Everything psychological is biological. So today, I am presenting a very interesting Psychology experiment which was extremely surprising for me and was proven successful(spoiler alert!). So stay tuned till this interesting read.
In the early 2000s a psychologist and a researcher named, Calvo-Merino, discovered that even watching the activity will activate the brain’s internal simulation of it. And the same goes with imagining a physical experience, which will activate some of the same neural networks that are active during the actual experience (Grezes & Decety, 2001). So other curious researchers went on an exploration to really prove this true. This exploration was research on the University of Tennessee women’s basketball team. This research(Savoy & Beitel, 1996) was an experiment on mental practice and basketball shooting. As the mental practice became mandatory, the research showed a significant improvement in the athletes’ free-throw shooting. After mental practice, the free-throw shooting increased from 52% in games with physical practice to 65% after a mental practice. Their mental practice included players imagining throwing foul shots under several conditions. These practices led to their win in the national championship game in overtime. So the key lesson is that fantasizing about your preparation to be successful is more effective than spending your imagination on your dream destinations which aren’t going to prepare you for anything. This led to mental practice as a standard procedure of training for Olympic athletes.
Sources:
Myers Psychology Textbook Second Edition for AP
Tags: #brain
Thank you so much!
Well written!