Anxiety, Attentional Control, and Performance Impairment in Penalty Kicks

Abstract

The current study sought to test the predictions of attentional control theory (ACT) in a sporting environment. Fourteen experienced footballers took penalty kicks under low-and high-threat counterbalanced conditions while wearing a gaze registration system. Fixations to target locations (goalkeeper and goal area) were determined using frame-by-frame analysis. When anxious, footballers made faster first fixations and fixated for significantly longer toward the goalkeeper. This disruption in gaze behavior brought about significant reductions in shooting accuracy, with shots becoming significantly centralized and within the goalkeeper's reach. These findings support the predictions of ACT, as anxious participants were more likely to focus on the "threatening" goalkeeper, owing to an increased influence of the stimulus-driven attentional control system.

Anxiety, anticipation and contextual information: A test of attentional control theory

“…The experimental manipulations produced a sustained effect on anxiety levels, as scores were reported by the participants following every block of trials resulting in the production of a mean score. The different procedure employed may be the reason for the relatively small change in anxiety across blocks when compared with other published reports (e.g., Wilson et al, 2009). …”

“…Each item required a response on an 11-point Likert scale from 'not worried' (1) to 'worried' (11) for cognitive anxiety; 'not tense' (1) to 'tense' (11) for somatic anxiety; and 'not confident' (1) and 'confident' (11) for self-confidence. The MRF-3 was incorporated to keep in line with previous research into the application of PET and ACT to sport (see Wilson, Wood, & Vine, 2009;Wood & Wilson, 2011).…”

Effects of anxiety on running with and without an aiming task

“…Such shifts in attention can lead to a decrease in task efficiency, and possibly performance, as less attention is available for actual task execution. As an example, penalty kick performance in soccer players deteriorated when state anxiety was induced (Wilson, Wood, & Vine, 2009b). In line with attentional control theory, this drop in performance was accompanied by shifts in visual attention from the goal target area towards the goalkeeper, which is a potential threat to scoring a penalty in soccer.…”

Effects of anxiety and cognitive load on instrument scanning behavior in a flight simulation

“…A number of studies have found supporting evidence for the predictions of ACT on gaze behavior [4,5,6,7,8]. Anxiety has been shown to increase the frequency of fixations on goal-irrelevant stimuli [8] and to reduce the duration of ordinarily long target-focused fixations [5,9,7].…”

“…Anxiety has been shown to increase the frequency of fixations on goal-irrelevant stimuli [8] and to reduce the duration of ordinarily long target-focused fixations [5,9,7]. Recently, two studies have examined the effects of anxiety on gaze behavior in aviation tasks [10,11].…”