The Effects of Stress Mindset, Manipulated Through Serious Game Intervention, on Performance and Situation Awareness of Elite Female Football Players in the Context of a Match: An Experimental Study

Background: Performance levels in football are ever more important and no longer are just physical, technical, and tactical skills, the ones that make an athlete stand out. Cognitive variables, such as stress-coping, become more important and seem to be explaining differences in performance, for example, through reaching an optimal level of arousal. In addition, it is suggested that stress-coping skills also affect situation awareness (SA), important for decision-making in the complex and dynamic situations in football. Objective: This study was conducted to examine how stress-coping skills, such as stress mindset, affect performance and SA in the context of a football match. Methods: Twenty elite female football players participated in the study. The final sample size consisted of 15 players for the Stress Mindset Measure (SMM) analysis and 8 players for the multilevel model analyses. Two types of intervention were used to manipulate stress mindset and control over heart rate variability (HRV); a serious game called "Stressjam," and a reflection tool called "Brainjam." Questionnaires for stress mindset and SA and video analysis for performance were used. A total of three matches were assessed. Results: The "Stressjam" intervention resulted in significant differences in stress mindset throughout the intervention [F(1,5) = 7.357, P = 0.008]. Subsequently, multilevel analysis showed a positive, strong, and significant correlation between stress mindset, manipulated through "Stressjam" and SA [r(14) = 0.69, P = 0.014]. A correlation of practical interest, given the confidence intervals, was found between stress mindset, manipulated through "Stressjam," and performance. Conclusion: Cognitive variables, such as stress-coping, correlate significantly with SA in football. A correlation of practical interest was found between stress-coping and performance. Further research is needed to study the relationship between stress-coping and performance in football.

Changing Stress Mindset Through Stressjam: A Virtual Reality Game Using Biofeedback

Objective: A range of recent studies suggest that overall mindset about stress is related to health, performance, and well-being. Therefore, an exploratory study was conducted to examine whether virtual reality (VR) with real-time biofeedback would have potential in training people in an engaging way to develop a new stress-is-enhancing mindset.

Materials and Methods: The specific application to improve people's stress mindset that was used in this study is Stressjam. The application was tested on its attractiveness by 111 healthy participants, specifically on their personal involvement through the Personal Involvement Inventory and its usability through the System Usability Scale. In addition to the healthy participants, a group of 64 patients dealing with stress used Stressjam for at least three sessions. The Stress Mindset Measure was used to assess the stress mindset of both groups, at baseline and after finishing their session(s).

Results: Stressjam appears to be an application that is user friendly with good user involvement. The healthy participants and the patient sample both had a more positive stress mindset after using the application than at baseline, t(111) = 4.38, P < 0.001, and F(1,63) = 66.57, P < 0.001, respectively.

Conclusion: The results of this study give some indications that using VR with biofeedback might be useful in working toward a more positive stress mindset. As such, further research into applications such as Stressjam is warranted.