Abstract des Autors

Mental imagery, or the capacity to represent in the mind experiences of things that are not physically present, is attracting increasing attention from sports psychologists as a cognitive tool for improving athletic performance (the "mental practice" effect). Accordingly, a variety of tests have been developed to measure individual differences in this skill. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the psychometric adequacy of the most popular of these tests. In addition, several conceptual problems (e.g. is imagery an homogeneous construct?) and methodological issues (e.g. how can tests of visualization skills in sport be validated unless we know more about athletes' use of imagery?) surrounding the assessment of imagery skills in athletes are explored. Overall, we use these issues to highlight the gap which exists in sport psychology between theory and measurement. Some suggestions are provided to bridge this gap. Verf.-Referat