Using mental imagery to improve our skills
If you’ve ever looked into some of the techniques athletes and sport psychologists commonly talk about in performance settings, you’ll likely have come across the concept of mental imagery. There are numerous accounts out there about its benefits, and dozens of research papers claiming its undisputable supremacy. Recently, not one, but at least two meta-analyses, by Toth and colleagues (2020), and Lindsay and colleagues (2019) concluded that mental imagery had small but significant effects on performance regardless of expertise level, and since mental imagery has been a hotly debated topic over that past few decades, these conclusions are, at the very least, encouraging.
An example of imagery in action is Brouziyne and Molinaro (2005)’s study, where they recruited three groups of amateur golfers, with each group receiving a different intervention to improve their approach shot accuracy (that is, the long shot golfers take to get the ball as close to the hole as possible). The group that trained using both mental imagery and physical practice had less inaccurate shots than the group that practiced using activities irrelevant to golf. Although the rate of highly accurate shots wasn’t much different from simple physical practice in the mental imagery group, this does suggest that mental imagery improved approach shots somewhat.
So, mental imagery is a well-researched tool in performance enhancement, and at first glance, it seems pretty good at what it’s meant to be doing. But what is mental imagery, and why is it useful (and what is it meant to be doing anyway)? And, perhaps more importantly, can we, mere mortals, use it too?
The heck is a ‘mental imagery?’
‘Mental imagery’ is an umbrella term, and it refers to any situation where a person imagines a scenario, existent or non-existent, and rehearses certain actions within that setting. Usually, you’d have a facilitator guiding you through the imagery session after you close your eyes, but if you’re well-practiced in the technique, you can do it by yourself as well. For example, imagery may be a basketball player imagining a penalty shot, the consequent rebound, and their reaction to it, or a track athlete trying to recreate the feeling of anxiety they may experience before the start pistol goes off. Understandably, this definition is much too broad to be super handy, but there is a good reason for that: mental imagery comes in many forms. For starters, imagery type depends on the task you’re practicing: the best-researched is motor imagery, where you’re practicing a physical skill ‘in your mind’s eye’ (like the basketball penalty example), but you can practice emotional or cognitive elements of tasks as well (like the track athlete and their anxiety recreation). What more, according to Cumming and Williams (2012), mental imagery can be classified according to 5 characteristics: modality, perspective, agency, angle, and deliberation. Let’s have a look at what each of these mean, shall we?
- Modality refers to the most prominent sense during the imagery, or the sense that we primarily aim to manipulate. This can be any of the 5 senses (vision, touch, hearing, smell, or taste), though the most common modalities are visual and kinaesthetic (touch).
- Perspective can either be first-person or third-person; that is, you’re either imagining the scenario from within your own body, or you’re observing from a bystander POV.
- Agency is a bit of a tricky one, but it’s essentially about who is the primary actor in the scenario, i.e., whether it’s you or somebody else. In a third-person image, for example, you could either watch yourself from the outside, or watch a completely different person, while in first person, you may be taking on the body of an opponent, rather than yourself.
- Angle is where you’re watching the action from. This can be from in front of the actor, from behind, the side, above, below, or anything in between.
- Deliberation is somewhat different, as it’s not about what you imagine, but whether you’re doing it voluntarily. The literature usually considers deliberate mental imagery only, but if you think about it, daydreaming is mental imagery as well — it’s just that it’s not as useful for performance because you’re not controlling what’s happening as much.
How does imagery help me?
Alright, so we now know what’s happening when we do mental imagery and the parts that make up the picture. But at this point, you might be thinking, ‘well, that’s awfully simple. Why does this work?’ Most research in this area comes from neuroscience, concerning motor imagery specifically. According to Mizuguchi and colleagues (2012), motor imagery helps performance because of what we call ‘functional equivalence’ in the nervous system. Essentially, when you’re doing imagery, especially of the kinaesthetic type, you’re activating the same brain regions as you would if you were performing the imagined action in real life. According to Ladda and colleagues’ (2021) meta-analysis of fMRI recordings — which are great at pinpointing the location of brain activity — this activation happens mostly in the premotor and motor cortices (see Figure 2.), which are heavily involved in executing actual movement, like bending your fingers or taking a step. The difference between physical activity and imagery is best demonstrated by EEG recordings, which are super useful in showing the timing and intensity of brain activity. According to Sobierajewicz and colleagues (2017), for example, imagery activates the brain to the same intensity as actual physical movement does, but in the opposite direction — what this means is that our brain generates the same movement sequence, but then stops us right before we send the instructions to our muscles.
The efficacy of mental imagery is about more than just brain activity, though. Cumming & Williams (2012) suggested that imagery effectiveness depends on vividness and controllability as well. What this means is that the more real the scenario feels and the more you have control over what happens during the imagery, the more effective it is. Ladda and colleagues (2021) has also proposed that mental imagery works best if we take on the posture we’re emulating in our imagined scenario, especially in motor learning tasks. So, there’s a lot to why imagery works, even if you’re not that into neuroscience.
Okay, but why is this relevant to me?
