COMPETITIVE ANXIETY, SITUATION CRITICALITY, AND SOFTBALL PERFORMANCE

The relationship among person factors, situational factors, and battin g performance was examined during a collegiate softball tournament. Sp ecifically, the purposes of the present study were to examine (a) cogn itive and somatic anxiety and performance as related to athletes' trai t anxiety and situation criticality, and (b) the catastrophe theory pr ediction that somatic anxiety would differentially relate to performan ce depending upon the level of cognitive anxiety. Standardized perform ance scores and intraindividual cognitive and somatic anxiety scores w ere computed for each athlete (N = 11). As hypothesized, high levels o f situation criticality were associated with high levels of cognitive anxiety, but somatic anxiety did not differ in the two situations. Bot h person and situation factors were significant predictors of cognitiv e and somatic anxiety; however, the more salient factor was dependent upon the measurement of anxiety (raw scores vs. standardized score). C onsistent with the catastrophe theory, somatic anxiety had a different relationship with performance in high criticality situations compared to low criticality situations.