Mental Preparation for Physical Activities. Attention Styles… Mr. P. Leighton Mental Preparation for Physical Activities. Sport Psychology.

Today’s Session… Understand the importance of a performer focusing on relevant environmental stimuli during an activity. Discuss the “Inverted U Theory” and how it is important throughout Sports Psychology. Understand the Cue-utilisation Hypothesis in relevance to this section. Look at Attentional Styles and how they differ within sport.

Attentional Control… Attentional control refers to the extent in which a performer can focus his/her awareness on the relevant environmental stimuli during an activity. Basically- focus on the good and relevant, block out the bad and irrelevant i.e. Happy Gilmore? Attending to the most relevant cues requires CONCENTRATION. Maintaining this concentration until the task is complete indicates the performers ATTENTION SPAN. Concentration or SELECTIVE ATTENTION can be directed by external factors such as.. STIMULUS INTENSITY. WARNING CUES.

Cognition and Arousal… Cognition is the mental processes involved in acquiring knowledge, learning and understanding i.e. ABC, how to beat an opponent, strike a ball cleanly. Arousal is a level of excitement or activation. Generated by the CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM. When at low levels? When at high levels?

“The Inverted U Theory” Predicts the influence of arousal on the performance of MOTOR SKILL. This predicts that arousal influences performance. This is why we can use the “U” for a host of different aspects of Sports Psychology. However, CUE UTILISATION HYPOTESIS does go further to explain this theory.

Cue-Utilisation Hypothesis: Low Levels of Arousal… When arousal is low, the perceptual field of the performer widens excessively. This means that a performer is then open to irrelevant cues i.e. the opinions of the fans? (El-Hadj Diouf) To focus on the relevant stimuli is difficult and as a result the information processing system is overloaded. Decision making is then impeded.

Increased Arousal then… Perception field narrows to the IDEAL WIDTH. Narrowing allows attention to be given to the most relevant cues. At OPTIMAL AROUSAL selective attention is fully operational and the capacity to concentrate is maximised. This is CUE UTILISATION at its best.

Over Arousal above Optimal Threshold… The perception field is narrowed excessively. This means that relevant cues can be missed and that the information processing system becomes restricted. Effective decisions making is again impeded. Under these conditions the performer panics (where have you heard this before?) The performer will experience total disorientation of there senses. This is termed HYPERVIGILANCE.

What doesn’t the theory state? How the performer can adjust the width and direction of attention in response to varying situations within a sport. I.e. General play in Rugby, Taking a penalty, Scrum?

Attentional Styles… (Nideffer) Width of attention: Broad and Narrow. Direction of attention: External and Internal.

Attention Styles: Explained… Broad and Narrow dimension depicts a gradual change of the amount of information processed. Broad attention takes in a great deal of environmental information. This includes peripheral cues or stimuli i.e. passing when surrounded by defenders. Narrow focus is required concentration on one or a small number of stimuli. This usually allows performers to focus on one cue.

Continued… External and Internal dimensions indicate in which direction attention is focused. External focus is an outward projection of concentration on a stimulus. Internal focus indicates that the performers attention is directed inwardly towards their own psychological state.

Work for you… Spend the next 10 mins writing your own notes on the two pages up to EMOTIONAL CONTROL (Pg. 256-257) I will complete these notes for Wordpress but use this time to ensure you have fully understood this area.