The Influence of Experience upon Imagery Perspectives in Adolescent Sport Performers

Current imagery literature suggests that imagery perspectives may be subject to a default position (Morris & Spittle, 2001), with experience influencing how successfully individuals can utilize internal and external visual imagery. According to this proposition, the default imagery perspective is an internal 1st person perspective. However, few imagery inventories have been designed to differentiate and accurately measure these imagery perspectives (see Morris, Spittle, & Watt, 2005). Fewer still have considered athletic populations, in particular adolescent cohorts. Consequently, the current research examined the use of internal visual imagery (IVI), external visual imagery (EVI), and kinesthetic imagery (KI) amongst adolescent sport performers and whether the amount of hours engaged in practice outside of competition influenced their adoption. Eighty-seven (36 male, 51 female) county level participants from sports academies in the United Kingdom (M age = 14.0, SD = 1.92), from 6 interactive sports, completed the Vividness of Movement Imagery Questionnaire-2 (VMIQ-2; Roberts et al., 2008). Participants were grouped relative to the amount of practice they had engaged in since playing their current sport competitively. A repeated measures ANOVA recorded significant differences amongst participants vividness of imagery, Wilkes’ Λ F (2, 85) = 3.166, p < 0.05, η² = .07, post hoc pairwise comparisons using a Bonferroni adjustment revealed no significant differences between sub-scales. Results to MANOVA recorded no significant differences between VMIQ-2 sub-scales and three accumulated practice groupings, Wilkes’ Λ F (3, 82) = 436.14, p > 0.32, η² = .04. The results demonstrate adolescent sport performers possess between clear and reasonably vivid to moderately clear and vivid imagery ability when using IVI, EVI, and KI. Future research should consider the impact of environmental factors that influence the development of these modalities and perspectives.