Exercise and Sport Science Reviews Vol. 39, No. 2, pp. 85Y92, 2011

COLLET, C., A. GUILLOT, F. LEBON, T. MACINTYRE, and A. MORAN. 

 This review examines the measurement of motor imagery (MI) processes. First, self-report measures of MI are evaluated. Next, mental chronometry measures are considered. Then, we explain how physiological indices of the autonomic nervous system can measure MI. Finally, we show how these indices may be combined to produce a measure of MI quality called the Motor Imagery Index. Key Words: motor imagery, mental imagery, psychometric measures, mental chronometry, autonomic nervous system, electrodermal and cardiac activities.

British Journal of Psychology (in press)

Aidan Patrick Moran, Ph.D.;Aymeric Guillot, PhD;Tadhg MacIntyre, PhD;Christian Collet, PhD

One of the most remarkable capacities of the mind is its ability to simulate sensations, actions and cognitive neuroscientists and sport psychologists is motor imagery or the mental rehearsal of actions without engaging in the actual physical movements involved. Research on motor imagery is important in psychology because it provides an empirical window on movement planning, rectifies a relative neglect of non-visual types of mental imagery and has practical implications for skill learning and skilled performance in special populations (e.g., athletes, surgeons). Unfortunately, contemporary research on motor imagery is hampered by a variety of semantic, conceptual and methodological issues that prevent cross-fertilization of ideas between cognitive neuroscience and sport psychology. In this paper, we review these issues, suggest how they can be resolved and sketch some potentially fruitful new directions for inter-disciplinary research in motor imagery.

Keywords: Mental imagery, motor imagery, cognitive neuroscience, sport psychology

Mental imagery has been the subject of over a Century of testing on individual differences culminating with the development of the mental rotations paradigm (Shepard & Metzler, 1970). Despite this fact, surprisingly few studies have investigated people’s knowledge and beliefs about their own imagery experience, or meta-imagery (Moran, 2004). One study that did focus on meta-imagery used a survey to measure participants knowledge of imagery effects (e.g., mental rotation). Since then few researchers have pursued this line of enquiry. Recent qualitative research however has sought to establish the role of meta-imagery processes among experts in skilled movement (e.g., elite sport performers). They notably underlined that assessing and controlling meta-imagery processes is crucial and vital for the efficient application of imagery within sport (See MacIntyre & Moran, 2009). The discussion focuses on the development of new measures to assess meta-imagery among experts.

As William James, one of the founding fathers of psychology famously declared, “Everyone knows what attention is” (1890). Or do we? Meta-attention, quite simply, relates to ones understanding or awareness of the processes of attention. Attention and meta-attention has seen a recent upsurge in empirical interest from psychology and cognitive neuroscience (Vickers, 2007). This paper will examine meta-attention in sport skills. Visual attentional control will be examined in light of recent and ongoing research into a phenomenon known as Quiet Eye (Campbell & Moran, 2005; 2006). Quiet eye is a long steady visual fixation on a target during the pre shot routine immediately prior to executing a sports skill and has been associated with increased cognitive processing and superior subsequent performance (Vickers, 2009). Quiet eye findings have the potential to increase our understanding of visual attention and also to teach strategies to augment visual attention in sport and learning environments.