Pre-competition anxiety and performance in female high school swimmers: a test of optimal function theory

This investigation attempted to test Hanin's theory of optimal function in 15 female high school swimmers. Each swimmer completed the State Anxiety Inventory (STAI) and the Body Awareness Scale (BAS) under the following conditions: I) baseline; II) retrospective recall of "best", "usual", and "worst" performances; III) 24 h prior to an easy and difficult dual meet with instructions to respond as to "how you think you will feel 1 h before the meet"; and IV) 1 h before the meets utilizing the standard ("right now") instructional set. Success was determined in each meet by two methods: 1) objective ratings based on comparisons with the average of times from previous meets; and 2) subjective ratings of performance made by the coach. In the difficult meet significant (P less than 0.01) increases in precompetition anxiety and body awareness occurred, and the correlations between predicted and actual pre-competition were .95 (P less than 0.001) for both anxiety and body awareness. In the difficult meet swimmers subjectively classified as successful were more accurate (P less than 0.05) in predicting precompetition anxiety, and possessed pre-competition anxiety values that were closer to their recall of optimal pre-competition anxiety compared to the unsuccessful swimmers. No comparisons based on the objective classifications were significant, nor were any of the comparisons in the easy meet. The present findings support Hanin's optimal function theory.