The effects of competitive anxiety on memory span and rebound shooting tasks in basketball players

Two theoretical models were used to investigate aspects of basketball performance: Eysenck's (1979, 1984) compensatory arousal model and Humphreys and Revelle's (1984) twin resources model. Cognitive and somatic anxiety were manipulated using a 'time to event' paradigm. The aspects of performance were a short-term memory task (letter span) and a low memory demand, motoric-sustained information transfer task (rebound shooting). Hypotheses based on the different models were formulated and subsequently tested using analysis of variance and polynomial regression analysis. The results indicated significant (P < 0.01) linear relationships with negative slopes between cognitive anxiety and letter span, and between somatic anxiety and letter span; while significant (P < 0.01) linear relationships with positive slopes were recorded between cognitive anxiety and rebound shooting, and between somatic anxiety and rebound shooting. The analysis of variance results were in agreement with a positive effect (P < 0.05) for cognitive anxiety upon rebound shooting, and a negative effect which approached significance (P < 0.07) for somatic anxiety upon letter span. The results were interpreted as offering partial support for Eysenck's (1979) theoretical model, although further examination of multidimensional anxiety effects via the two models is warranted.