Title:
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Focus of attention : execution of form, anxious performance and consideration in imagery application
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In teaching and coaching environments we are continuously instructing or
guiding athletes in order to enhance their performance. The content of these
instructions often direct the athlete’s attention to particular aspects of either their
movements or the outcomes of the to-be-performed skill. It is therefore particularly
important that we are able to discern between the efficaciousness of instructions that
lead either to attention being directed to movement production or to movement
outcome. Although the more prominent literature that investigates the above is
relatively recent, work actually dates back to as early as the 19th Century. Here
James (1890) suggested that for successful performance in reaching and grasping
tasks, attention should be directed to movement outcome as opposed to movement
production.
Since then Wulf has been a proponent in the development of research in this
area, namely focus of attention (FOA) (for a review see Wulf, 2007a). Her work has
been pivotal in developing definitions of both internal and external foci of attention
and in offering hypotheses for the efficaciousness of each (i.e., the Constrained
Action Hypothesis [CAH] [Wulf, McNevin & Shea, 2001]). Wulf defines the
adoption of an internal FOA as occurring when participants focus on their body
movements during performance. For example, the snapping motion of the wrist in
basketball during the free throw action. On the other hand, external FOA is defined
as attention that is directed towards the movement effects of action e.g., the
trajectory of the ball during the free throw action. The CAH suggests that attending
to movements can interfere with normally automatic response programming and disrupt performance, whereas attending to the outcome of action promotes
movement automaticity and serves to enhance performance. Support for this
suggestion has been shown across a variety of sporting domains and populations (for
a review see Wulf, 2007a).
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