A review of behavioral interventions to enhance sports performance
A ready index lists 101 behavior-analytic sport studies—use it to pick proven tactics before you write a new program.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The authors hunted every paper that used ABA to boost sports skills. They found 101 studies from 1960 to 2018. The list covers 23 different tactics across 21 sports.
No stats were run; they simply mapped what exists so coaches and BCBAs can shop the shelf.
What they found
A ready index now exists. You can look up your sport and see which tricks have been tried. Most work sits in small single-case studies, but the menu is wide.
How this fits with other research
Leung et al. (2011) thought the field was tiny—only 25 studies. Schenk’s 2019 count shows four times more, so the picture has grown fast.
Matson et al. (2004) saw 40 single-case sport papers; the new scan nearly triples that number. The trend line is up, not flat.
DePaolo et al. (2019) is one of the fresh entries: prompting plus taking away sprints got a women’s lacrosse team to talk on the field. That study sits inside Schenk’s bigger box, showing the index works.
Why it matters
You no longer have to guess if behavior tools work in sports. Open the index, pick your athlete’s sport, and see what has already helped. Start there instead of reinventing drills.
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Open the Schenk table, find your client’s sport, and copy the top two tactics into this week’s plan.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Research on applied behavior analysis and sports performance has become an increasingly popular subject. It involves using behavioral measures to assess the utility of numerous interventions to enhance athletic performance. We identified 101 studies published since the late 1960s focusing on behavioral interventions to enhance sports performance. To determine the breadth of the current research, we identified each sport and the different interventions used to improve performance. Of the studies included in this review, research has investigated 23 interventions with 21 sports. The purpose of this paper is to review the current literature regarding what procedures have been evaluated, the results of this research, some of the limitations, and future directions of behavioral research on sports performance enhancement. In doing so, this review will allow readers to easily browse the current literature by the sport or intervention of interest.
Behavioral Interventions, 2019 · doi:10.1002/bin.1659