Putting Pressure on Theories of Choking: ! towards an expanded perspective on breakdown in skilled performance! ! Wayne Christensen, John Sutton, and Doris J.F. McIlwain! Submitted to Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, special issue on 'Unreflective Action and the Choking Effect', editor Massimiliano Cappuccio! ! Wayne Christensen! Department of Cognitive Science! Macquarie University! Sydney! NSW 2109 Australia! wayne.christensen@gmail.com ! ! John Sutton (corresponding author)! Department of Cognitive Science! Macquarie University! Sydney! NSW 2109 Australia! john.sutton@mq.edu.au ! Tel (61-2) 9850 4132! ! Doris McIlwain! Department of Psychology! Macquarie University! Sydney! NSW 2109 Australia! doris.mcilwain@mq.edu.au ! ! ! ! Putting Pressure on Theories of Choking: ! towards an expanded perspective on breakdown in skilled performance! ! Wayne Christensen, John Sutton, and Doris J.F. McIlwain! Macquarie University! Submitted to Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, special issue! ! Abstract! There is a widespread view that well-learned skills are automated, and that attention to the performance of these skills is damaging because it disrupts the automatic processes involved in their execution. This idea serves as the basis for an account of choking in high pressure situations. On this view, choking is the result of self-focused attention induced by anxiety. Recent research in sports psychology has produced a significant body of experimental evidence widely interpreted as supporting this account of choking in certain kinds of complex sensorimotor skills. We argue against this interpretation, pointing to problems with both the empirical evidence and the underlying theory. The experimental research fails to provide direct support for the central claims of the self-focus approach, contains inconsistencies, and suffers from problems of ecological validity. In addition, qualitative studies of choking have yielded contrary results. We further argue that in their current forms the self-focus and rival distraction approaches lack the theoretical resources to provide a good theory of choking, and we argue for an expanded approach. Some of the elements that should be in an expanded approach include accounts of the features of pressure situations that influence the psychological response, the processes of situation appraisal, and the ways that attentional control can be overwhelmed, leading to distraction in some cases, and in others, perhaps, to damaging attention to skill execution. We also suggest that choking may sometimes involve performance-impairing mechanisms other than distraction or self-focus.! ! Keywords: skill; choking under pressure; self-focus; distraction; situation appraisal; sport psychology.! ! Putting Pressure on Theories of Choking: ! towards an expanded perspective on breakdown in skilled performance! ! ! 1 Introduction! Elite performers in sport and other skill domains know that things can go wrong in an extraordinary variety of ways. The conditions for successful performance under pressure are fragile. Yet experts continue to train, commit, make sacrifices, plan, adapt, and believe. And sometimes, at least, they excel. When they do not, when hopes are dashed or potential unfulfilled, underperformance is often subtle, its sources mysterious.! ! Often, expert performers will bounce back from temporary adversity, backing themselves, coming back stronger. The mere incidence of an unexpected technical failing or one strategic error does not itself inevitably bring either sudden crashing performance breakdown, or a slow slide into mediocrity. Whatever complex factors initiate impairment in skill execution, what sometimes seems to make or break performance is the psychological impact of that first surprising setback, the expert's affective and cognitive appraisal of trouble under pressure. Notoriously in elite sport, different individuals can respond to similar situations in very different ways. A rare new challenging opportunity which affords visceral excitement for one can elicit in another a dark sense of threat or self-doubt. In different ways and at different timescales, the effects of a struggle or reversal can sometimes magnify and iterate, as once effortlessly integrated skills fragment in novel, cascading motor-cognitive misalignments.! ! In the extreme, acute or catastrophic deterioration in performance can result. These rarer cases attract a great deal of attention among pundits and theorists. There is an awful, sad drama in the disintegration of movement routines and skills which are usually smooth and flowing, whether it happens all of a sudden at some final hurdle, or more gradually as glory drains away. One cricket bowler who had suffered dramatic and unexpected performance impairment said 'in all my sport I've never experienced anything so terrifying, thinking "I can't do this"' (Bawden & Maynard 2001, p. 941). This is embodied cognition in the raw, with emotion and personality, kinesthesis and physiology, discipline and drives all affected together and on show. Interest in the diverse phenomena often given the labels 'choking' and 'the yips' springs not only from prurient fascination with public breakdown, but also from a wish to understand and intervene. This drives a quest among sports scientists and (increasingly) cognitive theorists more generally to identify the key mechanisms behind choking under pressure.! ! We harbour some doubts about the unity or coherence of the phenomena labelled 'choking' across different sports and contexts by practitioners, coaches, and the media. The idea that 'choking' marks a clear, well-defined explanatory target might not be right: discourse about choking, perhaps like talk about 'flow', may be partly constructed in the course of other social and communicative activities, rather