engleski

Music performance anxiety in Croatian students

Performance anxiety is a frequent and very distressing experience for professional musicians and music students. As the professional development starts early among musicians, younger samples are of special interest. The present study explored performance anxiety in a sample of 43 students (age 16&#8211; 28) who attended Croatian music school in Rijeka. We used Croatian version of Music Performance Anxiety Inventory for Adolescents (MPAI-A ; Osborne & Kenny, 2005) that was designed to assess somatic, cognitive and behavioral components of performance anxiety. Factor analysis of our data identified one reliable factor (Cronbach&#8217; s alpha 0.85). Results showed a high incidence of performance anxiety in our sample. About 14% of the students express high levels of anxiety report that it has in some way negatively affected their performance. Even if there is a slight tendency of girls experiencing higher performance anxiety than boys, we found no significant sex and age differences. Less anxious students like to perform more often and they tend to have somebody in their family playing music. The more often students perform, the less anxiety they express (r= -0.39 ; p<.01). This result confirms the importance of exposure in preventing and treating music performance anxiety. The scale is used for identification of students at risk for performance anxiety and in evaluation of the brief group cognitive-behavioural treatment for students that involve cognitive interventions (identification and modification of dysfunctional thoughts and beliefs) and behavioural interventions (exposure, deep breathing relaxation, external focus). In future research we plan to assess the relationship of music performance anxiety with specific aspects of social anxiety. We hypothesize that performance anxiety will be more related to measures of social phobia (fear that a person is observed and evaluated by others), than with social anxiety in social interaction.

music performance anxiety; students; cognitive-behavioural treatment

Baze u kojima se citira Pcicoterapia Cognitiva e Comportamentale su: EMBASE, Psychological abstracts, PsycSCAN: Behavior Analiysis & Therapy, PsycINFO, PsycLIT, ClinPSYC