12. Attentional control
- Created by: Amy Parkinson
- Created on: 19-04-15 15:40
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- Attentional control
- Relates to the extent to which a performer can focus awareness onto the environmental stimuli that are most relevant
- Focusing this awareness onto relevant stimuli involves concentration
- The capacity to maintain attentional focus until the skill has been complete indicates the length of the attention span
- Selective attention can be directed by external factors such as stimulus intensity and the presence of warning cues
- The most important determinants of attention here are cognition and arousal
- Cognition is the mental processes involved in acquiring knowledge, learning and understanding
- Arousal is a level of excitement or activation that is generated by the CNS
- Inverted U theory
- Predicts the influence of arousal on the performance of a motor skill
- Predicts that as arousal increases so does the quality of performance of motor skills
- This performance increase only occurs up to a point of otimal arousal
- After the point of optimal arousal, the quality of performance begins to decrease
- Cue utilisation hypothesis
- When arousal is low, the perceptual field of the performer widens excessively and access is given to a broad range of environmental irrelevant cues
- Decision making is impeded by an overload of stimuli and therefore, the quality of performance is low
- As arousal increases up to a point, the perceptual field will narrow. This allows attention to be given to the most relevant and important cues. At this point, selective attention is fully operational
- The capacity to focus selectively is termed cue utilisation
- If arousal increases above the optimal threshold, perceptual focus narrows excessively. This causes relevant data to be missed as the information processing system becomes restricted
- Under these conditions, the performer starts to panic. When arousal becomes extremely high, they will experience a total disorientation of their senses (hypervigilence)
- Cue utilisation does not make clear how to performer can adjust the width and direction of attention
- Attentional control
- NIDEFFER
- He presented a model of attentional styles which focuses on 2 dimenions
- 1. width of attention (broad and narrow focus)
- 2. direction of attention (external and internal focus)
- Width of attention
- Broad attention takes in a great deal of information
- Narrow attention indicated focus which is specific to only a small number of stimuli
- Direction of attention
- An external focus is an outward projection onto an environmental stimulus
- An internal focus indicates that the performer's attention has been directed inwards and onto the psychological state
- The model of attentional control predicts that attention has many effects on individual sports performance
- External focus like that on the position of opposition can help as a distraction from physical pain or fatigue
- Novice performers tend to use external focus to dissociate from unpleasant physical sensation
- Internal focus directs attention onto the psychological and physiological condition
- Expert performers often use internal focus as it helps to maximise concentration and control anxiety by providing feedback
- Optimal performance can only be achieved if the performer has the ability to adopt the attention style that matches the attentional demands of the situation
- The correct attention style is essential at all times
- Effective attention will prevent negative feelings and enable the performer to make positive attributions during performance
- A good performer can draw upon the full range of attention styles and this shows a link between cue utilisation and attentional control
- Optimal arousal and cue utilisation help a performer to shift their attention style to match the attentional demands of the situation
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