Can we use mental imagery for something other than physical performance? Sure! According to Jones and Stuth (1997), even athletes use it for other purposes as well. As I’ve mentioned before, mental imagery can improve affective regulation: that is, the ‘control over your emotions,’ whether it be ‘psyching up’ before a performance or handling anxiety. Besides that, mental imagery can be used for cognitive regulation, which is a bit of a mouthful, but it basically means changing the contents and the types of thoughts we hold about ourselves or our situation. This type of imagery is closely related to positive psychology, inasmuch as you’re trying to switch self-directed negative thoughts into positive ones. This is quite useful for motivation and concentration, because let’s face it: it’s easier to do your daily exercise when you think about its benefits, rather than how exhausting it will be. So, mental imagery is more than just a tool to learn motor skills; it can be used to help with emotional and cognitive control as well.
Even so, imagery is not only useful in exercise. According to a review by Schuster and colleagues (2011), mental imagery is used in educational settings, music, and medicine, as well as sport and psychology. Musicians, for example, can use imagery to learn how to do a vibrato, while surgeons can practice performing liver transplants without the pressure of a life being at stake. Of course, these are just a few examples, and in truth, you can apply mental imagery to just about anything. Nervous about a job interview? Use imagery to walk yourself through it and quell your anxiety! Want to learn how to flip a pancake without messing up your kitchen? Yup, you can try practicing that, too. Mental imagery has many uses for the average person as well, given that it’s done appropriately.
Alright, but how should I do it?
What is ‘appropriately,’ though? According to Toth and colleagues’ (2020) meta-analysis, mental imagery interventions work best when they are done for 1–6 weeks, 3 times a week, for 10–25 minutes each. A similar dose and duration of imagery intervention was also successful in a study by Reiser and colleagues (2011), who aimed to help participants increase their strength training performance as well. However, according to a seminal paper by Driskell and colleagues (1994), even using best practices, the effect of mental imagery depends on the activity we imagine and the amount of time that passes between the imagery and the actual performance. The more cognitive the task is and the sooner we perform it, the more effective mental imagery is. It’s also important to note that imagery works best if its characteristics fit with the task at hand: so, if you want to try out mental imagery, you first need to decide on what to use it for, and then construct your image according to Cumming and Williams’ (2012) list of characteristics.
Before you do so, however, it is worth keeping in mind that mental imagery has warranted a decent amount of criticism over the years. Despite the recent encouraging results from meta-analyses, mental imagery research has been criticised for not using appropriate measurements for its performance-enhancing or anxiety-reducing effects. It’s also worth noting that the effects of mental imagery have been observed to be relatively small, and they do not fully replace physical practice, especially when it comes to motor learning. This doesn’t mean that imagery is useless or that I’ve been lying to you this whole time, but rather, that it’s not a ‘magic pill’ or anything of the sort. Nothing is (and if you see an advertisement that tells you otherwise, you should be very wary indeed).
What’s the bottom line, then? As we can see, mental imagery is a diverse technique that can be used to enhance performance on motor tasks, but also to help with anxiety, or even rehabilitation following an injury. The scientific literature has identified some best practices for mental imagery interventions, but as is the case with any tool or technique, what works best will differ from individual to individual (yes, I will keep repeating this, because it’s important to remember!). So, build a routine that fits your purposes, and if you keep in mind its limitations, mental imagery might just help you, no matter how menial or life-changing your task is.
References:
Brouziyne, M., & Molinaro, C. (2005). Mental imagery combined with physical practice of approach shots for golf beginners. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 101(1), 203–211.
Cumming, J., & Williams, S. E. (2012). The Role of Imagery in Performance. The Oxford Handbook of Sport and Performance Psychology, 213.
Driskell, J. E., Copper, C., & Moran, A. (1994). Does mental practice enhance performance?. Journal of Applied Psychology, 79(4), 481.
Jones, L., & Stuth, G. (1997). The uses of mental imagery in athletics: An overview. Applied and Preventive Psychology, 6(2), 101–115.
Ladda, A. M., Lebon, F., & Lotze, M. (2021). Using motor imagery practice for improving motor performance–A review. Brain and Cognition, 150, 105705.
Lindsay, R., Spittle, M., & Larkin, P. (2019). The effect of mental imagery on skill performance in sport: A systematic review. Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, 22, S92.
Mizuguchi, N., Nakata, H., Uchida, Y., & Kanosue, K. (2012). Motor imagery and sport performance. The Journal of Physical Fitness and Sports Medicine, 1(1), 103–111.
Reiser, M., Büsch, D., & Munzert, J. (2011). Strength gains by motor imagery with different ratios of physical to mental practice. Frontiers in Psychology, 2, 194.
Schuster, C., Hilfiker, R., Amft, O., Scheidhauer, A., Andrews, B., Butler, J., … & Ettlin, T. (2011). Best practice for motor imagery: a systematic literature review on motor imagery training elements in five different disciplines. BMC Medicine, 9(1), 1–35.
Sobierajewicz, J., Przekoracka-Krawczyk, A., Jaśkowski, W., Verwey, W. B., & van der Lubbe, R. (2017). The influence of motor imagery on the learning of a fine hand motor skill. Experimental Brain Research, 235(1), 305–320.
Toth, A. J., McNeill, E., Hayes, K., Moran, A. P., & Campbell, M. (2020). Does mental practice still enhance performance? A 24 Year follow-up and meta-analytic replication and extension. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 48, 101672.
