Extroversion, mental practice and imagery in the acquisition of the cartwheel

Resumen

This work is aimed at (1) investigating the effects of physical pratice (PP) added to mental practice (MP) with internal imagery (II) and external imagery (EI) on learning the cartwheel and (2) establishing correlations among scores of extroversion and task performances. Thirty female adolescents (mean age 12.93 ± 0.73 years) were assigned to one of two groups of PP followed by MP with either II (n=15) or EI (n=15). There were fi ve experimental phases: pre-test, acquisition, post-test, retention, and transfer. Movements were fi lmed in all phases, but the acquisition. A checklist was used to assess the movements and extroversion was evaluated by means of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. The analyses showed signifi cant intragroup improvements from the pre-test to the other tests but no intergroup differences were detected in any of the phases. Yet a positive and moderate correlation was detected between extroversion and performance in the tests for those who practiced with EI. These fi ndings reinforce the importance of MP as a complimentary tool to PP and show the existence of relationships between extroversion, cartwheel performance and imagery.