Despite the advocacy of a confidence-enhancing function of mental imagery, the relationship between confidence and imagery has received little attention from sport researchers. The primary purpose of the present study was to identify the specific image content of confident athletes. Fifty-seven elite competitive rollerskaters completed the Movement Imagery Questionnaire-Revised (MIQ-R), the Sport Imagery Questionnaire (SIQ), and the State Sport Confidence Inventory (SSCI). Results revealed that high sport-confident athletes used more mastery and arousal imagery, and had better kinesthetic and visual imagery ability than low sport-confident athletes did. A hierarchical multiple regression analysis revealed that mastery imagery accounted for the majority of variance in SSCI scores (20%). The results of this study suggest that when it comes to sport confidence, the imaged rehearsal of specific sport skills may not be as important as the imagery of sport-related mastery experiences and emotions.

We estimated age at menarche in a cross-sectional sample of 159 competitive figure skaters aged 11-22 years. The sample represented three standards (test stream, pre-elite, elite) and three disciplines (free skaters, pair skaters, dancers). The status quo (yes/no) and retrospective methods were used. Estimated age at menarche based on probit analysis of the status quo data was 14.2 +/- 0.5 years, with 95% confidence intervals of 13.2 to 15.2 years. Mean recalled age at menarche for 67 skaters aged 16 years or over was 13.6 +/- 1.2 years. Comparisons of skaters by standard and discipline were limited to skaters > or = 16 years. Menarche was, on average, significantly later (P < 0.01) in elite (n = 36; 14.0 +/- 1.4 years) than in test stream (n = 15; 12.9 +/- 0.8 years) skaters. Age at menarche in pre-elite skaters (n = 16; 13.5 +/- 0.9 years) did not differ significantly from the other two groups. By discipline, menarche was, on average, significantly later (P < 0.01) in pair skaters (n = 12; 14.5 +/- 1.3 years) than in both free skaters (n = 38; 13.4 +/- 1.0 years) and dancers (n = 17; 13.4 +/- 1.4 years). Early maturing girls (menarche < 12.0 years; n = 2) were not represented in this sample of competitive figure skaters. Mean recalled age at menarche of mothers of skaters (n = 84) was 13.7 +/- 1.3 years and the mother-daughter correlation (n = 56 pairs) was 0.45 (P < 0.01). Later maturation was thus characteristic of competitive figure skaters, particularly in elite and more specialized pair skaters, and there was a significant familial resemblance.

Completing the State Sport Confidence Inventory requires participants to compare themselves with the most confident athlete they know. Inconsistency is inherent in participants' choices that may result in unsystematic variance across such responses. This study tested the modifiability of the inventory by removing the "comparison" component from the instructions and from each of the 13 questions. Using data from 31 female figure skaters (M age=16.1 yr., SD=1.0), the original and modified versions were compared. Adequate reliabilities were found for both measures (both rs=.94), but a paired sample t test indicated significant differences between mean scores on the two versions. The total score and all of the item scores were higher for the modified version than the original, and coefficients of determination showed variance shared by the modified and original items ranged only from 9 to 59% per item. These results suggest that the modified version was not an adequate representation of the original inventory.

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