Choking and Excelling Under Pressure

Abstract

Decrements in performance on cognitive tasks resulting from pressure to perform (i.e., choking) are thought to be caused by interference with the ability to use explicit strategies (the distraction theory). This view suggests that pressure should improve performance on tasks for which explicit strategies hamper performance. This hypothesis was tested by giving subjects one of two nearly identical learning tasks, a task that required learning a rule or one that required using a holistic information-integration strategy. Explicit rule use would hurt performance in the latter task. As predicted by the distraction theory, pressure decreased performance on the rule-based task but enhanced performance on the information-integration task.

Overthinking skilled motor performance: Or why those who teach can’t do

“…Competition between explicit and implicit learning systems has also been investigated in categorization tasks that require integration of information according to rules that are difficult to verbalize (Maddox & Ashby, 2004). Such differential effects of rule-based and procedural learning have been suggested to contribute to "choking under pressure" (Markman, Maddox, & Worthy, 2006), which offers an interesting account of evidence that stressful situations can increase skill-focused attention in experienced athletes (Baumeister, 1984;Beilock & Carr, 2001;Gray, 2004).…”

When bad stress goes good: increased threat reactivity predicts improved category learning performance

“…Initially, the hypothesis-testing system is in control, but control will generally shift in favor of the procedural-based system in II tasks (e.g., Ell & Ashby, 2006). Because of this competition, manipulations designed to interfere with the hypothesis-testing system can actually facilitate learning in II tasks (De Caro, Thomas, & Beilock, 2008;Maddox, Love, Glass, & Filoteo, 2008;Markman, Maddox, & Worthy, 2006;Worthy, Markman, & Maddox 2009). Thus, increased threat reactivity would be expected to facilitate the procedural-based system, resulting in enhanced accuracy on an II task.…”

“…The participants were instructed that at first they would be guessing, but to use the corrective feedback to help them learn the correct classification by trial-and-error. The tasks and procedure were adapted from Markman et al (2006) 1 The first minute of baseline was often contaminated by calibration and was excluded. We focus on the first 5 min of the categorization task because cardiovascular responses recover relatively quickly from stress (Linden, Earle, Gerin, & Christenfeld, 1997).…”

Choking under monitoring pressure: being watched by the experimenter reduces executive attention

“…DeCaro, Thomas, Albert, and Beilock (2011) suggested two different processes leading to poor performance in high-pressure situations. According to the first process, choking occurs because task-irrelevant thoughts and worries distract executive attention (a key component of WMC; Engle, 2002) away from task execution (e.g., Beilock & Carr, 2005;Beilock & DeCaro, 2007;Gimmig, Huguet, Caverni, & Cury, 2006;Markman, Maddox, & Worthy, 2006), which is problematic in difficult tasks requiring attentional control. The second process implies just the opposite-that pressure shifts too much executive attention toward the task at hand, which may cause poor performance in routine (non-attention-demanding) tasks relying on skill processes and procedures that normally run best outside of conscious awareness (e.g., Beilock, Bertenthal, McCoy, & Carr, 2004;Beilock, Carr, MacMahon, & Starkes, 2002;Beilock, Jellison, Rydell, McConnell, & Carr, 2006).…”