than simply describing a distinctive set of psychological or biomechanical processes. We'll argue here that, at the least, choking is likely to be substantially more complex than current theories recognize. Indeed, one crucial problem with the current debate is that it suffers from a poorly developed characterization of the explanandum.! ! A further challenge and opportunity is that a plausible account of choking under pressure needs to be integrated with our understanding of the nature of expertise and skilled movement. It may also help us address more general questions about cognition and agency. The influential theories of skill learning offered by Fitts & Posner (1967) and Dreyfus & Dreyfus (1986) differ in many other respects, but share the overall idea that skill acquisition involves a transition from cognitively demanding control to intuitive response entirely unmediated by higher cognition. Theorists in these distinct psychological and philosophical traditions often point out, rightly, that increased self-focus can sometimes disrupt skilled movement execution. Paying attention to, increasing awareness of, or seeking extra cognitive control over the component parts of a grooved movement sequence can sometimes fragment smooth action. Self-focus theories, though differing in detail, generalize from this observation to suggest that well-learned motor expertise is always and essentially automated. The idea that skill is automatic then lends itself naturally to a picture of choking, or performance failure under pressure, as caused by attention to the performance of the skill, the inappropriate intervention of awareness or top-down control. Thus, Baumeister (1984) claims that performance pressure is experienced when a high level of importance is placed on performing well, and choking arises because this draws the individual's attention to the processes involved in the skill, which impairs automatic control. Masters (1992) and Beilock & Carr (2001) develop similar accounts, which we assess below. And though he rejects it as an explanation of choking, Papineau (this issue) accepts a self-focus account of the yips.! ! In the extreme, these self-focus accounts thus leave no room for any beneficial form of self-awareness or cognitive control in online, real-time expert performance. In this respect, they fit with pervasive practitioners' lore about the dangers of 'overthinking'. They deny the possibility that any kind of swift, flexible, on-the-fly dynamic cognitive activity can effectively shape expert performance in the heat of competition. Indeed, theorists and sportspeople often treat 'thinking' as synonymous with debilitating, slow, effortful cognitive processes such as worrying.! ! In contrast, we believe that online expert performance in sensorimotor domains like sport is neither fully automatic nor insulated from cognitive processing, which we do not equate either with anxiety or with deliberate, conscious reflection. Instead, we have argued, skilled performance typically depends on cognition, rests on resistance to automation, the capacity to uncouple chunked routines when required, and involves active, dynamic, condensed, context-sensitive forms of cognitive control and 'thinking': expert attention can roam or float at very fast timescales across distinct levels of the integrated sensorimotor system, making subtle adjustments on the fly to everything from strategy to fine-grained motor processes (Sutton 2007; Geeves et al. 2008, 2014; Sutton et al 2011; McIlwain & Sutton 2014). Skill experience is rich and various, and is neither exhausted nor typified by the cases or contexts in which grooved action sequences are disrupted by attention to the details of movement execution (Christensen, Sutton, & McIlwain, submitted). Expert performers regularly face new challenges and unexpected forms of pressure without choking. They constantly go beyond their particular past experiences. They have flexible repertoires of embodied skill which help them adapt to new opponents or team-mates, unpredictable environments, hostile crowds, injury, extreme emotion, or strange weather. Elite athletes value highly the ability to generalize skills to increasingly challenging conditions, and often structure training regimes around preparing to cope effectively outside their 'comfort zone'. Such variability is entirely to be expected: challenging and more or less unfamiliar conditions are just part of the deal at these levels of performance. This is one reason that leaving performance – even online, on-the-fly performance – up to automated motor processes alone is unlikely to be sufficient to ground sustained expertise in dynamic domains. Rather, the alignment or integration of cognitive and motor processes at a range of timescales will sometimes need to be flexibly adjusted to changing circumstances.! ! Like most contributors to this issue, we begin our discussion of choking under pressure with a dichotomy entrenched in the literature between the 'self-focus' approaches just mentioned, and competing 'distraction' theories'. The 'selffocus' approach dominates contemporary research on choking in sporting skill, and has produced a significant body of empirical research in recent years. Much of our paper critically assesses the self-focus approach, but we also argue for a more encompassing approach to choking that goes beyond current theories, addressing a broader range of phenomena. The causes of choking are likely to be complex. Current theories focus on only a part of the phenomenon they are trying to explain, and aren't sufficiently well elaborated to provide strong support for their key claims. In particular, they do not clearly address the problem of explaining why only some performers choke under pressure, and only on some occasions. So they fail to build frameworks rich enough to