skateboarding psychology

[thisisme]

Skateboarding psychology - Skate Theory

[GrassDiver]

The article sounds accurate to my experience, and the reason why I love skating.

[Chrispy23]

Very cool article. My wife would say that I'm stubborn and have a high tolerance for physical pain when learning a new skate skill, but I like the sound of "High Task Orientation" better. Here's their summary chart:

[gavmck]

Sounds about right I reckon. Just get on with it like.

[Greenamtern]

Awesome! I'd like to see the study.

[Greenamtern]

It's a start ...

Cognitive-Affective Sources of Sport Enjoyment in Adolescent Sport Participants

Cognitive-Affective Sources of Sport Enjoyment in Adolescent Sport Participants
Journal article by Michael P. Boyd, Zenong Yin; Adolescence, Vol. 31, 1996


Journal Article Excerpt

Cognitive-affective sources of sport enjoyment in adolescent sport participants.

by Michael P. Boyd , Zenong Yin
Enjoyment is beginning to receive a resurgence of interest in the sport psychology literature. It has been described as a "positive affective response to the sport experience that reflects generalized feelings such as pleasure, liking, and fun" (Scanlan & Simons, 1992, pp. 203-204). These authors propose that uncovering the diverse origins of sport enjoyment is critical to a comprehensive understanding of positive affect and its relation to prolonged sport involvement. Inherent to their model is the proposition that enjoyment underlies greater commitment to sport. Although the construct has received empirical attention in the past, recent developments in the sport motivational literature suggest that contemporary approaches to the study of sport enjoyment be explored.
Enjoyment has generally been discussed with regard to intrinsic motivation. Deci and Ryan (1985) posit that enjoyment is derived from achievement behavior which is intrinsically motivating and provides perceptions of competence and self-determination. Scanlan and Simons (1992) argue, however, that to equate sport enjoyment exclusively to intrinsic motivation fails to acknowledge extrinsic sources. The authors contend that sport enjoyment is a "broader and more inclusive construct" derived from both internal and external origins. Wankel and Kreisel (1985) reported, for example, that although youth sport participants ranked intrinsic factors such as improving skills and personal accomplishment as important to enjoyment, extrinsically oriented factors such as winning and receiving rewards were also found to be important. It is paramount, therefore, that theoretical approaches consider both sources of sport enjoyment.
Research concerning sport enjoyment has yielded consistent findings. Enjoyment or the lack thereof, apparently are primary reasons for participation and dropout, respectively (Gill, Gross, & Huddleston, 1983; Gould, Feltz, Horn, & Weiss, 1982). Sport enjoyment has also been found to be associated with higher degrees of perceived physical competence and challenge, and adult satisfaction with motor performance (Brustad, 1988; Chalip, Csikszentmihalyi, Kleiber, & Larson, 1984; Scanlan & Lewthwaite, 1986; Wankel & Kreisel, 1985). Using qualitative data analysis, Scanlan, Stein, and Ravizza (1989) reported that elite figure skaters identified sources of enjoyment which included social recognition, movement sensation, and athleticism. These findings clearly point to both intrinsic and extrinsic antecedents of enjoyment in sport providing a theoretical framework from which to proceed.
Recent theoretical development in social-cognitive theory highlights the relationship between achievement goal orientation and sport behavior (Duda, 1992). Based on the work of Nicholls (1984, 1989), the paradigm offers an intuitively appealing approach to the study of enjoyment in sport. Task or ego achievement orientation, are said to impact upon the criteria individuals use to construe competence, and also influence subsequent achievement behavior including task choice, persistence, and performance (Nicholls, 1984). A task orientation entails the tendency to focus on mastery and self-improvement. Performing one's best or beyond personal expectations, provide perceptions of competence for those who are task-involved (Nicholls & Miller, 1984). Subjectively derived conceptions of competence apparently are internally grounded for individuals who subscribe to a task orientation. An ego orientation, rather, reflects a tendency to dwell on social comparison of ability and outcome, such as outperforming others on tasks of normative difficulty (Nicholls, 1989). For those who are ego-involved, demonstration of greater ability than others provides competence perceptions especially when greater effort must be exerted by others (Jagacinski & Nicholls, 1987). Perceptions of competence are therefore dependent exclusively upon external standards of performance for those who are ego-oriented.
In the sport literature, individual differences in achievement orientation have been reported to be associated with psychological and behavioral variables. A task orientation has been shown to be related to behavioral variation and attitudes toward sport, including mastery, cooperation, sportsmanship, and the belief that effort leads to success (Duda, 1989; Duda, Olson, & Templin, 1991; Duda & White, 1992). Conversely, an ego orientation has been found to be associated with unsportsmanlike behavior, legitimacy of aggression, and the belief that ability leads to success in sport (Duda & Nicholls, 1992; Duda et al., 1991; Duda & White, 1992). Intuitively, a task orientation, where competence is construed in regard to self-referenced, internally generated perceived ability, would induce intrinsic motivation and lend itself well to sport enjoyment. Ego orientation, however, and concomitant externally grounded perceived ability, may not be conductive to enjoyment.
A cognitive variable which has consistently emerged as a source of sport enjoyment is competence (Chalip et al., 1984; Scanlan & Lewthwaite, 1986; Wankel & Kreisel, 1985). Children with higher levels of perceived physical competence not only have been shown to be more ...

