Concentration

• Concentration

  The persons ability to exert deliberate mental effort on what is most important in a given situation.
• Action and State Orientation in Sport

  Scoring key: 

  Items 1-3 preoccupation subscale (failure related)

  Items 4-6 hesitation subscale (decision related)

  Items 7-9 volatility subscale (performance related)
• Irrelevant External Stimuli

  • Visual Information
  • Auditory Information
  • Gamesmanship, behaviours of others
  • Weather, playing conditions
• Irrelevant Internal Stimuli

  • Attending to past events
  • Attending to future events
  • Over analysis of body mechanics
  • Fatigue
  • Inadequate motivation
  • Choking under pressure
• Principles of effective concentration (Moran 2004)

  • Focused mind = Deliberate mental effort and intentionality
  • Conscious focus on one thought at a time
  • Ability to divide their attention between two or more concurrent actions
  • Peak performance states no difference between thinking and doing
  • Lose concentration when attention goes to events in the past/future and cues irrelevant to the task
  • Anxiety leads to focus on inappropriate cues and too much focus on conscious control
• Attentional Focus, Attentional Style, Attentional Flexibility (Nideffer, 1976)

  Width of Attention - Broad and Narrow

  Direction of attention - External and Internal

  
• Attentional Styles in football

  • Broad-external: Midfielder scanning the pitch before passing the ball
  • Broad-internal: Trying to internalise a new game plan at half time 
  • Narrow-external: Goalkeeper focusing on the ball coming into penalty area
  • Narrow-internal: Imagery use, rehearsing movements  
• Choking as an attentional Problem

  Conditions Leading to choking

  • Important Competition
  • Critical plays in a competition
  • Evaluation

  Attentional Changes

  • Internal Focus
  • Narrow Focus
  • Reduced flexibility

  Physical Changes

  • Increased muscle tension
  • Increased Breathing Rate
  • Increased Heart Rate

  Performance Impairment

  • Timing and coordination breakdown
  • Muscle tightness and fatigue
  • Rushing
  • Inability to attend to task-relevant cues

  A) 1. Important Competition 2. Critical plays in a competi

  
• Choking and Overanalysing Body Mechanics

  Conscious processing hypothesis: choking occurs when skilled performers focus too much on their conscious attention to the task.

  According to this hypothesis, performance decreases only with increased focus on several task relevant cues
• The Difference between the brain in beta (normal state) and in transient hypofrontality (flow state)

  The Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain that needs to be shut off during sports performance allowing all attention to go to the part we want to use without censorship.

  
• Different Aspects of Attention

  • Attentional Alertness

  Alertness and arousal

  Vigilance (Optimal sensitivity to stimuli and reponse readiness)

  • Attentional Selectivity

  Process of selective attention, zooming in on task relevant info, Ignoring distractions

  • Attentional Capacity

  Limited capacity or resource

  Mental workload

  Limitations in information processing, automaticity
• Attentional Problems (Learning)

  • Cognitive stage

  High level of cognitive effort and conscious though of procedural steps, significant amount of instruction needed to execute skills

  • Associate stage

  Skill refinement stage, some cognitive and conscious thought required for skill execution

  • Autonomous Stage

  Highly-automatic skill execution, very little conscious though on procedural steps, freedom to direct attention elsewhere
• The Stroop effect - concentration

  People take longer at naming a colour when they are distracted by another feature of the stimulus. Selective Attention - Naming colours require more attention than reading words.

  Two competing neural pathways interfere with each other 

  Speed of processing - Words are read faster than colours are named, More automatic process interferes with less automatic process
• Improving concentration on site

  • Use simulations in practice (practice with distractions present)
  • Use cue words to focus (instructional and motivational words).
  • Employ nonjudgmental thinking.
  • Establish routines (before or during the event).
  • Develop competition plans
  • Practice eye movements / quiet eye
  • Overlearn skills