Rationale
Individuals with music performance anxiety (MPA) present physical, behavioral, and cognitive manifestations of anxiety, in addition to information processing deficits, especially in facial ...emotion recognition (FER).
Objectives
To assess the effects of a single dose of intranasal oxytocin (24 IU) on FER in a sample of musicians with high and low MPA (primary outcome), as well as indicators of mood/anxiety and self-assessed performance (secondary outcomes).
Methods
Crossover, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial involving 43 male musicians with different levels of MPA. Participants completed a static facial emotion recognition task and self-rated mood and performance scales. Data were analyzed using ANOVA 2 × 0 for crossover trials and the Omnibus test (measure of separability between intervention and carryover effects).
Results
Only musicians with high MPA treated with oxytocin had a higher accuracy in the recognition of happiness (
p
< 0.03;
d
> 0.72). No effects of oxytocin were found on mood indicators or on self-perceived performance, regardless of MPA level.
Conclusions
The results indicate possible benefits of the acute treatment with oxytocin in MPA, which may improve the management of this common and disabling condition that affects professional musicians. The appropriate perception of positive feedback may increase confidence and feelings of social acceptance, reducing symptoms associated with the condition. The lack of effects on mood/anxiety and cognition may be explained by the context-dependent characteristic of the effects of oxytocin, since the experiment did not represent an actual situation of social threat.
Trial registration
Brazilian Clinical Trials Registry (
Registro Brasileiro de Ensaios Clínicos
): No. RBR-9cph2q
This study aimed to examine the association between the incidence of musculoskeletal disorder episodes (MDEs) and obsessive and harmonious passion as well as performance anxiety throughout a dance ...season, which lasted 38 weeks.
Prospective cohort study.
A total of 118 professional and preprofessional dancers were recruited and assessed at baseline, while 88 completed the follow-up. Their levels of passion and performance anxiety were assessed at the beginning of a dance season using the Passion Scale and the Kenny Music Performance Anxiety Inventory, respectively. To monitor the incidence of MDEs throughout a dance season, dancers were asked to complete a weekly electronic diary.
A higher level of obsessive passion was associated with a higher incidence of MDEs causing an interruption of dance activities (β = 0.264, p = 0.022). Harmonious passion and performance anxiety were not associated with MDEs throughout the season.
Findings of this study support the role of obsessive passion in the development of MDEs in dancers.
•Obsessive passion was positively associated with the incidence of MDEs causing an interruption of dance during the season.•Harmonious passion was not associated with the incidence of MDEs throughout the season.•Performance anxiety was not associated with the incidence of MDEs during the season.
Several studies have developed and validated specific scales to understand, identify and confirm research hypotheses associated with music performance anxiety (MPA). These scales mostly assess ...behavioral, cognitive, and physiological factors. There is currently no original MPA assessment tool for higher music education in Continental Portuguese, which suggests a research gap. The aim of this study was to determine if the Portuguese Music Performance Anxiety Scale (PoMPAS), developed for this research, is a valid and reliable measure of MPA for the context of higher education in Portugal. The total sample was N = 414 (166 male, 245 female, and three without gender identification). The development of this scale was based on a three-dimensional model (behavioral, cognitive, and physiological), following the theoretical models of Salmon (1990) and Osborne and Kenny (2005). Confirmatory factor analysis of the PoMPAS suggested a good fit in a three-dimensional model with 27 items. The internal consistency values proved appropriate, showing good Cronbach’s alphas (between α = 0.81 and α = 0.90). The McDonald’s Omega also demonstrated good consistency (between ω = 0.81 and ω = 0.90). The PoMPAS is a reliable tool to measure the impact of MPA, with good psychometric qualities, specifically for the Portuguese higher music education context.
A pre-test/post-test, intervention-versus-control experimental design was used to examine the effects, mechanisms and moderators of deep breathing on state anxiety and test performance in 122 Primary ...5 students. Taking deep breaths before a timed math test significantly reduced self-reported feelings of anxiety and improved test performance. There was a statistical trend towards greater effectiveness in reducing state anxiety for boys compared to girls, and in enhancing test performance for students with higher autonomic reactivity in test-like situations. The latter moderation was significant when comparing high-versus-low autonomic reactivity groups. Mediation analyses suggest that deep breathing reduces state anxiety in test-like situations, creating a better state-of-mind by enhancing the regulation of adaptive-maladaptive thoughts during the test, allowing for better performance. The quick and simple technique can be easily learnt and effectively applied by most children to immediately alleviate some of the adverse effects of test anxiety on psychological well-being and academic performance.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Individuals often feel anxious in anticipation of tasks such as speaking in public or meeting with a boss. I find that an overwhelming majority of people believe trying to calm down is the best way ...to cope with pre-performance anxiety. However, across several studies involving karaoke singing, public speaking, and math performance, I investigate an alternative strategy: reappraising anxiety as excitement. Compared with those who attempt to calm down, individuals who reappraise their anxious arousal as excitement feel more excited and perform better. Individuals can reappraise anxiety as excitement using minimal strategies such as self-talk (e.g., saying "I am excited" out loud) or simple messages (e.g., "get excited"), which lead them to feel more excited, adopt an opportunity mind-set (as opposed to a threat mind-set), and improve their subsequent performance. These findings suggest the importance of arousal congruency during the emotional reappraisal process.
