Practice In Skill Acquisition Part 2 Flashcards
How do we study attention?
Simply instruct then to attend to something in particular (very uncontrolled, how do you know they did it?)
Dual task paradigms: have them perform secondary task whilst they are doing the sport skill
Problems with attentional studies
Lack of consistency in definitions of different types of attention
Methodological problems:
Lack of manipulation checks
few measurements of performance in secondary tasks
Attention- divided or selective
Instruction effect
What should you emphasise when giving instructions, speed or accuracy?
What should a performer focus their attention in during learning?
The amount of detail the performer is given about a task can completely change the learning that occurs
Skill vs environmentally focused attention
Skill focused…
Is attention to any aspect of skill execution. (Eg the position of the limbs or movement of the bat)
Environmentally focused…
Is attention to anything not directly involved in skill execution (eg the position of infielder or sounds from the crowd)
Beilock et al (2002)
Golf Putting #1
Performance of experts and novices
Putting whilst attending to either:
Angle of the putter at the point of contact (skill focused)
Or
The sounds being played through loud speakers (environmentally focused)
Results: Novice golfers worse putting accuracy when trying to detect the sound (EF)
Because putting requires almost all available resources (dual task hard)
Novices improved when focusing on club head angle (SF)
Expert golfers not effected by detecting sound
Because well practiced so have resources left to attend to something else
But focusing on club angle surprisingly resulted in worse
If asked to focus on part of skill they don’t usually attend to paralysis by analysis
Beilock et al (2002)
Football Dribbling
Expert and novice soccer players dribbling through a slalom
(All players right footed)
Two secondary tasks:
Skill focused- attend to which side of your foot is in contact with ball
Environmentally focused- monitor streams of words present through a loud speaker whilst dribbling
Results: performance akin to golf putting study
Experts better with environmentally focused and novice with skill focused
But for right footed dominant dribbling!
When using non dominant left foot performance changed completely
Experts behaved like novices (better with skill focused attention)
Expertise is very very specific!
How should we perform with speeded instructions?
Experts should perform better with less time to think, the can perform a skill really quickly (eg icing the kicker)
Novices should show opposite effect because they need to attend to skill execution
Beilock et al (2004)
Golf putting #2
Golf putting accuracy under two different sets of instructions…
Speed or accuracy instructions (little time between putts or taking time to be accurate)
Results: Experts better when they have less time to think about it (contradicting the traditional speed accuracy instructions)
Novices worse when they have less time to think about it (need time to attend to what they’re doing)
Gray (2004)
Baseball batting #1
Batting performance using virtual reality setup between college and novice baseball players
Two secondary tasks:
Skill or environment focus (judge whether bat was moving up or down when signal tone heard and judge whether tone was high or low pitch)
Skill focus as very difficult and environment focus has nothing to with skill
Results: same basic pattern as Beilock studies
Skill focused attention increases temporal error for experts but decreases for novices
Novices always worse but better in skill focused
Internally vs externally focused attention
Internally: is attention to a part of ones own body (eg movement of the hands)
Externally: is attention to anything external of the body (eg trajectory of the ball)
Wulf et al (2001)
Stabilometer task
Dynamic balancing on a stabilometer (keep board level)
Everyone pretty much novice at this task
Performance measure is variability of the board angle
Two attention conditions:
Internal (keep attention on feet and try to keep them horizontal)
External (attention on markers that were attached to platform)
Results: smaller errors occurred in external focus condition
Suggested because when performer attend to their body they tend to actively intervene with skill execution, which disrupts automaticity
Wulf et al (2002)
Volleyball serving
Is there an advantage of external focus of attention in experts?
Expert vs novice measuring serve accuracy across several practice sessions
Manipulated attention by varying feedback given to the player after each serve
Results: like stabilometer experiment.
External focus = better performance than internal
Perkins-Ceccato et al (2003)
Golf Chipping #1
On golf chipping accuracy
Internal (attention on the form of their swing and adjustment of force)
External (on hitting the ball as close to the pin as possible)
Results: experts better with external
Novices with internal
Bell and Hardy (2009)
Golf chipping #2
Effectiveness of 3 focuses of attention for 33 skilled male golfers
Internal Proximal external (club head and ball) Distal external (ball)
Each performed 50 pitch shots
Further away the external focus of attention is from the body the better the performance
Castaneda and Gray (2005)
Baseball batting #2
Different types of attentional focus on baseball batting
Skill internal- attention directed to execution and hands
Skill external- to execution and location outside the bat
Environmental irrelevant- attention directed away from skill execution and to information that could not be used to improve performance
Environmental relevant- directed away from skill execution and to info that could be used to improve performance
Results:
Novices sig worse under environmental irrelevant compared to other conditions
Experts sig better under external relevant
No sig between novice and experts
Internal irrelevant not focused on the outcome