[end of free preview]

[Cann0n]

Ouch! My head!

[Eddy Martinez]

I just like the freedom. I can go where ever, when ever i want. Unless the school cop runs me off. Your amigo eddy texas outlaws.

[skategeezer]

Sunday, July 8, 2007
Fullerton researcher picks up on the skateboarding vibe

An ex-coach delves into the psychology of extreme athletes.

By MARLA JO FISHER
The Orange County Register
Comments 0 | Recommend 3

Mike Boyd was sitting on a bench behind a bus depot in San Francisco, watching a skateboarder repeatedly try to master a jump.
He crashed and scraped himself up. A friend rushed up and asked if he was OK.
"And the guy answered: 'Yeah, I'm all right. I've been working on this trick for a year, and I'm going to get it yet.' "
At that moment, Boyd became fascinated with the psychology of skateboarding, one of the world's most renegade sports, even though about 12 million people practice it.
Boyd, 53, a former football coach at Katella High School in Anaheim, started studying skateboarders partly because he liked their determination in the face of widespread rejection and scorn by authority.
The Cal State Fullerton researcher and lecturer is one of only a handful of people who conduct academic research on the brains of board riders.
"They are cool characters," Boyd said. "They have high vigor. They will never give up."
In a recent article in the Journal of Sport Behavior, Boyd contrasted the mental attitudes of skateboarders with those of more traditional sports players.
He was curious to know how skateboarders would fare on a famous measure of sports psychology. The "Iceberg Profile" gets its name from the big spike in the middle of a graph that appears when data on top athletes are plotted.
Psychological surveys of top athletes tend to show they have certain traits in common, including low rates of depression, tension, fatigue, confusion and anger.
The athletes also show high vigor, the ability to bounce back and persevere in the face of adversity as well as to push through mediocrity and excel by determination.
The most successful athletes also have "high task orientation," which means they want to excel because of an internal need to see how well they can do, rather than a desire to compare themselves with others.
Boyd knows a lot about how athletes think. He coached football at Katella, his alma mater, for seven years. Initially he aspired to become a head football coach.
Then he became interested in what makes people tick while working part time as a bartender at Big Daddy's, a now defunct Orange County disco.
"It was a natural psychology lab," Boyd said. "I heard every pickup line in the business."
After earning his masters and Ph.D., Boyd began teaching at Cal State Fullerton, with stints at other universities along the way.
Boyd's recently published paper on the psychology of skateboarding with co-author Mi-Sook Kim, an associate professor of sport and exercise psychology at San Francisco State University, is among a relative few done on the sport.
In 2001, Boyd started hanging out at two well-known San Francisco skateboarding spots, Pier 7 and a bus yard at Third and Army streets, and offered skateboarders $2 each to answer a mood questionnaire.
He remembers a group of homeless skateboarders who took the $10 he paid five of them and used the money to buy meat to make sandwiches.
"Skateboarders get a bum rap," Boyd said. "People kick them out of places. These guys never say die. They are like artists. They never give up."
Extreme skateboarding and snowboarding, skiing and surfing are sensation-seeking sports that mix the thrill of danger with exhilaration. Most extreme sports enthusiasts are under 28.
"Golf is not a sensation-seeking sport," Boyd said.
Does he engage in any extreme sports?
"No. I'm past 28," he said with a smile.
Boyd's study, published in March, describes how the skateboarders who are sensation-seekers and focus on improvement fit the Iceberg Profile of Olympic and other successful athletes.
Skateboarding can be a good sport for kids as long as they take only risks that are on par with their skill level, said Boyd, who runs clinics for coaches on youth sports.
"It's a noncompetitive activity," Boyd said. "It's not who won or lost. Competition drives a lot of kids away from sports after the age of 12."
Boyd has been one of only a handful of researchers in the field. Skateboarding has received little attention from academia over the years, and few studies have been published.
"I was surprised at how little (literature) was out there," said Deirdre Kelly, a professor at the University of British Columbia who studied girl skateboarders. "Just speculating, maybe it has something to do with skateboarding's being a nontraditional sport and its association with nonconformity."
Iain Borden, a professor at University College London who wrote a book on skateboarders and public space, said he's unsure why there has been so little attention.
"It might be to do with some kind of general perception that skateboarding is somehow still a children's activity and therefore somehow not worthy of academic study," Borden said. "Although, of course, I would argue that neither of these things are actually the case."
These days, Boyd is looking at the psychology of other extreme sports such as surfing and snowboarding. He and his graduate students have hung out near the Huntington Beach Pier, talking to surfers.
"We been trying to interview big-wave surfers about what it feels like on the edge and what is the rush," Boyd said. "But we're having a hard time, because they can't explain it."

[Sho Nuff]

sucidial tendencys: posessed to skate..,