Abstract:
Psychological states affect focus of attention and play a mediating role in its effect on motor performance and learning. The present study investigated the effect of practice under psychological pressure and attention focusing with instruction on learning billiard shot. Participants were 48 female volunteer students (19-23 years old) who were randomly selected and assigned to 4 experimental groups (internal focus under high and low pressure, external focus under high and low pressure). The groups practiced for 8 sessions after the pretest. Acquisition test was performed in the last session of practice, and the retention test was conducted with 2 and 10 days of delay after the last practice session. The accuracy of the shots was scored according to the distance of the ball from the pit. The results of U Mann-Whitney test showed priority of internal attention in the acquisition and 10-day delay retention tests and priority of practice under low pressure in 10-day delay retention test (PP<0.05). It seems that given the nature of skill in terms of unchanged environmental conditions and high accuracy and attention requirements especially in the early stages of learning, practice under low psychological pressure conditions and internal focusing will result in more delayed retention for novice people
Machine summary:
Professor, Faculty of Sports Sciences, Urmia University, Urmia, Iran Abstract Psychological conditions affect the focus of attention and play a moderating role in their effects on motor execution and learning.
No research has been done in this area so far; Therefore, the present research aims to accurately evaluate the execution and learning of billiards shots in different arousal conditions, and to answer the question of whether training in high or low psychological pressure conditions and also with internal and external focus of attention follows the principle of specificity of training, and whether focusing attention during training as a strategy to cope with stressful conditions and natural orientation of attention improves learning?
Studying the interaction effect of two important factors, psychological pressure and focus of attention in training, on the acquisition and learning of informational motor skills provides useful information for developing appropriate training strategies in real sports situations in order to achieve optimal performance.
Results of Friedman's two-way analysis of variance {Refer to the attached table file} Discussion and Conclusion The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of practice under low or high psychological pressure and internal or external focus of attention on the acquisition and learning of a billiard shot.
There was no significant difference between the groups in the delayed recall test after 2 days; but in the delayed recall test after 10 days, the main effect of focus of attention was not significant; but practice under low psychological pressure was superior to high pressure.
(
, 
, 
)
