L6A: Attention II Flashcards
Probe RT
Start and End
B & E
What are the 3 features of attention
relevant to performing actions?
-
Limited & selective: limited capacity causes selective
attention (measured with secondary tasks) -
Intentional or Incidental
– Intentional: voluntary (conscious/controlled)
– Incidental: involuntary (nonconscious/automatic) -
Directionally focused:
– Internal (body-focused)
– External (environment/effects’ focused)
What does it mean for attention to be Intentional?
Consciously choose to attend to
information & inhibit attention to others
Eg. Intentionally focus on material for your KIN
211 Midterm exam and tune out distractions
What does it mean for attention to be Incidental?
Involuntarily shift attention in response to an unexpected external stimulus
Eg. Unintentionally focus attention to a fire
alarm that sounds while studying for midterm
What is Controlled processing?
- Intentional / volitional / conscious processing
- Slow
- Attention demanding
- Serial processing… process one thing at a time & in order.
What is Automatic processing?
- Unintentional / involuntary / nonconscious processing
- Fast
- Not Attention demanding
- Parallel processing… do more than one thing at once.
More of a continuum *Never really become fully “automatic”
What is the benefit of Developing automaticity?
- Developing automaticity in a task allows it to be performed without disruption/interference
- Automaticity is developed through lots of practice
- After mastering dribbling skills; attention is free to now monitor players in the environment, make decisions…etc
Directional Focus
What is INTERNAL Focus?
Internal = Directed toward performer’s own body movements.
- Associated with focus of novices
- Associated with controlled processing
- In learning of new skills, internal focus instructions are worse than external focus instructions
- Related to ‘choking’ under pressure in experts
– normally good performance suffers when re-focus internally
What is EXTERNAL Focus?
External = Directed toward Effects movements have on environment (outcomes).
- Associated with focus of experts
- Associated with automatic processing
- In learning of new skills, external focus instructions are better than internal focus instructions
- More than just distraction
- focusing on task relevant effects (holistic focus)on factors outside the body and movement effects
e.g., Focus on the racquet (the swing path), the ball (height/ spin), or where to land the ball (target area) “slice through the ball”
What happens to focus during “Choking under pressure”?
Choking under pressure: thought to be in part a direction-of-attention issue
Occurs when performers change normal routine, attention shifts from external to internal focus.
Otherwise good performance goes wrong.
Assume we knew how fast experts & novices could dribble round cones (baseline/control).
What method would we then use to measure attention demands of dribbling?
Secondary Task
- Who would show more “cost”/interference (biggest difference from control), from an internal focus to their foot; experts or novices?
- Who would show more “cost”/interference, from monitoring what the experimenter/coach was saying; experts or novices?
a) qn1 = Experts, qn2 = Novices
b) qn1 = Novices, qn2 = Experts
c) qn1 = Novices, qn2 = Novices
d) qn1 = Experts, qn2 = Experts
A
