Exam Three Sports Psychology Concentration

Concentration

the mental effort placed on sensory or mental events

the person’s ability to exert deliberate mental effort on what is most important in a given situation

concentration=attention

4 Components of Concentration

focusing on relevant environment cues

maintaining attentional focus

situation awareness

shifting attentional focus when necessary

Selective Attention

selecting what cues to attend to and disregard

Situation Awareness

the ability to understand what is going on around oneself (to size up a situation)

Associative Attentional Strategy

monitoring bodily functions and feelings, such as heart rate, breathing, muscle tension

think a continuim

Dissociative Attentional Strategy

not monitoring bodily functions; distraction and tuning out

think a continuim

Associative strategies are generally correlated with…

faster running performances, although runners use both associative and dissociative strategies

Dissociation does not increase…

probability of injury but it can decrease fatigue and monotony

used by people who want to increase adherence to exercise

Elite athlete peak performance is associated with…

being absorbed in the present and having no thoughts about past or future

being mentally relaxed and having a high degree of concentration and control

being a state of extraordinary awareness of both the body and the external environment

Experts as compared to novice performers…

make faster decisions and better anticipate future events

attend more to movement patterns

search more systematically for cues

selectively attend to the structure inherent in sport

are more skillful in predicting ball flight patterns

Single Channel Theory

information is processed through a single and fixed capacity channel

Variable Allocation Theory

individuals are flexible and can choose where to focus their attention, allocating it on more than one task at at time

Multiple Resource Pool

attention is distributed throughout the nervous system (like microprocessors) and each microprocessor has its own unique capabilities and resource-performance relationship

Attentional Selectivity

letting some information into the processing system while other information is screened or ignored, akin to using a searchlight to focus on certain things

Common Attentional Selectivity Errors

being too broad in one’s focus

being distracted from relevant information by irrelevant information

inability to shift focus rapidly enough among all relevant cues

Attentional Capacity

attention is limited in the amount of information that can be processed at one time

Controlled Processing

mental processing that involves conscious attention and awareness of what you are doing when you perform a sport skill

Automatic Processing

mental processing without conscious attention

less restrictive than controlled processing

proficient athletes engage more often in this

Attentional Alertness

increases in emotional arousal narrow the attentional field

ex: losing sensitivity to cues in the peripheral visual field with increased emotional arousal

Concentration and Optimal Performance

focus on only the relevant cues in the athletic environment and eliminate distractions

the ability to automatically process or execute movements is critical in performance environments

Attentional Problems - Internal Distractions

attending to past events (what was…?)

attending to future events (what if…?)

choking under pressure

over-analysis of body mechanics

fatigue

inadequate motivation