Date of Award

4-1-2023

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Stephanie Peterson, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Wayne Fuqua, Ph.D.

Third Advisor

Alan Poling, Ph.D.

Fourth Advisor

Raymond Miltenberger, Ph.D.

Keywords

Athletic performance, diving, feedback, sports, video feedback, video modeling

Access Setting

Masters Thesis-Open Access

Abstract

There is a growing body of literature examining the use of behavior analytic coaching techniques to enhance athlete performance across many different sports. To date, no studies have focused on performance improvement in springboard diving. Springboard diving skills are complex behavior chains and require the accurate performance of multiple smaller, component skills. Several studies have examined different types of feedback to teach and improve complex motor skills in sports other than springboard diving (BenitezSantiago & Miltenberger, 2016; Kelley and Miltenberger, 2016; Quinn et al., 2019; Walker et al., 2020). In one such study, Walker et al. (2020) combined video and verbal feedback with simultaneous expert modeling to improve the performance of several rock climbing skills by novice athletes. This project replicated and extended the use of this expert modeling with video and verbal feedback training package to enhance the performance of three basic springboard diving skills by novice athletes. This study included two adolescent female participants with prior springboard diving experience. Following intervention, both participants improved in their performance accuracy for all targeted skills, and generally maintained or occasionally decreased in performance accuracy across targeted skills during follow up measures. The results of this study further indicated that this type of coaching feedback, while being longer in duration than standard coaching, may produce more rapid and significant behavior change than can be achieved with standard coaching.

Download

Share

COinS