Relationship between mental imagery and sporting performance.

Simultaneous measurement of six autonomic nervous system (ANS) variable responses during mental rehearsal of an action, makes it possible to draw a parallel between mental imagery of a task and its actual execution. The experiment was carried out in the field during precision shooting competitions and in the laboratory for imagery activity, on 22 subjects. Results show that there is similarity of ANS response in the three situations: the period of concentration prior to shooting, actual shooting and mental representation of shooting. The ratio formed by ANS response during concentration and imagery of actual firing tends towards the value one, therefore towards some identity. All subjects may be classified around this value; it is worth noting that subject distribution around this value corresponds to performance value. It seems that the better the subject, the closer his concentration/shooting or imagery/actual shooting ratio is to the theoretical value one. These results show the utmost importance of the quality of mental representation for performance improvement. It can be supposed that subject classification above the theoretical value one corresponds to overflowing emotional reactivity in one of the two phases and that this interferes with accuracy; a placing below the theoretical value one shows a lack of similarity between mental representation and the action.