6/10 - Attention, Concentration and Flow

What is concentration?

The mental effort placed on sensory or mental events. It is the person’s ability to exert deliberate mental effort on what is most important in a given situation.

The ability to maintain focus on relevant environmental cues.

What are the 4 components of concentration?

1. Focusing on relevant environment cues. Selective attention: Selecting what cues to attend to and disregard

 

1. Maintaining attentional focus

 

1. Situation awareness: The ability to understand what is going on around oneself (to size up a situation)

 

1. Shifting attentional focus when necessary

 

What is Selective Attention?

Describe Attentional Selectivity (4 points)

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

 

And so human performance is limited by:

 

• 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

Describe Attentional Capacity (5 points)

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

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

• Automatic processing is mental processing without conscious attention

• Athletes can change from controlled processing to automatic processing as they become more proficient

• Expertise is characterized by shifting from controlled to automatic, because this helps free up resources for other tasks

Describe Attentional Alertness (4 points)

• Sensory awareness

•  Attention can be ‘captured’

• Increases in emotions and arousal can influence the attentional field

• E.g: you might lose sensitivity to information in the peripheral fields when arousal levels are too low

Name the type of Attentional Focus

White book

What is Associative Attentional Strategy?

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

What is Dissociative Attentional Strategy?

Not monitoring bodily functions; distraction and tuning out

What should you think of association and dissociation as?

Being on a continuum

What has research in association and dissociation find?

• 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

 

• Dissociation should be used by people who want to increase adherence to exercise

What is the 2 types of attentional problems grouped as?

Internal and External Distractions

What are the 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

What are the external distractions?

• Visual distractions

• Auditory distractions

What is Choking?

When an athlete or team performs significantly below their normal ability in a high-pressure situation, despite having the skill and motivation to do well.

Attentional process, which is impaired performanceand the inability to retain control over performance without outside assistance.

What are the conditions leading to choking?

• Important competition

• Critical plays in a competition

• Evaluation by coaches, peer and parents

What are the attentional changes associated with choking?

• Internal focus

• Narrow focus

• Reduced flexibility

What are the performance impairments associated with choking?

• Timing and coordination breakdown

• Muscle tightness and fatigue

• Rushing

• Inability to attend to task-relevant cues

What are the physical changes associated with choking?

• Increased muscle tension

• Increased breathing rate

• Racing heart race

What is Conscious Processing Hypothesis?

Choking occurs when skilled performers focus too much of their conscious attention to the task, much as they would do if they were a novice at the task

What happens to performance and focus according to conscious processing hypothesis?

• performance decreases only

• increased focus on several task-relevant cues

How can you assess attentional skills? (5 points)

• Test of Attention and Interpersonal Style (TAIS)

 

• TAIS is a general trait measure. Sport-specific measures also exist. TAIS is not without problems

 

• Effective attenders can attend to several stimuli without getting overloaded and can narrow attentional focus without leaving out important information

 

• Ineffective attenders are easily confused with multiple stimuli

 

• Psychophysiological and neurological measures:

 

EEG (brain activity). Elite shooters can voluntarily reduce cognitive activity and enhance performance.

 

Heart rate - Elite shooters have cardiac decelerations just before performance

What is Gaze?

A number of consecutive fixations in an area of interest

Can we measure ‘attention’ more directly in sport settings?

YES

Gaze behaviour – visual attention

How can you measure gaze behaviour?

Use eye-trackers (gaze registration systems)

How can Gaze direction be calculated?

• Comparing the relative position and the relationship between the pupil (A) and corneal reflection – the glint (C)

• Infra-red illumination of the eye produces the 'bright pupil' effect (B) and makes the tracking easier.

What is number of fixations?

A concentration of a large number of fixations in a certain area may be related to a user's interest in the object or detail presented in that area when viewing a scene.

 

What is the fixation (gaze) duration?

The total of fixation durations in a particular area.

What is the Scan path?

Is a line connecting consecutive fixations. It can be revealing of a viewer's visual exploration strategies and is often verydifferent in experts and novices.

What is flow?

A state of full involvement and enjoyment in the present activity

Why is flow important / interesting?

t is a rare experience of complete focus which allows:

 

• Relevant for understanding motivation

• Enhances wellbeing

• Relevant for understanding sporting (or work) performance (And attention)

 

When does flow happen?

• Challenge- skill balance

• Immediate feedback

• Clear goal

What is flow like?

• Concentration

• Action-awareness merging

• Transformation of time

• Reduced self-awareness

• Autotelicity

• Sense of control

 

How do we measure flow?

Flow State Scale-2 (Jackson & Eklund, 2002)

• Maps onto the 9 dimensions of flow

• 36 questions

 

Flow Short Scale (Rheinberg, Engeser & Vollmeyer, 2002)

• Simpler characterisation of flow (fluency and absorption)

• Just 9 questions

What are the problems with self-report?