Linking Imagery Perspective and Imagery Speed to Athletes’ Imagery Content

This study investigated how structural elements of sport imagery—perspective (first-person perspective [1PP] vs. third-person perspective [3PP]) and temporal speed (real, slow, fast)—are associated with athletes’ imagery ability across five content domains: skill, strategy, goal, affect, and mastery. Participants were 378 collegiate athletes recruited in Japan. A single integrated path model, in which 1PP and 3PP were entered simultaneously as correlated predictors, was used to examine how each perspective is associated with imagery ability directly and through indirect pathways involving speed, with significance based on bias-corrected bootstrap confidence intervals. Imagery perspective was significantly associated with the imagery speeds, apart from the 1PP–fast pacing link, and both perspectives showed significant total associations with the content domains, with the exception of the borderline 3PP–skill association. The internal viewpoint (1PP) was associated with imagery content primarily through direct pathways, most clearly for goal, skill, and affect, whereas the external viewpoint (3PP) was directly associated only with affect and mastery and was linked to cognitive and self-regulatory content largely through imagery speed—slowed pacing for skill and fast pacing for strategy and mastery. The two perspectives differed only modestly, and at a trend level, in their direct links to goal and skill imagery. These findings underscore the differentiated roles of perspective and speed in imagery processing and highlight the value of aligning perspective–speed configurations with specific imagery content in sport.