Two experiments were conducted to investigate whether mental
practice can serve as an eff ective intervention strategy for decreasing interference
eff ects of distracting noise at the time of executing open (badminton service return)
and closed (badminton serve) skills. In Experiment 1, 44 male students participated
and in Experiment 2, 36 students participated. In both experiments, students were
randomly assigned to one of three groups: (a) mental practice, (b) mental practice
plus noise distraction (MPD), and (c) control. All participants performed 40 trials in
the acquisition phase and 20 trials in the retention phase. Absolute error and adjusted
variable error were recorded to measure performance. Experiment 1 showed that for
a closed skill, the MPD group served with greater accuracy than did the control
group in both acquisition and retention phases. Experiment 2 showed that for the
open skill, the MP group performed with less error than did the control group, but
only in the acquisition trials. Results indicate that mental practice may function to
block out noise disturbances and that mental practice may work diff erently with
diff erent skill sets.