Intemotmnal Journal of Psychophysiology, 6 (1988) 1-8 Elsevier 1 PSP 00184 zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA Research Reports An application of psychophysiology in sports psychology: heart rate responses to relevant and irrelevant stimuli as a function of anxiety and defensiveness in elite gymnasts Patsy Tremayne and Robert J. Barry School of Education, University of New South Wales, Kensrngton (Australia) (Accepted 28 October 1987) Key words: Sports psychology; Heart rate; Anxiety; Defensiveness One problem in the optimization of athletic performance is that consistency in practice situations is not always carried over to competitive situations. There is an increase in irrelevant stimuli in competition which cannot always be gated out satisfactorily by the anxious athlete. We investigated the physiological responses to relevant and irrelevant stimuli of 48 elite female gymnasts differing in levels of anxiety and defensiveness. Cardiac responses were recorded to tone presentations and analyzed as a function of instructions, anxiety manipulation and group. The results suggest that phasic responses of high-anxious gymnasts were larger than those of low-anxious gymnasts. High-anxious gymnasts experience more difficulty in completely gating out the occurrence of irrelevant stimuli than do low-anxious gymnasts. Finally, under anxiety-producing conditions, high levels of defensiveness and anxiety in combination appear to have a debilitating effect on the gymnast’s ability to discontinue processing of irrelevant stimuli, while truiy low-anxious subjects appear distracted from processing relevant stimuli. Further investigation of the interactions between levels of trait anxiety and anxiety-producing situations in a sport-specific domain appear warranted. The role of defensiveness in these interactions should also be investigated. INTRODUCTION Much attention has been directed to the study of anxiety in competitive sport settings, as reach- ing an optimal level of arousal is important to all sports performance. In particular, gymnastics, which consists of a series of complex skills, elicits high degrees of arousal because of the nature of the tasks and the length of time over which the competition is conducted. Gymnasts, like other athletes and individuals in stressful conditions, do not always perform in competition to the best of their ability (Harter, 1981; Lampman, 1967). One Correspondence: P. Tremayne. Present address: School of Edu- cation and Language Studies, Macarthur Institute of Higher Education, P.O. Box 108. Milperra, N.S.W. 2014, Australia. reason for this is that practice and competitive environments are dissimilar, thus increasing the athlete’s anxiety. Factors in the competitive en- vironment which can detrimentally increase the gymnast’s anxiety include the following: the pres- ence of an audience; having to perform certain complex skills under pressure; wanting to do well to please coaches, parents and friends; the formal- ity of the occasion and the athlete’s perceptions of the importance of the competition. The study of anxiety is complicated by the notion of ‘repression’, a concept associated with Freud, who stated that ‘the essence of repression lies simply in turning something away, and keep- ing it at a distance, from the conscious’ (1957, p. 147). He believed that repression was a defensive mechanism that prevented or eliminated psycho- logical pain or ‘unpleasure’. Of particular interest 0167-8760/88/$03.50 0 1988 Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. (Biomedical Division)