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Triplett's Sports Psychology

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Whereas Triplett's work represented the first sport psychology research study in North
America, the first individual to do systematic sport psychology analysis was Coleman R.
Griffith, a doctoral student also at the University of Illinois (Cox et al., 1993). In the 1920s,
Griffith began to apply laboratory findings to real-life sports situations and went into the field to make observations and interview athletes. In addition, between 1921 and 1931, Griffith published 25 articles on topics such as learning, personality, psychomotor skills, reaction times, and flexibility (Gould & Pick, 1995). In 1923, the University of Illinois hired him to help athletes improve their performance. Later, he worked as a psychologist for basketball and football teams, such as the Chicago Cubs, to help them improve their performance through
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He also published the first two books on the topic titled Psychology of Coaching (1926) and Psychology and Athletics (1928)
(Gould & Pick, 1995). For being the first person who systematically conducted research in sport psychology and for his extensive work including lessons, articles, and books, he is considered the father of sport psychology in North America (Williams & Straub, 1998).
Isolated Sport Psychology Work: 1930-1960
Although Griffith is considered to be the father of sport psychology in North America, his work did not lead to the emergence of sport psychology because he did not have immediate followers who continued his work. In fact, during the period between 1930 and 1960, sustained
SPORT PSYCHOLOGY 6 programs were nonexistent and only some sporadic research was done (Williams & Straub,
1998). In 1931, Walter Miles, B. C. Graves, and Glenn Warner, a professor, graduate student, and football coach, respectively, at Stanford University, studied reaction times of football players. Miles created a chronoscope to simultaneously time the reaction times of

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