Taking Coal to Newcastle
Thank-you 
Pete Smith, KNR
Attentional focus, moderators
and theory
Pete Smith, KNR
Focus of attention
• Internal
– Direct learners’ attention to their body
movements
• External
– Direct learners’ attention to the effects of their
body movements
• For example (balance task):
Internal: “focus on keeping your feet horizontal”
External: “focus on keeping the markers horizontal”
Hypotheses
• Common coding view (Wulf & Prinz, 1990)
– Actions planned in terms of their outcomes
– “Constrained action” hypothesis (McNevin et al. 2000)
• Internal focus leads to “freezing” degrees of freedom (after
Vereijken et al. 1992)
• External focus allows movement system to “more naturally selforganize”
• Conscious processing hypothesis (Poolton et al. 2006)
– Internal focus processes more information than does
external
• Internal focus = internal and some external information
• External = just external
Hypotheses
• Predictions (relative to control condition)?
Constrained action hypothesis
Conscious processing hypothesis
An internal
focus is worse
than the norm
?
An internal
focus is the
norm
Avoidance of
conscious processing
to which both other
groups are prone
Some
conscious
processing
Avoidance of
conscious
processing
Most
conscious
processing
Study 1
• Attentional focus effects in children
– PE curriculum (Graham, 2010)
• Increase the number of cues as children age
• Cues draw attention to critical elements of skill
– Internal focus?
– Task complexity effects
• Wulf, Töllner & Shea (2007) – errors required to induce
internal focus
– Generalizable to all ages?
Study 1
• Attentional focus effects in children
– 42 6-7 year olds, 42 8-10 year olds
– All learned two tasks
– Trained one day, tested the next
Bassin Timer
Internal: “use your finger
to hit the button”
Pedalo
Internal: “move by
pushing your feet
forward”
External: “hit the button”
External: “move by
pushing the boards
forward”
Study 1
• Practice and retention trials
– Bassin Timer
• 30 trials practice (10 at each of three velocities)
– Reminded of focus every 3 trials
• 15 trials retention test 24 hrs. later (5 at each of 3
velocities)
– Pedalo
• 10 trials forwards, 10 trials backwards, 5m per trial
– Reminded of focus every 2 trials
• 4 forward, 4 back, 24 hrs. later, as quickly as possible
Study 1
• Results
– Bassin timer
• Only learning effects and age effects
– Pedalo
• Age by focus interaction in retention
Study 1
• Findings
– Performance of both tasks improved with practice
– Older children performed better than younger children
throughout.
– No differences due to attentional focus during practice.
– Retention differences perhaps supported Wulf’s (2007)
interpretation of focus of attention effects, rather than Poolton
et al.’s (2006)
• Where differences existed, external focus performed better than
either internal focus or control
• No evidence of an internal focus impairing performance relative to
control (as suggested by Poolton et al., 2006)
• Focus effects only found in the more complex task, for the
older children
Study 2
• Task complexity, age, and sex effects
– Premises:
• Deliberate performance is detrimental
– Deliberate performance can be elicited due to errors made
during practice – complexity & age effects
– Deliberate performance can be elicited due to focus on
outcomes (males) or form (females) (Wulf, Wächter, and
Wortmann, 2003) – females should benefit from an external
focus
• Deliberate performance can be avoided by enforcing an
external focus
– Suggests stronger focus effects with younger people, more
complex tasks, and for females
Study 2
• Two tasks, differing in complexity
• Two ages: 48 8-10 year olds, 48 undergrads (19-26)
• Males and females
Study 2
• Practice and retention trials
– All trials over 7m path
– 20 practice trials (all forwards) – no time limit
– 4 retention trials 24 hours later (all forwards) as
fast as possible
Study 2
• Practice effects – no focus effects
– Age by practice by complexity interaction
Study 2
• Retention effects
– Only present for
males
– Only present for
the complex task
– Equally beneficial
regardless of age
Study 2
• Findings
– Muddy
– Complexity effect emerged, only for males
– No age effect
• Age differences gone by end of practice
– Males rather than females susceptible to focus
effects
– Manipulation check revealed no difference in
success with focus
Study 3
• Coaches’ cues, teachers’ cues:
– Duba, Kraemer, and Martin (2007):
• “curl your wrists under the bar” & “bring your
shoulders to your ears” (for power clean)
– Physical education literature (Fronske & Wilson
(2001)
• “arm close to body, brush shorts” (volleyball serve).
Study 3
• Specificity of internal focus cues:
– Bernstein’s (1967) endpoint control
• Russell (2007) and Oudejans, Koedijker, and Beek (2007)
– Outcome invariant, joint movements giving rise to outcome
variable
» Blacksmiths’ hammer example
– Focusing on one aspect of a movement (as with an internal focus)
may introduce a type of control counter-productive to this
endpoint control
– Moreover, the more specific the internal focus is to the role of
one joint within the overall organization of the movement, the
more potentially disruptive to the overall organization of the
movement it may be.
Study 3
• Standing long jump
Groups and Focus Cues:
(1)
Narrow Internal Focus- “Focus your attention
on extending your knees to jump as far as
possible”
(2)
Broad Internal Focus- “Focus your attention
on using your legs to jump as far as possible”
(3)
External Focus- “Focus you attention on
jumping as far as possible past the start line”
(4)
Control (no assigned focus)
Dependent Measures:
•
Jump Distance (cm)
Data Analysis:
•
An ANCOVA on jump distance was conducted
with participant height as the covariate.
Study 3
• 5 jumps in each condition
• Results
– No effect of specificity
Study 4
• Related to the task complexity effect again
– Performance only examined this time
– Wulf, McNevin, Shea (2001)
• No effects in practice, only in retention (balance task)
Study 4
• Related to the task complexity effect again
– Difficulty of maintaining any focus when making
errors
• Poolton et al. (2006), Wulf et al. (2001): Attention
switches common
• Why no effects during practice?
– Wulf and others’ findings due to subjects’ inability to maintain
focus early in practice?
Study 4
• Balance task, one trial (after warm up)
– 39 students
– 4 conditions (45s each)
•
•
•
•
Control
Internal
External
Digit span
– Counterbalanced
Study 4
• Results
– Digit span better than all conditions
Study 4
• Implication
– Attentional requires complexity to emerge (Wulf et al.
2007)
– But beyond that level they may disappear again, at
least temporarily
• The difficulty of maintaining focus of attention becomes
challenging, & performance differences do not emerge as a
result.
– Then other methods of manipulating attention (Nafati
& Vuillerme, 2011) may prove more effective.
Study 5
•
•
•
•
Pedalo
Warm-up, 20 trials practice
4 trials retention (24 hrs later)
3 groups
– Internal
– External
– Distraction
Study 6
•
•
•
•
Balance
Warm-up, 14 trials practice (2 days)
3 trials retention (24 hrs later)
3 groups
– Internal
– External
– Distraction