Christopher Mesagno
School of Health Sciences, University of Ballarat, Australia
The ability to perform under competitive pressure is an important aspect of elite sport. Some athletes perform well and can deal with the pressure (i.e., clutch performance or excelling under pressure), while others succumb to choking under pressure (i.e., choking). Choking has been investigated for over 30 years with burgeoning of research in the past decade, yet, opposing choking on the performance under pressure continuum is “clutch” performance, which is in its infancy with only a few recent studies (Hill, Hanton, Matthews, & Fleming, 2010; Mesagno & Marchant, 2013; Otten, 2009) dedicating at least part of their investigation to the positive performance outcomes of clutch performances. To my knowledge, no journal has devoted a special issue that investigates the polar opposites of performance under pressure: choking and excelling under pressure
Keywords:
Christopher Mesagno * and Denise M. Hill **
(*) School of Health Sciences, University of Ballarat, Australia
(**) University of Gloucestershire, Gloucester, United Kingdom
In sport, choking under pressure is a negative athletic experience that may have psychologically damaging effects. The media recognizes that choking is a dramatic drop in performance, whereas researchers have labeled choking as any decrease in performance under pressure. This discrepancy between the media’s and researchers’ perception of choking leads to ambiguity among terms and confusion among researchers, applied practitioners, and the general public. Thus, the current position paper will: critically analyze current choking definitions and explore why they are not appropriate operational definitions; explain the current underperformance and choking terminology debate; offer an alternative choking definition that should be debated; and also identify ways that researchers can improve the robustness of choking investigations. It is hoped that this paper will stimulate debate and improve the quality of future choking research.
Keywords: Anxiety, Paradoxical performance, Under-performance
Tim Buszard *, Damian Farrow */** and Rich S.w. Masters ***
(*) School of Sport and Exercise Science ,Institute of Sport, Exercise and Active Living, Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia
(**) Australian Institute of Sport, Belconnen ACT, Australia
(***) Institute of Human Performance, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong
Choking, as Mesagno and Hill (2013) acknowledge, is a colloquial term that describes events that sometimes occur in real life when performers are highly motivated to succeed. The term is emotive and evokes strong imagery, so it is popularly used in the media. Use of the term by researchers, however, often raises confusion. Mesagno and Hill point out that current definitions are inadequate and they highlight the need for a clear definition of ‘choking’ in order to help guide researchers in the quest to better understand it as a phenomenon. Psychologists have typically defined choking as under performance in a highly pressured environment when striving for optimal success (e.g., Baumeister, 1984). Such a definition leaves it necessary to determine whether the level of underperformance that occurred was significant enough to warrant use of the term ‘choke’. In sport, the term is typically used when a performer (or a team) fails to win when seemingly in an insurmountable position. The failure needs to result from uncharacteristic mistakes, rather than an opponent’s good skill, but even this can result in confusion. Not only is it often difficult to determine whether the player(s) got worse or the opponent( s) got better, but the two are confounded, for as one gets worse, the other may get better.
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Robin C. Jackson
Centre for Sports Medicine and Human Performance, Brunel University, U.K.
In their position paper, Mesagno and Hill (M&H) argue that there is a discrepancy between how the term ‘choking’ is used by the media and researchers and propose that the term should be reserved for more acute and significant declines in performance than tend to be studied by researchers. Specifically, they assert that researchers may have failed to investigate the phenomenon by considering any (statistically significant) drop in performance to be choking. In response, M&H propose to re-conceptualise choking in a manner that also includes reference to the proposed underlying causes. In this commentary, I argue that the crux of their position is a valid question that should be re-stated as a hypothesis, the testing of which requires a clear distinction between ‘moderate’ and ‘major’ under-performance under pressure. Second, I argue that defining these terms, together with the collective term ‘choking’, must be independent of any hypothesised explanation to be scientifically meaningful.
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Mark P. Otten
California State University, Northridge, USA
For every instance of choking in sports, it could be argued that a “clutch” performance is just as possible. Mesagno and Hill (2013) begin their choking review with the observation that choking (under pressure) is “damaging” to athletes, based on impaired enjoyment, well-being and self-identity in performance (Hill, Hanton, Matthews, & Fleming, 2011). Indeed, we could conceivably begin a similar review on clutch play by noting it to be exciting for athletes, thereby boosting their enjoyment, well-being, and selfidentity. The problem is, the choking literature in sport psychology is many years more advanced than that of clutch performance, something that is perplexing given the proliferation of examples of clutch play that popular media so often put forth these days.
Keywords: NULL
Christopher Mesagno * and Denise M. Hill **
(*) School of Health Sciences, University of Ballarat, Australia
(**) University of Gloucestershire, Gloucester, United Kingdom
In this special issue of International Journal of Sport Psychology, Mesagno and Hill (2013) composed a position paper on choking, and consequently three experts commented on the manuscript, whereby a provocative debate developed to extend and help stimulate future choking research. Firstly, we would like to thank the contributors of the commentaries for providing a thought-provoking debate regarding current choking research. The aim of this final paper is to reflect on, and provide a final word to, the choking debate in this issue.
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Raôul R.d. Oudejans *, Olaf Binsch ** and Frank C. Bakker *
(*) MOVE Research Institute Amsterdam, Faculty of Human Movement Sciences, VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
(**) TNO Soesterberg, The Netherlands
Providing instructions to avoid an action may ironically increase the tendency to engage in that action, especially when attentional resources are taxed. In the perceptual- motor domain the role of anxiety in inducing such ironic effects has rarely been investigated even though anxiety both affects attention and plays a crucial role in performance decrements in sports (i.e., choking under pressure). Therefore, we investigated the combined effects of anxiety and negative instructions on perceptual- motor performance. Participants threw darts under one neutral instruction to hit bulls-eye and one negatively worded instruction while positioned either high or low on a climbing wall (i.e., with and without anxiety). Only the combination of high anxiety and the negative instruction led to a significant drop in performance. In line with theories on ironic processes and choking, the results indicate that when negative instructions and anxiety are combined, the likelihood of ironic effects and, thus, choking, is increased.
