Kristin Noel Mauldin

The flow state has been a hot topic in applied sport and performance psychology as well as the general public recently. This state is much sought after given its tie to enjoyment, intrinsic motivation, and increased performance. However, the process required to enter flow remains elusive. Here we look to cognitive motivational theories and, especially, perception of goal approach, for answers. Thus, in this chapter relevant cognitive motivation theories are summarized and tied to the current understanding of flow. Overlap in variables relevant to both theories are discussed as well as variables described in cognitive motivation theories that merit further investigation as to their potential role in flow onset and experience.

As the construct of flow is currently under revision, the nine dimensions of the Jackson-Marsh Model of flow have been examined more closely. The current study aims to add to this examination by comparing these dimensions across four performance domains: academic, individual sport, spectator sport, and team sport. Participants completed two different flow assessments within one hour following their specified performance activity. One of the assessments measured state specific flow (FSS-2, Jackson & Marsh, 1996). A total of 118 performers participated: academic (n = 26), individual sport (n = 26), spectator sport (n = 32), and team sport (n = 34). Multivariate analysis of variance analyses conducted on the dimensions that represent antecedents of flow (challenge to skills match, clear goals, and unambiguous feedback) revealed less unambiguous feedback for the exam takers (academic) in comparison to the individual sport athletes, spectator sport athletes, and team sport athletes. A multivariate analysis of variance was then conducted comparing dimensions of the experience of flow between activity types. Individual sport athletes experienced higher levels of merging of action and awareness while spectator sport athletes experienced less loss of self-consciousness between the performance domains. Implications of these differences for the flow construct are discussed.

Background/Objectives: Concussions, their physical presentation, and patients’ recovery have been researched and documented numerous times, but the experiences of surviving and recovering from a concussion need to be explored further. The purpose of this study was to examine the lived experiences of NCAA Division I, II, and III student athletes who had suffered from one or more concussions. Methods: The consensual qualitative research (CQR) methodology was employed, guiding the formation of the interview questions and the analysis of the responses. The participants completed a free-response questionnaire as well as a semi-structured virtual interview that utilized a blend of idiographic, inductive, hermeneutic, and interpretive phenomenological approaches. Through their questionnaire and interview responses, they discussed their experience being concussed at a collegiate level. Results: Ten NCAA student athletes described their various physical, cognitive, emotional, and sleep-related symptoms due to receiving their concussion(s). Many of these student athletes reported feelings of loneliness, being misunderstood, or even not feeling “normal or at baseline” during and after their concussion recovery. One primary finding was the key role the athletic trainers played in the student athletes’ recovery process from initially receiving the concussion to their return to play. Conclusions: These findings will help contribute to the knowledge of what it is like to experience one or multiple concussions, the recovery process, and how that process can be improved.

Exercise and sports involvement are highly beneficial for youth. These extracurricular activities have a multitude of physical and emotional benefits and teach both the skills of the sport and social skills. However, parenting an athlete is not an easy task. Today's youth athletes are pushed harder than ever before. With the introduction of the Junior Olympics and travel ball, the stakes have become higher and the pressure more intense for these young athletes. For parents, facilitating sports involvement in their child and being involved but not too involved is a fine line. Pulling from research and applied experience in sports psychology, this chapter outlines methods parents can implement to increase children's motivation to engage in sports, increase their performance, return from setbacks, transition out of sports, and practice self-care. This chapter will discuss the dos and don'ts of parenting children in sports and other performance activities. Parenting athletes and high-level performers presents unique challenges but also presents opportunities to foster a child's growth and development. The authors focus on how parents' roles change as their children progress from youngsters learning basic techniques into skilled athletes. They begin with ways to encourage children to engage in sports and activities and foster intrinsic motivation. They then move on to the delicate balance of allowing children to have autonomy while still teaching commitment and motivating them – without pushing so hard that it contributes to anxiety and burnout. This leads to the parent's level of involvement where the authors discuss what the parent's role is and what it is not. Next, they focus on the child's potential setbacks, such as injury and game loss. Then, they propose strategies to help the child successfully rebound from these setbacks. Discussion will follow on how to support children as they prepare to transition out of sport and preparatory methods that can be used early on to keep an identity that extends beyond athletics. Finally, they wrap up with a personal note to parents on how their own experiences and expectations may be projected onto their children. Parental self-care and awareness will be encouraged, as they are vital to the well-being of the parent, the child, and their relationship. Request access from your librarian to read this chapter's full text.

In this review I describe how imagery can be used to help increase the likelihood of entering into a flow state. Flow, the experience of being fully absorbed in a task, leads to greater task enjoyment and has been tied to improved performance.

Patients with hippocampal damage are sometimes impaired at remembering information across delays as short as a few seconds. How are these impairments to be understood? One possibility is that retention of some kinds of information is critically dependent on the hippocampus, regardless of the retention interval and regardless of whether the task depends on working memory or long-term memory. Alternatively, retention may be dependent on the hippocampus only when the task involves a memory load large enough to exceed working memory capacity. To explore these possibilities, we assessed the performance of patients with hippocampal lesions on two tasks requiring retention of the same object-in-scene information across a brief delay. The tasks placed different demands on memory. In one task, which used a continuous recognition format, participants needed to try to hold up to nine scenes in mind, even when no scene intervened between the study scene and the corresponding test scene. Patients were impaired in this condition. In a second task, using a conventional study-test format, participants needed to hold in mind only one scene at a time for either 3 or 14 sec. With this procedure, patients performed as well as controls after a 3-sec delay but were impaired after a 14-sec delay. We suggest that retention of object-in-scene information is dependent on the hippocampus only when working memory is insufficient to support performance (because memory load is high or the retention interval is long). In these circumstances performance depends, at least in part, on long-term memory.

It has been proposed that a core network of brain regions, including the hippocampus, supports both past remembering and future imagining. We investigated the importance of the hippocampus for these functions. Five patients with bilateral hippocampal damage and one patient with large medial temporal lobe lesions were tested for their ability to recount autobiographical episodes from the remote past, the recent past, and to imagine plausible episodes in the near future. The patients with hippocampal damage had intact remote autobiographical memory, modestly impaired recent memory, and an intact ability to imagine the future. The patient with large medial temporal lobe lesions had intact remote memory, markedly impaired recent memory, and also had an intact ability to imagine the future. The findings suggest that the capacity for imagining the future, like the capacity for remembering the remote past, is independent of the hippocampus.

Working memory has traditionally been viewed as independent of the hippocampus and related medial temporal lobe structures. Yet memory-impaired patients with medial temporal lobe damage are sometimes impaired at remembering relational information (e.g., an object and its location) across delays as short as a few seconds. This observation has raised the possibility that medial temporal lobe structures are sometimes critical for maintaining relational information, regardless of whether the task depends on working or long-term memory. An alternative possibility is that these structures are critical for maintaining relational information only when the task exceeds working memory capacity and depends instead on long-term memory. To test these ideas, we drew on a method used previously in a classic study of digit span in patient HM that distinguished immediate memory from long-term memory. In two experiments, we assessed the ability of four patients with medial temporal lobe lesions to maintain varying numbers of object–location associations across a 1 s retention interval. In both experiments, the patients exhibited a similar pattern of performance. They performed similarly to controls when only a small number of object–location associations needed to be maintained, and they exhibited an abrupt discontinuity in performance with larger set sizes. This pattern of results supports the idea that maintenance of relational information in working memory is intact after damage to the hippocampus and related medial temporal lobe structures and that damage to these structures impairs performance only when the task depends on long-term memory.