Music performance anxiety (MPA) regularly occurs when musicians present themselves before an audience in performance situations, and thus, it plays an important role in the careers of professional ...musicians. MPA is expressed on the emotional and physical level, as well as on the levels of thinking and behavior, and extends along a continuum of varying severity. Its performance-impairing, afflicting form is considered to be a specific type of social phobia, which requires therapy. There are different psychological theories, which contribute to the understanding of the phenomenon of MPA and provide basic principles for the various treatment approaches. Current "best practice," in our clinical experience, is a personal- and problem-oriented approach within a multimodal therapy model, including the range of psychoanalytic and cognitive behavioral therapies, body-oriented methods, and mental techniques. In order to avoid severe MPA, prevention in the field of music pedagogic is very important. Thus, the concepts of dealing positively with MPA should be implemented very early into the instrumental and vocal education of musicians.
Scholars and social critics are looking at gender and sexuality, as well as masculinity, in new ways and with more attention to the way cultural ideologies affect men’s and women’s lives. With the ...rise of an online “incel” (involuntarily celibate) community and the perpetration of acts of violence in their name, as well as increased awareness about the complexities of sexual interaction brought to the fore by the #metoo movement, it has become critical to discuss how men’s sexuality and masculinity are related, as well as the way men feel about the messages they get about being a man. Prior research on masculinity and masculine sexuality has examined the experiences of adolescent boys. But what happens to boys as they become men and as many move away from homo-social environments into sexual relationships? What happens when they no longer have a crowd of peers to posture or perform for? How do their sexual experiences and sexual selves change? How do they prove their masculinity in a society that demands it when they are no longer surrounded by peers? And how do they cultivate sexual selves and sexual self-confidence in a culture that expects them to always already be knowledgeable, desiring sexual subjects? In Getting It, Having It, Keeping It Up , Beth Montemurro explores the cultivation of heterosexual men’s sexual selves. Based on detailed, in-depth interviews with a large, diverse group of heterosexual men between the ages of 20 and 68, she investigates how getting sex, having sex, and keeping up their sex lives matters to men. Ultimately, Montemurro uncovers the tension between public, cultural narratives about hetero-masculinity and men’s private, sexual selves and their intimate experiences.
Performance anxiety can profoundly affect motor performance, even in experts such as professional athletes and musicians. Previously, the neural mechanisms underlying anxiety-induced performance ...deterioration have predominantly been investigated for individual one-shot actions. Sports and music, however, are characterized by action sequences, where many individual actions are assembled to develop a performance. Here, utilizing a novel differential sequential motor learning paradigm, we first show that performance at the junctions between pre-learnt action sequences is particularly prone to anxiety. Next, utilizing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we reveal that performance deterioration at the junctions is parametrically correlated with activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC). Finally, we show that 1 Hz repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation of the dACC attenuates the performance deterioration at the junctions. These results demonstrate causality between dACC activity and impairment of sequential motor performance due to anxiety, and suggest new intervention techniques against the deterioration.
I commenced my academic exploration of music performance anxiety in a study with opera chorus artists from Opera Australia in 2004. I subsequently postulated a new theory of the aetiology of music ...performance anxiety and began the development of the
(K-MPAI) to assess the hypothesized theoretical constructs underpinning its diverse clinical presentations. I proposed a new definition of music performance anxiety in 2009 and revised the item content of the K-MPAI from 26 to 40 in 2011. Over the ensuing years, many researchers have used the K-MPAI in studies on a wide variety of musicians, including vocalists and instrumentalists, popular and classical musicians, tertiary music students, and professional, solo, orchestral, ensemble, band, and community musicians. To date, the K-MPAI has been reported in more than 400 studies and has been translated into 22 languages. It has been the subject of more than 39 dissertations. In this paper, I examine the research that has used the K-MPAI to assess the theory and to ascertain how well the assessment tool, and its cross-cultural validation have provided evidence for its factorial structure, robustness, and utility. The evidence indicates that the factorial structure remains consistent across cultures and different populations of musicians. It has good discriminative ability and utility for diagnostic purposes. I conclude with some reflections on how the K-MPAI can guide therapeutic interventions and with some thoughts on future directions.
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