Judging joint angles and movement outcome: Shifting the focus of attention in dart-throwing.

Abstract

Many research studies have shown the advantage of an external focus of attention (FOA) relative to an internal focus for motor learning and performance when the focus is explicitly instructed. The current experiments varied the FOA by asking the participants to judge either joint angles (internal probes) or spatial accuracy (external probes) following dart throws in which vision was removed. The probes were administered without prior practice (Experiment 1) or following 432 practice trials (Experiment 2). Spatial errors and trial-to-trial variability were reduced in Experiment 2 compared with Experiment 1. In both experiments, spatial errors were greater during internal probes compared with external probes or a no-probe control condition. These data suggest that the advantages of an external FOA relative to an internal FOA are not fully attributable to visual processing and that these advantages can be attained using probing questions between trials, whereas previous research has explicitly instructed the FOA.

Focus of Attention in Children's Motor Learning: Examining the Role of Age and Working Memory

“…Thus, for our study, this hypothesis would imply that adopting an external focus facilitated motor learning as it allowed the children to pick up more task-relevant information (see also Van der Kamp, Oudejans, & Savelsbergh, 2003). Yet, visual attentional functioning is unlikely to fully account for the results noted in our study: Recent studies actually suggest that attentional focus effects are also evident in situations in which no visual information is available to the learner (Schlesinger, Porter, & Russell, 2012;Sherwood, Lohse, & Healy, 2014). In any event, we encourage future studies to more directly assess how different measures of children's attentional functioning influence the effectiveness of different attentional foci for motor learning.…”

The Differential Effects of Attentional Focus in Children with Moderate and Profound Visual Impairments

“…The benefits of an external focus of attention have been well established in the literature ( Wulf, 2013 ), but it is unclear if children with VI would experience the same benefit when performing a balancing task. Recent research has demonstrated that when participants are blindfolded and performing discrete tasks, an external focus improves motor performance ( Land et al, 2013 ; Sherwood et al, 2014 ; Abdollahipour et al, 2016 ). However, the same pattern may not hold true for tasks more reliant on sensory feedback, especially in participants with VI who are accustomed to performing motor tasks with limited vision or a complete absence of vision.…”

“…The influence of vision on attentional focus has recently been tested with blindfolded participants. In these studies, an external focus led to better performance than an internal focus in a vertical jump ( Abdollahipour et al, 2016 ), dart throwing ( Sherwood et al, 2014 ), and golf putting ( Land et al, 2013 ). While these findings suggest vision does not impact attentional focus effects, it is important to note that the tasks used differ from balance in that they rely minimally on sensory feedback.…”

The effect of internal and external focus of attention on game performance in tennis

“…Moreover, due to the fact that attention to visual information searching underlies the cognitive system (Gottlieb, 2012), some researchers tried to assess the link between vision and focus of attention. According to the results of object manipulation studies, in golf (Land, Tenenbaum, Ward, & Marquardt, 2013) and dart throwing (Sherwood, Lohse, & Healy, 2014), the superiority of the external focus of attention is not attributed to visual information processing during performing a motor skill. Similar, the research of Abdollahipour, Psotta, and Land (2016) revealed that the use of the external attentional focus does not rely on visual information even in a non-object manipulation action such as jumping height.…”