Keywords: Anxiety, Dart throwing, Ironic effects, Perceptual-motor control
Denise M Hill, Christopher R Potter and Candice Quilliam
University of Gloucestershire, Gloucester, United Kingdom
The aim of the study was to explore choking in sport and examine specifically, the moderating influence of physiological stress. Through a pragmatic mixed-methods approach, 40 novice golfers completed a low intensity (LI; 90% gas exchange threshold) and high intensity (HI; 100% V˙O2 max) exercise task, followed by a golf putting task under high (HP) and low pressure (LP). Performance scores were investigated using a two-way (2 x 2) Pressure by Intensity repeated measures ANOVA, and the difference between LP and HP performance scores of each participant (after LI and HI) was calculated to identify individuals who choked. Five participants experienced choking and completed individual semi-structured interviews which explored the event and the perceived moderating role of physiological stress. The study found the influence of physiological stress on choking in sport was insignificant, yet has provided further insights into its antecedents, mechanisms, consequences and other potential moderators.
Keywords: Anxiety, Attention, Fatigue, Paradoxical performance
Robin C. Jackson, Noel P. Kinrade, Teresa Hicks and Rebecca Wills
Centre for Sports Medicine & Human Performance, Brunel University,United Kingdom
Two field-based studies were conducted to test the predictive validity of the Reinvestment Scale, the Movement-Specific Reinvestment Scale and the Decision- Specific Reinvestment Scale. In Study 1, performance ratings were gathered for female university field hockey and netball players (N = 44) competing in low-pressure group games and high-pressure play-off games over the second half of a season. In Study 2, passing accuracy was assessed in a group of female university netball players (N = 15) over the course of a season. Analyses of variance using group data coupled with correlation and regression analyses revealed good support for the predictive validity of the Reinvestment Scale and Decision-Specific Reinvestment Scale, with high reinvesters being more prone to skill failure under pressure. The results are discussed in terms of task demands, the processes underlying skill failure, and the definition of choking.
Keywords: Choking, Self-Focus
Tim Buszard *, Damian Farrow */**, Frank F. Zhu *** and Rich S.w. Masters ****
(*) College of Sport and Exercise Science /Institute of Sport, Exercise and Active Living, Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia
(**) Australian Institute of Sport, Belconnen ACT, Australia
(***) NULL
(****) Institute of Human Performance, The University of Hong Kong, The Hong Kong Jockey, Building for Interdisciplinary Research, Hong Kong
Two studies were conducted to explore the relationship between verbal and visual working memory capacity, the propensity for conscious monitoring and control of movement, and performance of a novel tennis hitting task. In children (Study 1), verbal working memory capacity was positively associated with the score on a validated psychometric measure of the propensity for conscious monitoring and control of motor performance (the Movement Specific Reinvestment Scale). A similar relationship was evident in Study 2 for adults. Additionally, Study 2 showed that performance of a novel tennis hitting task improved during a pressured condition following an unpressured condition. Verbal working memory capacity predicted the amount of improvement in performance, with lower capacity performers displaying greater improvements than higher capacity participants. The findings are discussed in the context of cognitive demands of problem solving and hypothesis testing during early skill acquisition and implicit motor learning theory.
Keywords: Conscious control, Early learning, Hypothesis Testing strategies, Implicit motor learning
Samuel J. Vine *, Lee J. Moore *, Andrew Cooke **, Christopher Ring *** and Mark R. Wilson *
(*) Sport and Health Sciences, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, UK
(**) School of Sport, Health and Exercise Sciences, Bangor University, UK
(***) School of Sport and Exercise Sciences, University of Birmingham, UK
The aim of this study was to determine if Quiet Eye (QE)-training might act as a form of implicit motor learning; enabling trainees to maintain performance under pressure by limiting the accrual of explicit rules governing performance. Forty-five novice golfers performed 40 Baseline and 320 acquisition golf putts in one of three instruction groups (QE, Analogy, Explicit). Learning and resilience to pressure were assessed in a Retention-Pressure-Retention design (60 putts) during which mean radial error, QE, conscious processing and explicit rule accrual were measured. The QE-trained group outperformed the Analogy group in the Retention tests and both other groups in the Pressure test; underpinned by superior visual attentional control (longer QE periods). The QE-trained group and the Analogy group reported fewer explicit rules and less conscious processing than the explicit group. QE training therefore appears to offer advantages in terms of both resilience to pressure and expedited skill acquisition.
Keywords: Analogy, Anxiety, Golf putting, Skill acquisition
Rob Gray, Jonathan Allsop and Sarah E. Williams
School of Sport and Exercise Sciences, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom
The effects of performance pressure on the putting kinematics of 13 expert golfers was investigated. Golfers varied substantially in their response to the pressure with three having significantly increased putting errors (i.e., choking), three having significantly decreased putting errors (i.e., clutch performance) and the remainder showing no significant effect of pressure. Putting performance was significantly related to several kinematic variables. In particular, the relationship between downswing amplitude (DA) and putting distance was weaker for those golfers that choked under pressure as compared to clutch performers. The change in the DA-distance relationship associated with the introduction of pressure was significantly correlated with the change in accuracy (r = -0.58). These effects of pressure on putting kinematics are qualitively similar to the effects produced by directing attention to skill execution with a secondary task (Beilock & Gray, 2012) and thus provide further support for the explicit monitoring theory of choking under pressure.
Keywords: Attention, Motor Control, Performance, Pressure