International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology

This scoping review aimed to identify the current state of knowledge on toxic leadership in high-performance sports and its consequences for mental health and performance at individual, interpersonal, and organizational levels. Abstract screening (n=768) and full-text review (n=83) resulted in the inclusion of 26 studies, predominantly conducted in North America and Europe. Studies used inconsistent defini-tions, theoretical frameworks, and methodological approaches to study darker or toxic leadership. Several antecedents and maintaining factors to toxic leadership were identified, such as individual leader characteristics, a performance-oriented culture, status/power structures, and a lack of reporting processes or consequences within organizations. The empirical literature provided initial support for the negative consequences of toxic leadership on athletes’ mental health, injuries, and motivation to remain in high-performance sports. Few studies have investigated the consequences of toxic leadership on sports organizations, staff or coaches. We conclude that research on toxic leadership in high-performance sports is in its early stages, with an underdeveloped understanding of how problematic leadership can be detected, prevented, and addressed to minimize their impact in sports. Researchers, governing bodies, and sports organizations must intensify their efforts to comprehend the emergence and persistence of toxic leadership within high-performance sports environments.

Loneliness is an established risk factor for mental and physical health problems. Individuals involved in sport face many unique stressors, some of which could exacerbate the risk of loneliness. To bring clarity to published evidence in this area, inform future research, and develop applied recommendations to prevent and reduce loneliness in the sport community, we sought to systematically review, synthesise, and appraise research on loneliness in sport. Following electronic database and manual searches to identify literature on loneliness in the sport community up to August 2024, we included and thematically synthesised data from 194 studies (N = 88,516). Social loneliness was the most common conceptualisation of loneliness within the literature. We identified socio-cultural, institutional, interpersonal, and intrapersonal risk factors associated with loneliness. There was less evidence for protective factors, but the available evidence was categorised into interpersonal and intrapersonal factors. Finally, there was substantial evidence concerning adverse consequences associated with loneliness in sport, including: impaired mental health and well-being; adverse social outcomes; negative cognitive, affective, and motivational outcomes; and maladaptive behavioural outcomes. Overall, this review advances knowledge by synthesising, for the first time, evidence on loneliness in sport and offers theoretical, methodological, and practical contributions that extend understanding of loneliness.

In this systematic review, we provide an overview of stressors and coping strategies in esports, emphasizing the goal of informing applied practice and guiding future research. Guided by the PRISMA guidelines and employing the SPIDER framework, we synthesize findings from 19 studies. Performance stressors such as defeat and performance pressure (e.g. pressure to win) were prominently observed, along with team, social, organizational, and personal stressors. Coping strategies, aligned with Nicholls et al. (2016), demonstrate internal regulation was the most frequently reported, followed by mastery coping, while goal withdrawal strategies were less frequently reported. Comparing esports to traditional sports highlights the role of social stressors such as social media and public perceptionin esports. However, personal stressors remain relatively unexplored. The review also identifies research gaps in stressor appraisal and communal coping strategies. Future research could delve into personal stressors, considering a wide array of psychological factors, and employing dynamic methodologies. Practical implications revolve around tailored interventions, promoting open communication, mastery coping techniques, and holistic well-being strategies. This review provides a broader understanding of esports stressors and coping strategies, offering a starting point for targeted interventions aimed at enhancing performance and well-being in the distinctive competitive landscape of esports.

In this scoping review, we aimed to (1) provide clarity on terms used to describe elite esport samples, (2) identify the indicators used to describe elite esport samples, (3) collate rationales provided for defining esports samples as elite, and (4) draw conclusions on how to define elite esport samples. Electronic database and manual searches conducted for the final time in March 2024 yielded 7,802 records. Sixty-three studies published since 2012, with 1,768 e’athletes, satisfied the eligibility criteria and were included in the review. In total, 71% of the studies did not define "elite" when classifying their samples. In the remaining studies, elite esport samples were defined through four categories: (1) highest level of competition, (2) professional status, (3) in-game achievement, and (4) domain experience. Of the 63 studies, 29 classified their samples as elite through one category, and 34 included justifications incorporating two or more categories. We propose a 2-step working elite classification system for esports samples that considers a player's highest level of competition and success at that level. Furthermore, we propose a set of reporting guidelines for elite e'athletes, which encourages researchers to unpack: (1) the success of the e’athletes, and (2) the prominence of the esport.

