concentration & attention

Question 1

according to Moran (2004) what is the defenition of attention?

Answer 1

“A person’s ability to exert deliberate mental effort on what is most important in any given situation”

Question 2

what are the 4 key characteristics of attention?

Answer 2

Selective Attention
Maintaining Alertness/Attention
Situational Awareness
Shifting Attention

Question 3

what is the defining characteristic of selective attention?

Answer 3

• selectign where to put attention
• focusing on relevant environmental cues
• disregard irrelenat cues
• internal (thoughts, feelings, experiences
• external= lights, sounds, etc.

Question 4

what is the defining characteristic of attention?

Answer 4

• Maintaining attention / concentration / focus
• Over a long period of time
• Being able to switch it on and off and be alert to cues
• Regaining concentration
• Finite resource- will run out
• Tiring!

Question 5

what is the defning characteristic of shifting attention?

Answer 5

• Shifting the scope and focus of attention
  ○ Narrow / Broad
  ○ Internal / External
• Like a camera lens, we can zoom in and out

Question 6

what is the information processing approach?

Answer 6

• the theoretical lense we use to understand attention and conentration in sport
• alligns with cognitive psychology
• considers human thinking as a series of steps- like a computer processor

Question 7

what were the previous ideas of the information processing approach?

Answer 7

• Previous ideas= attention was a single channel in the brain
• Developed to being a choice on where individuals place their attention (selective attention)
• Having situation awareness
• Now the idea that attention has multiple tools (can run parallel channels at the same time)
• Much more multifaceted.

Question 8

what are the 3 processes of attention?

Answer 8

1. Attentional selectivity
2. Attentional capacity
3. Attentional alertness
   All happening at the same time

Question 9

what is selectivity?

Answer 9

• attentional selectivity
• spotlight sed to focus on what is most importnat
• it may be difficult to pinpoint the spotlight (focus on aspects that are too broad)
• causes distractions
• divides attention

Question 10

what is attentional capacity?

Answer 10

• Attention is limited – it’s a finite resource
• To mitigate this, we have two types of attentional processing:
  ○ Controlled - uses a lot more of our attentional resources
  ○ Automatic - have more attention here (not needing to consciously put it into the skill acquisition)
  Conscious control vs automatic control

Question 11

what is attentional alertness?

Answer 11

• Connected to our levels of emotional arousal
• Too much emotion = narrow field of attention
• Cant focus on all relevant cues
• Missing cues in other areas
• E.g.: driving a car- if something diverts your attention (anger due to being cut off) may prevent us missing something in the environment (heightened emotions).

Question 12

what is attentional control theory?

Answer 12

• Eysenck et al. (2007)
• Top down (goal-directed) processing
• Having an aim to achieve- directed attention
• Thoughts, experiences and knowledge
• What is happening in the mind is controlling the outcome
• Bottom-up (stimulus-driven) processing
• Something from our senses triggers where we put our attention.
• Anxiety impairs goal-directed attentional system, so influenced more by stimulus-driven system
• Anxiety makes goal-directed processing more difficult- our senses take more of a control on where our attention is placed.
• Pay more attention to threatening stimuli (physical or emotional)

Question 13

what did Wilson et al (2009) study?

Answer 13

• Low and high-threat (could win money and was a crowed) penalty kicks
• Measured how many gaze fixations footballers made to goalkeeper and goal- area (i.e., threatening stimuli)
• What are they looking at/ what are they focusing on- diverting attention
• They found, in the high-threat group, footballers would fixate faster, more often, and for longer on the goalkeeper (i.e., the threat)- not on where they wanted to put the ball
• Decreased performance and shots landed within goalies reach
• More centralised kicks
  Example of attentional control theory= how top-down and bottom-up attentional processing work.

Question 14

what is attentional focus?

Answer 14

• Explores where we put our attention.
• How do athletes only focus on relevant cues and stimuli?
• One theory (Nideffer, 1976) suggests its along two dimensions:
• Width (broad vs. narrow)
  Direction (internal vs. external)

Question 15

what is attentional focus (width)?

Answer 15

• Width relates to broad or narrow focus of attention
  ○ Broad focus is when athletes are aware of different stimuli at once
  § Broad field of attention- lots of cues are attended to.
  ○ Narrow focus is when athletes can exclude irrelevant information
  Focus on only important aspects of attention

Question 16

what is attentional focus (direction)?

Answer 16

• Direction refers to the target of an individual’s attention
  ○ External direction relates to an athlete focusing on stimuli external to them
  § The crowd, coach, other players, lights etc.
  ○ Internal direction relates to concentration on internal factors
  § In terms of thoughts, feelings, experiences, internal voice, goals set for ourselves
• Can be on bodily movements (how our body feels)

Question 17

what are the key points of attentional focus?

Answer 17

• Useful to use as a sport psychologist with clients
  ○ Can easily visualise the concept of attention
  ○ Can map them onto the cross
• Helps to bring awareness to attention
  ○ Where, when, who…
  § Where is attention during competition?
  Can highlight attentional issues

Question 18

what are distractions?

Answer 18

• Internal distractions
  ○ Choking under pressure- complex
• External distractions
  ○ Visual
  ○ Auditory
• What cues are going to distract us (5 senses)
  Break up distractions as cues: what cue is it hitting for us (auditory and visual)

Question 19

what is choking under pressure?

Answer 19

• Can be hard to define despite feeling ‘intuitive’
  ○ Attentional process
• Typically characterised by a decrease in performance
• However, poor performance does not necessarily equal choking
  ○ Process that leads to impaired performance when good performance is the norm.- May be choking.

Question 20

what is the choking process (Hill et al, 2010; Weinberg & Gould, 2024).

Answer 20

• Conditions that lead to choking:
  ○ Internal (direction)
  ○ E.g.: evaluation by others/ important competition
• Physical changes
  ○ In the body:
  § Increase in muscle tension
  § Increase in breathing rate
  § Heart rate will increase
  § Easily tip past optimal level of arousal
  § Strong link to “fight or flight” responses
• Attentional changes:
  ○ Narrow focus
  § Cant focus on lot of cues at once
  ○ Reduced flexibility in attention
  ○ Focus more internally on the individual
• Leads to performance impairment:
  ○ Coordination breakdown due to physical changes
  § Quicker fatigue due to increased focus.
• Focus too much on internal movements: lose fluidity (choking is opposite to fluidity)
• Due to distractions
  ○ Attentional capacity is being used up somewhere else.

Question 21

how do we impove attention?

Answer 21

self-talk= develop scripts/ cue words to refocus attention
midfulness= practice of being mindful and non judgemental to our innermost thoughts and feelings
preperfromance routines= routine that is used before performances, form of mental preparation to get mind in routine of competition, a habit that is associated with a good quality performance.