Anxiety–performance relationships in climbing: a process-oriented approach

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Abstract

Objectives: Two experiments were conducted to investigate manifestations of anxiety at the subjective, physiological, and behavioural level of analysis.

Design: In Experiment 1 we investigated the manifestations of state anxiety at the first two levels by comparing low- and high-anxiety conditions during climbing. In Experiment 2 we explored behavioural differences under these conditions.

Methods: We manipulated anxiety by using a climbing wall with routes defined at different heights (low and high). Participants were 13 and 17 novice climbers in Experiments 1 and 2, respectively (ages 19–30 years). We measured self-reported state anxiety, heart rate (Experiments 1 and 2), blood lactate concentration and muscle fatigue (Experiment 1), and climbing time and fluency of movements (Experiment 2).

Results: At the level of subjective experience we found that when novices climbed a route high on a climbing wall they reported significantly more anxiety than when they traversed an identical route low on the climbing wall. At the physiological level, they exhibited significantly higher heart rates, more muscle fatigue, and higher blood lactate concentrations. The results of Experiment 2 showed that state anxiety also affected participants’ movement behaviour, which was evidenced by an increased geometric index of entropy and by longer climbing times.

Conclusions: Results indicated that anxiety indeed manifested itself at three levels. A possible explanation for the effects of anxiety that is also found in the literature is that a temporary regress may occur to a movement execution that is associated with earlier stages of motor learning.

Section snippets

Participants

Thirteen participants, five male and eight female, aged 20 to 30 years, volunteered to participate in the experiment. The participants, mainly college students, had no experience in climbing, and were naive to the purposes of the experiment. They were paid a small fee for their participation.

As a standard check, the Dutch version of the A-Trait scale of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI)4

Experiment 2

A possible explanation for performance decrements coinciding with anxiety may be a regress to earlier stages of motor learning (e.g., Baumeister, 1984, Fitts and Posner, 1967, Hardy, 1999, Masters, 1992, Masters, 2000, Mullen and Hardy, 2000) characterised by higher muscle tension, and rigid and jerky movements. In Experiment 1 we showed that anxiety is accompanied by more muscle fatigue, indicating a higher muscle tension. In Experiment 2 we examined whether anxiety is also accompanied by

General discussion

The main aim of this study was to examine the relationship between anxiety and motor performance. More specifically, we investigated the processes underlying the often-noticed impairment of performance associated with anxiety. To examine anxiety–performance relationships we investigated possible manifestations of anxiety at three levels: the level of subjective experience, the physiological level, and the behavioural level. Based on the literature on anxiety (e.g., Hardy, 1999, Masters, 1992,

Acknowledgements

We wish to express our gratitude to Mark Arts, Arjan Berdien, Charlotte Gardeniers, and Walter de Kok for conducting Experiment 2.

We would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

We thank Peter Beek for his valuable input regarding the dynamical perspective on dimensionality and the concept of degrees of freedom.

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