Assessing the Effectiveness of Antecedent and Consequent Interventions to Enhance Sports Performance

Sports research in behavior analysis is becoming increasingly popular. As the proliferation of research continues, multiple interventions have been shown to help enhance sports-related performance. However, different intervention components are rarely if ever used alone, which has created a limitation with the current body of research. To begin to address this limitation, this study had three experiments to evaluate some different components of video recording procedures and behavioral skills training (BST) to facilitate performance enhancement. Experiment 1 separated video modeling and video feedback to see which component best improved pitching form in Little League baseball players. Experiment 2 evaluated video self-evaluation and video feedback to evaluate which component best improved swing form of recreational golfers. Experiment 3 separated the different antecedent and consequence components of BST (instruction and feedback) to see which component best improved safe-tackling form in Pop-Warner football players. Results showed that consequent interventions were more effective than antecedent interventions. We discuss the importance of the results to current literature, and how they might guide future research