Physical Education (PE) teachers’ adoption of motivational teaching behaviours is a critical determinant of students’ quality of experience in lessons. Drawing from achievement goal theory (AGT) and self-determination theory (SDT), extensive evidence has substantiated the consequences of teachers emphasising a specific type of motivational climate (AGT) or interpersonal style (SDT). However, less attention has been paid to critically appraising the antecedents of teachers’ behaviours underpinning a particular climate or style. Therefore, the aim of the present scoping review was to evaluate the extant literature addressing the determinants of teachers’ motivational behaviours in PE from AGT and SDT perspectives. Nine databases were searched to identify 94 studies that met the inclusion criteria. Findings revealed that more studies had sought to understand the reasons for teaching behaviours from a SDT approach than from the lens of AGT. Moreover, multiple personal and contextual factors were shown to be associated with, or to impact upon, teachers’ behaviours. Future research should adopt a more theoretically integrative approach to advancing our understanding of teachers’ motivational behaviours, as well as examine additional antecedents that might be suitable for intervention with pre- and in-service PE teachers.

The Home Advantage (HA) phenomenon, where teams perform better in front of their fans, has garnered increased interest during the COVID-19 pandemic, which provided a unique opportunity to study HA without crowd presence. Despite the presence of useful conceptual frameworks, most previous research has focused on investigating isolated individual factors. Here we review our newly developed Home Advantage Mediated (HAM) model, which considers all major factors and their interrelations simultaneously. HAM assumes that the crowd effects are mediated through other relevant factors, such as referee bias and team performance. Most importantly, HAM can be formally expressed as a mediation model, a technique widely employed in social sciences for investigating causal pathways. We demonstrate how researchers can use HAM to model the HA in European football and how moderating variables, such as COVID-19 and the absence of fans, can be incorporated into the model to disentangle the processes behind the HA phenomenon. This model not only sheds new light on this well-established sports phenomenon but also guides the practical application of mediation and moderated mediation models in a Bayesian framework. This approach can be extended to other sports science areas, demonstrating the versatility and utility of our model. ARTICLE HISTORY

A growing body of investigation has suggested the benefits of an external focus of attention on the performance and learning of motor skills in adults and the elderly. This systematic review investigates the effects of focus of attention on the performance and learning of motor skills in children with typical and atypical development. The literature search was conducted in the electronic databases PubMed, Science Direct, Web of Science, and Scielo, with data inception in December 2023. Of the 43 studies in the review, 30 involved the performance and learning of motor skills in children with typical development and 13 in children with atypical development. The current systematic review demonstrates that the direction of instructions/feedback can influence the performance and learning of children's motor skills, regardless of the children's developmental condition or task.

This review summarizes meta-analyses (MAs) of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that assessed the effectiveness of aerobic exercise and dance interventions on cognitive functions in adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Five databases, MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, PubMed, and CENTRAL, were searched. MAs that exclusively pooled the effect sizes of aerobic exercise or dance on cognitive functions in adults aged 50 and above with MCI were included. We summarized 20 MAs, including 59 unique RCTs on aerobic exercise and 12 unique RCTs on dance. The meta-meta-analysis results demonstrated that both aerobic exercise (SMD = 0.28 [.13, .43]) and dance (SMD = 0.39 [.28, .49]) significantly improve overall cognition in adults with MCI. When considering specific cognitive domains, aerobic exercise significantly improves global cognition (SMD = 0.42 [.21, .64]) but does not significantly impact executive function and memory. Dance significantly enhances global cognition (SMD = 0.4 [.01, .09]), executive function (SMD = 0.18 [.03, .32]), and memory (SMD = 0.46 [.32, .61]). The moderator analysis also supported dance's superior effect on memory. This finding suggests that the cognitively demanding nature of dance, which involves memorizing complex choreography and coordinating movements with accompanying music, provides additional benefits for memory. Overall, the current review supports that aerobic exercise and dance are effective non-pharmacological interventions to stabilize and even improve cognitive functions in adults with MCI.

