How Attentional Focus Can Affect Sports Performance

I am now going to review how attentional focus can impact sports performance. Attentional cues are information you take in whilst competing. There are two types of attentional cues, relevant cues and irrelevant cues. Relevant attentional cues include making sure you team mates are in position and making sure the position of the ball is correct when about to shoot. Irrelevant attentional cues include crowd noises and things like bottles being thrown. Selective attention is what all sports psychologists work towards as it is looking to ignore all irrelevant cues and focusing on relevant cues that can impact performance. This would benefit performance as they are able to concentrate on the right things and the important things rather than the irrelevant cues that aren’t important. For example, a boxer needs to ignore the irrelevant cues such as the crowd and the noise and focus on the relevant cues such as their opponent and the punches being thrown towards them. If they can’t do this then their performance will decrease as they are focusing on the wrong things. Divided attention is when you are required to concentrate on more than one relevant cue. This occurs in rugby as they need to be aware of where the ball is, make sure they are behind the pass so they can receive the pass and make sure they are in the right positions. Sports performance requires both selective and divided attention to improve performance as athletes don’t want to focus on the irrelevant cues but must focus on all on the relevant cues. Overall, attentional cues must be considered when looking at a performer’s performance.

Attentional focus can be viewed in two dimensions. This is the width dimension and the direct dimension. Width dimension is then split into broad attentional focus and narrow attentional focus. Broad attentional focus means that you take in and process a lot of information. For example, when batting in cricket, you need to watch the ball, look at the gaps in the field to know where to try and play the shot in order to score enough runs. Narrow attentional focus occurs when you have a small amount of information to take in. A sporting example of this is in a 100m sprint as you are only focusing on yourself like staying in the right line and make sure you get a good start. Competitive pressure can impact broad attentional focus as the batsman may feel pressure to score runs and will not find the gaps due to the pressure. It can also impact narrow attentional focus as the 100m sprinter will think too hard into their own performance. Athletes in team based sports such as football and rugby will need to have a broad attentional focus in order to view all the players on the field so they can read the game. Athletes in solo based sports such as sprinters and golfers will need to have a narrow attentional focus so they can focus on their own performance and no one else’s. In the direct dimension, this is also split into two, external attentional focus and internal attentional focus. External attentional focus means that you take in external relevant cues such as crowd noises and things like bottles being thrown. A sporting example of this could be in tennis, the crowd must be silent when playing but if they weren’t then the player may focus on that if their performance hindered. Internal attentional focus occurs when you take in your thoughts and feelings or personal skills. Overall, both the width dimension and direct dimension needs to be considered when reviewing an athlete’s sports performance.

Shifting attentional focus is also very important as an athlete. This can be a case of shifting broad to narrow or internal to external. For example, a goalkeeper may be focusing on the irrelevant cues like the crowd and the attacker who keeps bumping into him rather than the relevant cues like where the ball is and the position of his defenders. This needs to be shifted as the irrelevant cues aren’t beneficial and need to be ignored whereas the relevant cues are extremely important and needs to focus on throughout. Overall, it is important to shift attentional cues from irrelevant and relevant as they are related to the sport and not things like the crowd.

Attentional strategies are strategies to stop any negative attentional focus that may appear. It is split into two broad headings, associative strategies and dissociative strategies. Associative strategies focus on internal sensations, for example breathing to help control internal things that can affect performance. This can be seen in sports such as in a penalty shootout, when a player is waiting to take their penalty, they may be seen breathing in and out hard to try and eradicate the nerves that they are feeling. Dissociative strategies focus externally to stop you from thinking about fatigue or pain. Comparing this to arousal types.