26 of the SEHS glossary’s terms, each with the part of the syllabus where you first meet it.
Attention focused on one or two specific cues, used when a performer executes a skill or responds to a single target.
An interactionist theory, developed by Atkinson and McClelland, proposing that personality factors and situational factors interact to produce a resultant tendency, which creates emotions (pride or shame) that drive approach or avoidance behaviour.
Behaviour by a coach, teacher, parent or other social agent that satisfies another person’s needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness, such as offering choice, giving a rationale, providing structure and showing care.
Behaviour by a social agent that actively frustrates another person’s needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness, such as pressure, threats, excessive control, belittling criticism or rejection.
A personality factor in need achievement theory describing a person’s motivation to seek out challenges, persist and experience pride in success; also called the motive to achieve success (nAch).
A personality factor in need achievement theory describing a person’s motivation to avoid situations in which they might fail and feel shame; also called the motive to avoid failure (nAf).
A control mechanism in which a change in a regulated variable triggers a response that reverses the change, returning the variable towards its set point; the basis of homeostasis.
Transfer in which learning one skill hinders the learning or performance of another, usually because the situations are similar but need different responses.
The synapse between the axon terminal of a motor neuron and a skeletal muscle fibre, where acetylcholine is released to start a muscle action potential.
A nerve cell, specialised to carry electrical impulses, with a cell body, dendrites that receive signals and an axon that carries impulses away.
A Big Five trait describing the extent to which an individual perceives situations as distressing and experiences negative emotions such as anxiety, worry and sadness.
A chemical released from the end of a neuron that crosses a synapse and passes the signal to the next neuron or to an effector cell, such as acetylcholine or norepinephrine.
The SI unit of force: the force needed to give a mass of 1 kg an acceleration of 1 m s⁻², so 1 N = 1 kg m s⁻².
A law of motion stating that a body stays at rest or moves at constant velocity in a straight line unless an external resultant force acts on it.
A law of motion stating that the acceleration of a body is proportional to the resultant force on it and inversely proportional to its mass, .
A law of motion stating that when one body exerts a force on another, the second exerts an equal and opposite force on the first; the two forces act on different bodies.
A model describing attention on two dimensions, width (broad or narrow) and direction (internal or external), giving four styles: broad-external (assess), broad-internal (analyse), narrow-internal (rehearse) and narrow-external (act).
The energy used in everyday physical activity that is not planned exercise, such as walking, standing, fidgeting and household tasks; it varies greatly between people.
An accumulation of training and non-training stress that lowers performance for weeks to months, with psychological and physiological symptoms, and gives no performance gain after recovery.
A learner-centred approach to teaching motor skills, based on the ecological model, in which the coach manipulates constraints in game-like practice so learners discover functional movement solutions.
Heat production without muscle contraction, by raising the metabolic rate of tissues, especially brown adipose tissue, under the control of sympathetic nerves and hormones such as thyroxine and epinephrine.
Medicines such as ibuprofen and naproxen that reduce pain and inflammation by blocking the cyclo-oxygenase enzymes that produce prostaglandins; side effects include stomach irritation and possibly slower tissue healing.
A partner-assisted exercise in which the athlete kneels with the ankles held and slowly lowers the upright body forwards, resisting with an eccentric contraction of the hamstrings, used to prevent hamstring strains.
A hormone of the adrenal medulla and the neurotransmitter of most sympathetic nerve endings, which raises heart rate and constricts blood vessels in non-active tissues; also called noradrenaline.
The contact force exerted by a surface on a body resting or moving on it, acting at right angles to the surface; on level ground it equals weight when there is no vertical acceleration.
A statement that there is no difference between conditions or no relationship between variables, so that any difference observed in the data is due to chance; a statistical test decides whether to reject it.