Elite Youth Soccer Players' Sources and Types of Soccer Confidence.

Sport confidence is a psychological characteristic considered vital for youth soccer players to possess. However, only limited research has explored the types and sources of sport confidence important to elite youth performers in professional soccer academies. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 academy footballers (aged 10 or 11). Abductive hierarchical content analysis identified types of confidence to include achievement, skill execution, psychological factors, superiority to opposition and tactical awareness. Key sources of confidence identified by players were performance accomplishments, coaching, social support, and preparation. Even though the dimensions reported were similar to previous research, a number of unique sub-themes of confidence sources emerged, including pre-training/competition emotions, coach and team-mate feedback. The results demonstrate the importance of considering maturation levels and context when seeking to understand and develop confidence in youth performers.

Mixed emotion experiences for self or another person in adolescence.

INTRODUCTION: This study examined types of reported simultaneous mixed emotion experiences for the first time in adolescence for high and low intensity emotion pairs using an Analogue Emotion Scale which affords the graphing of two opposite valence emotions over time on the same graph. METHODS: In a cross sectional design, 163 participants based in schools across the UK formed two age groups representing early and mid-adolescence (12 years, 5 months-16 years, 9 months vs. 16 years, 10 months-18 years, 8 months) across two conditions considering either their own (n = 83) or another child's (n = 80) emotional experience divided equally for high (n = 80) or low (n = 83) intensity mixed emotion pairs presented in vignettes about themselves or another person. They were seen individually and completed an emotion presence interview and an Analogue Emotion Scale about the emotions experienced in the condition appropriate vignette. RESULTS: Participants reported mixed emotions both sequentially and simultaneously. In particular we found that children showed that others experience emotions in a more sequential manner, while they themselves would experience more emotions in a highly simultaneous way. Emotion experience was different depending on the emotion pair and age group. CONCLUSIONS: Adolescents' subjective mixed emotion experiences vary by intensity and patterns of simultaneity over time. Findings are discussed in relation to an evaluative space model of mixed emotion and applications of the AES with adolescent populations.

Expressivity in children's drawings of themselves for adult audiences with varied authority and familiarity.

This study investigated whether children's expressive drawings of themselves vary as a function of audience authority and familiarity. One hundred and seventy-five children, 85 boys and 90 girls, aged between 8 years 1 months and 9 years 2 months (M = 8 years 5 months) were allocated into seven groups: a reference group (n = 25), where no audience was specified, and six audience groups (n = 25 per group) varying by audience type (policeman vs. teacher vs. man) and familiarity (familiar vs. unfamiliar). They drew baseline then happy and sad drawings of themselves, rated affect towards drawings type, and rated perceived audience authority. Audience familiarity and authority impacted expressive drawing strategy use and this varied by gender. There was higher overall expressive strategy use for happy drawings and for girls, and influences of affect type, familiarity, and authority were found. The implications of children's perceptions of audience type on their expressive drawings are discussed. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Children vary their happy and sad expressive drawings for familiar peer and adult audiences. They show more positive expressivity to familiar peer and adult audiences. Children perceive authority differently depending on professional roles. What does this study add? Children's expressive drawings differ depending on audience familiarity and professional role. Greater expressivity for familiar than unfamiliar audiences, with difference varying by perceived authority. For policemen, boys showed more sad expression when unfamiliar and girls showed more happy expression when familiar.

Children's colour choices for completing drawings of affectively characterised topics.

BACKGROUND: This study was designed to explore whether or not children systematically use particular colours when completing drawings of affectively characterised topics. METHOD: Three hundred and thirty 4-11-year-old children were subdivided into three conditions, colouring in a drawing of a man, a dog, or a tree, respectively. The children completed two test sessions in counterbalanced order. In one session, children rated and ranked ten colours in order of preference. In the other session, children completed three colouring tasks in which they had to colour in three identical figures but which had been given different affective characterisations: a neutrally characterised figure, a figure characterised as nasty, and a figure characterised as nice. RESULTS: It was found that, in all age groups and for all topics, the children used their more preferred colours for the nice figures, their least preferred colours for the nasty figures, and colours rated intermediately for the neutral figures. It was also found that, in all age groups and for all topics, black tended to be the most frequently chosen colour for colouring in the drawings of the negatively characterised figures. By contrast, primary colours were predominantly selected for the neutral figure, while a wide range of mainly primary and secondary colours were chosen for colouring in the nice figure. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that children are able to alter systematically their use of colour during picture completion tasks in response to differential affective topic characterisations, and that even very young children are able to use colours symbolically.