The role of mental toughness in acquisition and retention of a sports skill

The present study aims to investigate the role of mental toughness in acquisition and retention of a sports skill. The participants consisted of male undergraduate students (n=26, Age=20.80±1.87) who had no experience of basketball training. The subjects were homogenized into two groups of low and high mental toughness based on the scores they obtained on Mental Toughness Questionnaire-48 (MTQ-48) and their pretest scores of basketball passing skill (n1=n2=13). Participants practiced basketball passing skill with verbal feedback in 15 sessions held every alternate day. The retention test was administered one week after the last training session. During the retention test, participants did not receive any augmented feedback on how to do the assigned task. Repeated measures and one-way ANOVA were run to analyze the data. The level of significance was set at α=0.05 in all statistical tests. The results showed that participants in two groups had a significant progress in acquisition the basketball passing task. However, the subjects with high mental toughness outperformed the low-mental-toughness subjects in both acquisition and retention. The present findings suggest that mental toughness, as a personal factor, may play a crucial role in acquisition and retention of skills