No abstract

Poor performance in pressure-filled situations, or "choking under pressure," has largely been explained by two different classes of theories. Distraction theories propose that choking occurs because attention needed to perform the task at hand is coopted by task-irrelevant thoughts and worries. Explicit monitoring theories claim essentially the opposite-that pressure prompts individuals to attend closely to skill processes in a manner that disrupts execution. Although both mechanisms have been shown to occur in certain contexts, it is unclear when distraction and/or explicit monitoring will ultimately impact performance. The authors propose that aspects of the pressure situation itself can lead to distraction and/or explicit monitoring, differentially harming skills that rely more or less on working memory and attentional control. In Experiments 1-2, it is shown that pressure that induces distraction (involving performance-contingent outcomes) hurts rule-based category learning heavily dependent on attentional control. In contrast, pressure that induces explicit monitoring of performance (monitoring by others) hurts information-integration category learning thought to run best without heavy demands on working memory and attentional control. In Experiment 3, the authors leverage knowledge about how specific types of pressure impact performance to design interventions to eliminate choking. Finally, in Experiment 4, the selective effects of monitoring-pressure are replicated in a different procedural-based task: the serial reaction time task. Skill failure (and success) depends in part on how the performance environment influences attention and the extent to which skill execution depends on explicit attentional control.

No abstract

Recent work in the general recognition theory (GRT) framework indicates that there are serious problems with some of the inferential machinery designed to detect perceptual and decisional interactions in multidimensional identification and categorization (Mack, Richler, Gauthier, & Palmeri, 2011). These problems are more extensive than previously recognized, as we show through new analytic and simulation-based results indicating that failure of decisional separability is not identifiable in the Gaussian GRT model with either of two common response selection models. We also describe previously unnoticed formal implicational relationships between seemingly distinct tests of perceptual and decisional interactions. Augmenting these formal results with further simulations, we show that tests based on marginal signal detection parameters produce unacceptably high rates of incorrect statistical significance. We conclude by discussing the scope of the implications of these results, and we offer a brief sketch of a new set of recommendations for testing relationships between dimensions in perception and response selection in the full-factorial identification paradigm.

Choking under pressure has largely been explained by two different classes of theories. Distraction theories propose that pressure-induced failure occurs because attention needed to perform the task at hand is co-opted by task-irrelevant thoughts and worries. Explicit monitoring theories claim essentially the opposite-that pressure prompts individuals to attend closely to skill processes in a manner that disrupts execution. Although both mechanisms of choking have been shown to occur in certain contexts, it is unclear when distraction and/or explicit monitoring will ultimately impact performance. We propose that aspects of the pressure situation itself can lead to distraction and/or explicit monitoring, differentially harming skills that rely more (or less) on working memory and attentional control. Using category learning as a test bed, in three experiments we show that performance-contingent outcome pressures hurt rule-based category learning heavily dependent on attentional control. In contrast, pressure involving monitoring by others impairs information-integration category learning thought to run best without heavy demands on attentional control (Experiments 1-2). In Experiment 3, we leverage our knowledge about how specific types of pressure impact performance to design interventions to eliminate choking. Skill failure (and success) under pressure depends on the type of pressure one is under and the control structures of the task being performed.