sports and cognition 3

• Sporting performance, pressure and cognition

  Attentional control theory: Sport
• Lee Trevino: 'Pressure is playing for ten dollars when you don't have a dime in your pocket.'
• Factors that increase the importance of performing well

  • Threats on ego in competitive sports
  • Monetary incentives
• Pressure produces


  • Systemic stress response influencing endocrine, cardiovascular and muscular systems
  • Effects on cognitive functioning
  • Mediating role of cognitive biases on pressure-performance relations
  • Effects of cognitive biases on momentary state anxiety and attentional control
• Choking


  • When inferior performance happens despite effort and incentives to do well
  • When superior performance is achievable but choked by anxiety under perceived pressure
• Choking


  An acute and considerable decrease in skill execution and performance when self-expected standards are normally achievable, which is the result of increased anxiety under perceived pressure
• fMRI study


  • Negative correlation between frontal-motor functional connectivity and choking
  • Suggest choking is due to inadequate executive/frontal control resources.
• Clutch performance


  Incremental/ superior performance under pressure circumstances
• Although most studies look at negative effects of pressure some have looked at positive effects.
• Typical experimental studies on Pressure-Performance Relations

  1. Low Pressure (Control) - Baseline measures (Pre-competition state anxiety)

  2. Independent Variable (incentives & evaluative threat)

  3. High Pressure (Experimental) - Performance measures
• The assumption has been that performance is worse in high pressure condition
• Increased pressure leads to increased anxiety
• Pressure is constant
• There is a uni-directional link between pressure and performance
• Expert performance is 'automatic'
• Proceduralised


  Skill representation does not require the same degree of attention and control as that at lower levels of practice.
• Theoretical Frameworks


  • Drive theories
  • Attentional theories
• Theoretical explanations for choking

  • Arousal/ Drive Theories
  • Attentional Theories
• Self-focus theories of choking

  • Pressure situation increase anxiety and self-consciousness about performing successfully
  • This increases the attention paid to skill processes and their step-by-step control
  • Performance disruption then occurs due to the effortful allocation of attention to previously automated processes
• Introducing a concurrent attentionally demanding task should impair novice performance.
• Instructions directing participants to attend to aspects of skilled performance outside of conscious awareness of skilled performers should impair expert performance more than novice performance.
• Evidence of expert 'skill focus' under pressure in real world settings is not robust.
• Self focus theory/ weaknesses


  • Assumes that expert performance is fully automatic(not true because experts do have to think about the actions they take in certain situations)
  • There is intra-subject variability (e.g. final posture, movement components)
  • Strategic deployment of attention
  • Assumes that self focus is always detrimental
• Attentional Control Theory (ACT)

  • ACT distinguishes between two variables: Performance effectiveness (quality of performance) and Processing efficiency (the r/ship between performance effectiveness and the resources used to achieve that performance level)
  • Its reduced by task irrelevant thoughts (worries, performance concerns)
  • The prediction is that anxiety impairs processing efficiency more than performance effectiveness
• Attentional Control Theory (ACT)

  • The Goal-directed attentional system (Top down control of attention, involves the PFC)
  • Stimulus driven attentional system (Bottom-up control of attention – detection of behaviourally relevant sensory events)
  • Anxiety increases the influence of the stimulus-driven system and reduces that of the top-down system
  • Increases distractibility from task-irrelevant stimuli.
• Act also assumes that negative effects of anxiety on processing efficiency are mediated by the working memory system.


  • Especially the central executive (top-down attentional system)
  • Inhibition (resistance to distractibility) and shifting (attentional allocation) relate well to ACT.
• Attentional Control Theory: Sport (ACTS)

  • Addresses how pressure influences the individual's levels of anxiety and motivation (as in ACT)
  • And how these anxiety and motivation levels then influence performance
  • Feedback loops.
• Anxiety impairs processing efficiency more than performance effectiveness
• Anxiety reduces the efficiency of inhibition (Negative attentional control)
• Anxiety reduces the efficiency of shifting (Positive attentional control)
• Anxiety reduces the efficiency of shifting


  Experts have superior attentional control
• Processing efficiency vs performance effectiveness

  Anxiety affects processing efficiency more than performance effectiveness (e.g., when relating performance effectiveness to self-reported effort)
• Quiet eye

  • The final fixation on a location that is within 3 degrees of visual angle for a minimum of 100ms
  • Requires within task attentional control (shifting) as well as resistance to distraction (inhibition)
  • Positive r/ship between the duration of quiet eye and success (e.g., in darts, archery)
• How is ACTS different from ACT

  • ACTS is more explicit than ACT about the initial determinants of anxiety
  • the role of feedback loops based on performance failure and errors;
  • the role of motivation in moderating the deployment of effort or processing resources;
  • the sporadic nature of attentional disruptions in trained sporting performers.
• Determinants of Anxiety


  • Whether increased pressure leads to heightened anxiety depends on how cognitive biases alter the perceived probability and cost of poor performance.
  • Attentional biases
  • Interpretive biases (Threat)
  • This relationship is in turn influenced by fluctuations in the individual sportsperson's tendency to engage in performance monitoring.
• Error monitoring


  • Increased error monitoring increases anxiety
  • Anxiety increases biases
  • Failure illustrates the bi-directional nature of the pressure –performance relationship
  • Adverse effects of failure on cognitive and motor performance are greater among individuals with anxious personalities
• Perceived costs and p. of failure

  • Perceived probability and costs of future undesirable outcomes influences anxiety
  • Role of appraisals
  • Changes in perception of costs and p. of failure
• Role of motivation and Effort

  • High confidence is associated with proactive control (goal directed attention)
  • Low confidence is associated with reactive control (stimulus driven attention)
• Attentional control disruption are sporadic
• Anxiety increases performance variability