Talent pathways are longitudinal and multidimensional in nature offering developmental environments for athletes that incorporate multiple processes at multiple timepoints. Recent reviews have unilaterally targeted static talent areas (i.e. talent detection and identification). This review aimed to identify quantitative and qualitative studies with longitudinal designs, within an elite athlete population, that considered development and selection literature collectively. Taking a novel pragmatic approach achieved pluralism in a strive to greatly advance our methodological understanding to acquire knowledge of more effective talent development in sport. This review followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and used a Meta-aggregation methodology. A search of talent development and selection literature identified 41 quantitative and 3 qualitative longitudinal studies. Overall, ten (quantitative) studies investigated interactions between multidimensional selection (i.e. measures of performance) and development characteristics; performance variables changed non-linearly alongside talent development characteristics. No longitudinal mixed-method research studies were found. For practitioners, multiple performance measures need to be considered alongside development characteristics to better assess talent. For researchers, the design of this review models an epistemological and ontological congruent approach that can be used to facilitate the design of future mixed-method and longitudinal research; capturing the dynamic and multifaceted individual differences of talent development.

In the present paper, we outline a conceptual model for performance crises in sports teams. We derive a definition of team performance crisis from conceptualizations from other research areas (economics, communications sciences, etc.) and stress theories. Combined with sport psychological literature, this knowledge is adapted to match the specifics of team sports. We define a team performance crisis as continuous underperformance across games, accompanied by team members’ threat states, and the inability of a team to cope, resulting in low team functioning. The empirically testable crisis model represents a team performance crisis as a downward spiral with the severity of the crisis determined by how far along the spiral the team has come. There are different stages: crisis predispositions (stage 0), a crisis trigger (stage 1), and the further crisis process (stage 2). While stage 1 depicts what characteristics of a situation have the potential to trigger threat states, stage 2 represents how this leads to the inability to break free. After proposing the model, we differentiate it from other constructs examining the phenomenon of performance deviations and why they are insufficient in explaining lasting underperformance in teams. We provide directions for future research and conclude with practical implications.

Over the past 50 years, a large number of studies have been carried out on the use of motor imagery practice (also called mental practice) to train motor functions. Because of its proven effectiveness for motor learning in adults, many researchers have investigated whether this technique can also improve the motor (especially sport) performances of children and adolescents. Although there is evidence that mental practice positively affects motor learning in young athletes, questions remain about the best way of implementing this type of training when participants’ motor imagery and cognitive functions are not yet fully developed. We reviewed the literature on mental practice in typically developing children and adolescents. Based on our findings, we then drew up a list of recommendations and guidelines for practitioners and coaches to develop effective motor imagery interventions for young athletes. Unresolved issues, methodological limitations of empirical studies, and research perspectives in the field of motor imagery training are discussed.

Intragroup conflict is inevitable in sports teams. The aim of this scoping review is to examine the existing literature in this area in order to derive recommendations for future research on intragroup conflict in sport. Quantitative studies that have investigated intragroup conflict in sport groups were included. Studies that investigated only athlete-coach conflict were excluded. A systematic multi-database search, followed by a systematic forward and backward search, led to the identification of 48 studies. Thus far, research in this area has mainly been conducted in the competitive context of team sports with athletes aged between 18 and 25 years. It has been found that intragroup conflict does not necessarily correlate with team success or failure, while it appears to have a negative relationship with athletes’ mental health. In addition, studies have repeatedly revealed a relationship between intragroup conflict and group cohesion that is either positive or negative, depending on the dimension of intragroup conflict. At present, there are few recommendations for practice that can be derived from extant research. Future research should focus on outcomes, study designs, and a theoretical base in order to obtain a more comprehensive knowledge of intragroup conflict in sport.

The aims of this scoping review were to map the current literature on interventions for improving mental health in athletes, identify knowledge gaps, and generate future research questions. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) guided this review. A systematic literature search was conducted in SPORTDiscus, PsycINFO, and SCOPUS and 44 intervention studies met the inclusion criteria. Results showed that 22 studies (50%) implemented cognitive behavioural principles, and the majority of these studies were influenced by various mindfulness programmes. Most studies (93%) included healthy athlete samples, and athletes aged 15–19 were the most examined age group (43%). Only three studies used clinical criteria in their sampling of participants and mediators were examined in two studies. The scarcity of studies examining mediators and subclinical or clinical samples revealed critical knowledge gaps in the literature. Furthermore, the critical appraisal showed that regardless of study design, most studies demonstrated low internal validity. We propose the use of high-quality single-case studies with athletes who experience subclinical or clinical mental health issues, and further investigation of mechanisms of change linking intervention components to outcomes of interest.