Psychological Skills

This area of research examines how psychological skills influence high level performance, and explores the types of factors that impact on the effectiveness of psychological skill use. The research spans a wide variety of contexts, including sport, education, and extreme environments, and integrates theoretical perspectives from a number of psychological domains (e.g., personality and social psychology, cognitive psychology, neuroscience) in order to best understand how psychological skills exert their effects, and when they can be most useful in aiding performance.

Example publications:

Latinjak, A. T., Hatzigeorgiadis, A., Comoutos, N., & Hardy, J. (2019). Speaking clearly … 10 years on: The case for an integrative perspective of self-talk in sportSport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology8(4), 353-367. https://doi.org/10.1037/spy0000160

Arthur, R., Roberts, R., Callow, N., & Glendinning, F. (2019). Coaches Coaching Psychological Skills – Why Not? A Framework and Questionnaire DevelopmentJournal of Sport and Exercise Psychology41(1), 10-23. https://doi.org/10.1123/jsep.2017-0198

Callow, N., Edwards, M. G., Jones, A. L., Hardy, L., & Connell, S. (2019). Action dual-tasks reveal differential effects of visual imagery perspectives on motor performanceQuarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology72(6), 1401-1411. https://doi.org/10.1177/1747021818811464

Arthur, R., Fitzwater, J., Roberts, R., Hardy, J., & Arthur, C. (2017). Psychological skills and “the Paras”: The indirect effects of psychological skills on enduranceJournal of Applied Sport Psychology29(4), 449-465. https://doi.org/10.1080/10413200.2017.1306728

Jiang, D., Edwards, M. G., Mullins, P., & Callow, N. (2015). The neural substrates for the different modalities of movement imageryBrain and Cognition97, 22-31. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2015.04.005

Hardy, J. T., Blanchfield, A. W., Hardy, J., De Morree, H. M., Staiano, W., & Marcora, S. M. (2014). Talking yourself out of exhaustion: the effects of self-talk on endurance performanceMedicine and Science in Sports and Exercise46(5), 998-1007. https://doi.org/10.1249/MSS.0000000000000184