Investigation of the effect of pre-exit nonverbal behaviors of short distance athletes

Various internal states of individuals in daily life can be measured through scales, but these studies may be limited in the field. In addition, many disciplines conduct research to examine human behavior, but these researches are limited like scale studies because they are in the laboratory environment and in front of the computer. The use of behavior analysis programs can provide the opportunity to collect data from the athletes just before or during the competition, without being affected by all these limitations. In athletics, the athlete is expected to get their concentration before the start. In addition, the sprinter needs to control his negative emotions. Although athletes express themselves verbally, their body language can give important clues about their "real" internal states. In this direction, it is important to analyze the nonverbal behaviors of the athletes before the start because it does not contain the limitations of many other methods and can be used on the field. In line with this importance, the aim of this study is to analyze the pre-start nonverbal behaviors of the athletes in the 60 meter sprint branch of athletics by coding them with the BAP (Body Action Posture Coding System) coding system and in addition, to examine the effect on the performance of the athletes. The Mann–Whitney U test was used to determine the similarities and differences between the competition performances of the research group, which was divided into two groups according to the "presence and absence" status of the behavioral variables. It has been observed that the athletes who perform the "turning the head to the left" movement exhibit lower performance. It has been determined that those who do the "pushing the chest forward" movement have higher performance than those who do not. When the relationships between the competition performances of the research group and the frequencies of the behavioral variables were examined, a statistically significant, positive and low-level (rho=0.32) relationship was found between movement frequency of "turn head to the left" and the performance. On the other hand, negative and low-level significant relationships (p<0.05) were found between the variables of "pushing the chest forward, keeping the left hand on the waist or hips, standing on the right arm at the side, standing on the right arm in front" and competition performance. It has been observed that the movements of "pushing the chest forward" (R2=0.09) and "standing right arm at the side" (R2=0.10) are the variables that affect the competition performance the most. As a result, with this thesis study, it has been revealed that some nonverbal behaviors of the athletes, regardless of whether they are voluntary or involuntary, affect their performance. The situation that nonverbal behaviors can give clues about the mental state of the athlete as well as give clues about the result of the competition has been opened to discussion with this study.