Paradoxical Perfromance Flashcards
PARADOXICAL PERFORMANCE
“Athletes who are usually able to perform the
targeted movement suddenly no longer
succeed in doing so”
Choking, slumps and blocks
Three Types of Paradoxical Performances
Choking
Slumps
Blocks
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”
The mechanisms of choking
Choking
- Drive
-Attention
Drive Theories
Basic Premise:
“Performance can be
affected detrimentally by an increased
level of arousal/drive, produced by the
desire to perform well under pressure.
”
Drive Theories
Inverted U
Inverted U-Hypothesis: As physiological Arousal increases, performance improves but only up to a certain point, after which performance will decline
Drive Theories
Dominant Response Theory
Pressure leads athletes to
produce their dominant
response.
↑ expertise = ↑performance
under pressure
↓ expertise = ↓ performance under pressure
Drive Theories
CUSP
Cognitive anxiety is what drives this theory, it does a better job because of this cognitive element
A catastrophic drop in
performance will occur when levels of cognitive anxiety and physiological arousal are both high
Drive Theory: Takeaways
Plausible but not
comprehensive
Don’t work in all cases
Don’t explain the ‘why’
Drive theory is not comprehensive and do not work in all places, it does not explain what performance goes down, why do some people choke in some situations and others do not
Attention
Distraction Theory (Basic Premise)
Pressure-induced anxiety will occupy the athlete’s working memory and
create a dual-task condition in which anxiety-
related thoughts are processed alongside
information required for skill execution
Attention
Limitation to working memory
Reading while listening to music with lyrics
Counting while someone yells out random numbers
Stroop test
- A test that is designed to to stress you out, a word has a color, you need to say the the word, that had ps the color
Attention
Self-focus theory (Basic Premise)
propose that performance
anxiety increases an athlete’s level of self-
consciousness, which will cause them to focus
their attention inwardly, consciously monitor
and/or control their skill execution, and choke
as a result
Attention
Stages of learning
Thinking a lot
“explicit rule-based
declarative knowledge”
—(automatization)—>
Thinking a little
“implicit, procedural
knowledge”
——(Pressure)—-> Back to the top
Distraction Theories
Self-focus Theories
Distraction Theories: Attention overload
Self-focus Theories: Pressure increases self-
consciousness & exerting control
Person, Task, Environment
Venn diagram
TASK: What is the person actually doing
ENVIRONMENT: Audience
PERSON: High anxiety, perfectionism
