Chapter 7 Concentration: Focus Under Pressure By Clark Perry

1. Chapter 7 Concentration: Focus Under Pressure By Clark Perry

2. Overview • From the mass of information our senses are bombarded with, how do we filter out what is vital to success from what is useless? • Understanding attention • Attention as • alertness, • a limited capacity, and • selectivity. • Enhancing attention for competition

3. Cues • At any given time, an athlete can focus on some of a very large number of stimuli. • Cues are the stimuli that guide attention, thought, and action. They can be • relevant (helpful to performance), • irrelevant (unhelpful to performance), or • noxious (harmful to performance).

4. The Attentional System

5. In the Zone • Aidan Moran called the attentional system the bridge between perception, cognition, and action. • Attention is a skill that can be developed through appropriate practice and instruction. • Athletes call the state they are in when they are totally focused the zone. Mastering the skill of being able to focus on relevant cues under pressure is a characteristic of elite athletes.

6. Key Components of Attentional Systems • Selectivity: focused concentration • Time-sharing: coordination of skilled behavior • Regulation of alertness: arousal control

7. Three Uses of the Term Attention • Alertness • Capacity • Selectivity (Posner & Boies, 1971; Abernethy, 2001.)

8. Attention As Alertness • Alertness depends on the athlete’s emotional state. • Anxiety, arousal, and visual attention are related (Janelle, 2002). • As anxiety increases, it can lead to • Attentional narrowing • Controlled processing • Inefficiencies in attentional allocation • Distraction by irrelevant or threatening cues

9. Attentional Narrowing • Width or breadth of attention is narrowed. • Important cues are missed. • Mistakes are made; attention may be directed to errors. A vicious cycle occurs.

10. Controlled Processing • Choking under pressure (Lewis & Linder, 1997). • Once a task becomes automated, it no longer requires conscious attention. • But as pressure increases, attention can shift from relevant cues to focus on control of performance. We say “choking” occurs.

11. Inefficiency of Attentional Allocation • High-level performers are exceptionally efficient at allocating attention. • As anxiety increases, response times to relevant cues increase. (continued)

12. Inefficiency of Attentional Allocation (cont) • It may be possible to train athletes to enhance visual control to create more appropriate responses to attentional cues (e.g., “quiet eye”) (Vickers, n.d.).

13. Distraction • Anxiety can lead athletes to perceive cues as threatening and to focus on irrelevant cues. • Optimal level of arousal will help prevent distraction.

14. Attention As a Limited Capacity • Abernethy argues that an athlete’s processing capacity is fixed, but the athlete may choose to apportion it to different tasks. • Difficult tasks processed together have cumulative processing requirements. • When requirements exceed capacity, processing is incomplete or delayed.

15. Attention As Selectivity • Abernethy’s searchlight metaphor for attention involves three common errors: • Beam is too broad. Attention is not focused on essential elements for success of task. • Beam points in wrong direction. Attention is distracted by irrelevant information (example of golf). • Beam is too narrow or moves too slowly. Attention is not divided effectively among all necessary stimuli.

16. Distractions • External distractions: • Noise • Gamesmanship • Weather • Playing conditions • Visual distractions • Open sports • Closed sports • Internal distractions: • Thoughts • Fears

17. Enhancing Attention for Competition • Research by Gabrielle Wulf and colleagues. • Performance was increased on tasks by focusing attention on the effects of the action. • Should athlete think about own movements or the movement of the racket head, club, or other equipment? • Focusing on immediate effects is more advantageous than focusing on resultant effects (flight of ball or where ball lands).

18. Flow and Attention • Csikszentmihalyi argues that we don’t help people get into flow by trying to create it. • Flow happens as a result of creating an environment that matches the skills of the athlete with the challenges of the task. • For focused concentration, athletes need skills, perceptual awareness, self-confidence, and emotional control.