Organizational stressors and basic psychological needs: The mediating role of athletes' appraisal mechanisms.

This article reports the first study to quantitatively examine the relationships between the demands encountered by athletes that are associated with the organization within which they are operating, cognitive appraisals, and basic psychological need experiences. Three hundred and fifteen high-level British athletes completed a multisection questionnaire which assessed each of the aforementioned constructs. A series of path analyses provided valuable insight into the way in which the three dimensions (ie, frequency, intensity, and duration) of five organizational stressor categories were evaluated by athletes and, in turn, how such threat or challenge appraisals predicted feelings of need satisfaction and need frustration. Moreover, cognitive stress appraisals were found to mediate the relationship between organizational stressors and psychological need experiences. The role of secondary control appraisals was also explored and found to mediate the relationship between primary cognitive appraisals and basic psychological need experiences. Study limitations, proposed future research directions, and the implications of the findings for applied practitioners are discussed.

Attentional bias modification for acute experimental pain: A randomized controlled trial of retraining early versus later attention on pain severity, threshold and tolerance.

BACKGROUND: Noxious attentional bias is thought to confer vulnerability to pain, suggesting that modifying the bias could reduce pain outcomes. Herein is presented a randomized controlled trial to test the effects of retraining the dot probe attentional bias at short versus long stimulus durations towards neutral stimuli, and away from threat stimuli, on acute pain experience, in comparison with a placebo control group. METHODS: Eighty-one pain-free volunteers, blinded to condition, were randomized to complete either one of two neutral bias modification programs in which words were presented for 500 ms (ABM-500; n = 28) or 1250 ms (ABM-1250; n = 26), or to a sham training program that included both stimulus durations (ABM-Placebo; n = 27). Testing took place in a university laboratory. At post-training, participants completed the pain-inducing 'cold pressor task', and measures of pain severity, threshold and tolerance were taken. Attentional bias was also measured at pre- and post-training. RESULTS: Findings indicated that ABM-500 reliably increased pain threshold and tolerance, in comparison with the control group. In contrast, ABM-1250 did not affect any of the pain outcomes. Expected ABM effects on attentional bias were not evident at the group level, but nevertheless ABM-500 bias reduction was significantly associated with increased pain tolerance. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that retraining attention at short stimulus exposure durations is relatively more efficacious in promoting transfer of attentional retraining effects to real-world acute pain stressors, in comparison with both the longer stimulus duration and ABM-Placebo. SIGNIFICANCE: Testing of the impact of modifying maintained attentional bias on vulnerability to an acute pain stressor. Findings suggested that retraining rapid attentional bias using short exposure durations conferred greater analgesic benefit, in comparison with both the slower bias and sham-training.