from the trait-by-situation interaction, and is the most widely accepted.

Distinguish projective from psychometric (questionnaire) methods of measuring personality.

Projective tests present ambiguous stimuli (Rorschach inkblots, TAT) to reveal unconscious traits, scored subjectively; psychometric inventories use structured self-report items with objective scoring (16PF, EPQ, MMPI).

Name two standardized inventories used to measure personality.

Cattell's Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF) and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ); the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is another.

What does Morgan's 'Iceberg Profile' describe about elite athletes?

Using the Profile of Mood States (POMS), successful elite athletes score below average on tension, depression, anger, fatigue, and confusion but above average on vigour, forming an iceberg-shaped graph.

Define memory and name its three basic processes.

Memory is the encoding, storage, and retrieval of information. The three processes are encoding (registering information), storage (retaining it), and retrieval (recovering it when needed).

List the three stages of memory in the Atkinson-Shiffrin multi-store model with their durations.

Sensory memory (very brief, ~0.5-3 s), Short-term/working memory (~15-30 s, capacity about $7 \pm 2$ items), and Long-term memory (potentially permanent, virtually unlimited capacity).

What is Miller's 'magic number' for short-term memory capacity?

Short-term memory holds about $7 \pm 2$ (five to nine) chunks of information; chunking increases the effective amount stored.

Distinguish declarative from procedural long-term memory.

Declarative (explicit) memory stores facts and events that can be consciously stated (episodic + semantic); procedural (implicit) memory stores skills and how to perform motor actions (e.g., riding a bicycle).

Define thinking and list its main types/tools.

Thinking is the cognitive manipulation of mental representations (images, concepts, symbols) to reason, solve problems, and make decisions; tools include concepts, prototypes, mental images, and language.

Differentiate convergent from divergent thinking.

Convergent thinking seeks the single best/correct solution to a well-defined problem; divergent thinking generates many possible creative solutions and is associated with creativity.

Define transfer of training (transfer of learning).

Transfer of training is the influence (positive or negative) that the learning or practice of one skill has on the learning or performance of another skill or in another situation.

Name and define the three main types of transfer of training.

Positive transfer (prior learning aids new learning, e.g., tennis to badminton), Negative transfer (prior learning hinders new learning, e.g., tennis backswing to squash), and Zero/neutral transfer (no effect).

Differentiate proactive from retroactive transfer (and interference).

Proactive transfer is the effect of earlier learning on later learning; retroactive transfer is the effect of later learning back on earlier-learned material. When the effect is impairing, they are called proactive and retroactive interference.

What is bilateral transfer?

Bilateral transfer (cross-education) is the carry-over of skill learned with one limb/side of the body to the opposite, untrained limb (e.g., practising a throw with the right hand improving the left).

What does Thorndike's 'Identical Elements' theory say about transfer?

Transfer occurs to the extent that the two tasks share identical elements (stimulus and response components); the greater the similarity, the greater the positive transfer.

Give one practical implication of transfer of training for sports coaching.

Coaches should sequence skills and design practice so that lead-up activities maximise positive transfer and minimise negative transfer, making practice conditions resemble the competitive situation (specificity/similarity).