explain the variation in the occurrence of choking in real performance situations. Our constructive contribution identifies some elements for a more encompassing theory. These include an account of three things: the features of pressure situations that influence the psychological response; the processes of situation appraisal that addresses the problem of why some are more prone to choking than others; and the ways that attentional control can be overwhelmed, leading to distraction in some cases, and in others, perhaps, to damaging attention to skill execution. We also suggest that choking may involve performance-impairing mechanisms other than distraction or self-focus.! ! Developing a more comprehensive theory of choking with high levels of predictive and explanatory adequacy will be challenging. But it is important to characterize what a good theory would be like, both because it helps us to see more clearly the limitations of current approaches, and because it helps us to identify directions for improvement. We think one key lesson to be drawn is that the construction of such a theory will require a much closer engagement between empirical and theoretical research. On the one hand, philosophers interested in expertise need firm, critical immersion in the diverse and often conflicting bodies of empirical work on sport in order to build systematic theory. Empirical results and experimental design must be evaluated in detail. Philosophical theory needs grounding that goes well beyond anecdotes about Chuck Knoblauch and popular science books. The research of basic and applied sports psychologists is rich and theoretically sophisticated, and should be a primary point of reference for philosophical skill theory. Work in this field not only incorporates and attunes constantly to changing currents in mainstream cognitive scientific theory and practice, but is often in advance of more basic research in synthesizing or reconciling diverse methods and approaches (advanced ways in to a few strands of research include Williams, Davids, & Williams 1999; Starkes & Ericsson 2003; Williams & Hodges 2004; Farrow, Baker & MacMahon 2013). Constructively, philosophers can play a vital role in homing in on relevant, undernoticed features of the real-world phenomena of interest, and in developing integrative theory.! ! On the other hand, experimental scientists working on skill need to assess the gap between the controlled but artificial conditions of laboratory research and the complex circumstances of real-world choking, and to specify the steps required to bridge that gap. Richer descriptions of real cases of choking and allied phenomena are needed alongside and informing experimental studies, with closer attention to interrelations or feedback between biomechanical, cognitive, affective, and mood factors over time. In addition to the betterknown experimental literature, qualitative studies of choking have produced distinctive results, which we discuss briefly in section 4 below, though we must postpone a fuller treatment of the intriguing substantive and methodological questions they raise.! ! By putting pressure on what are currently sometimes rather thin accounts of the cognition and biomechanics of choking, we can acknowledge the potential relevance of more idiosyncratic features of personal history, motivation, and the capacity to engage reflectively with emotional experience. The highlyskilled expert performer is not only a uniquely-honed machine, but has also acquired a distinctive, expanded form of agency. The cooperative, interactive, looping mesh of strategic cognitive processes with lower-order motor control mechanisms is fragile and can go wrong at many levels and timescales. We seek to identify some relevant parameters, so that questions about their interrelations can be addressed more explicitly in future research. We hope this moves us a little further towards a rich, integrated picture of both the effective operation and the breakdown of skilled agency.! ! ! 2 Self-focus approaches to choking in sensorimotor skills! ! 2.1 Self-focus theories! ! 2.1.1 The conceptual framework! Baumeister & Showers (1986) presented a conceptual framework for research on choking which was based on the main kinds of approach prevalent at the time. This framework distinguishes between drive and attentional theories of choking, and between self-focus and distraction attentional theories. Baumeister & Showers dismiss drive theories as lacking explanatory and predictive ability (pp. 363-5 & pp. 375-7), and propose that the central theoretical concern of research on choking should be with articulating and comparing self-focus and distraction theories (p. 376). They claim that each of these types of theory might explain some forms of choking, and also note that self-focus and distraction might both make a contribution to choking (p. 376). Subsequent research has followed and elaborated on this framework, and a substantial body of empirical work has attempted to test comparatively selffocus and distraction accounts of choking in sporting and related sensorimotor skills. For recent reviews see Beilock & Gray (2007) and Hill et al. (2010b). ! ! In basic structure, self-focus theories claim that performance pressure creates self-consciousness, and this causes the individual to attend to and attempt to control the motor processes involved in performing the task, disrupting automated motor processes and thereby causing poorer performance. We'll call this the basic self-focus model (figure 1a). Conversely, distraction theories are said to claim that performance pressure generates worries about the situation which compete in working memory with the control operations that govern task performance, impairing those processes and, consequently, performance. We'll call this the basic distraction model (figure 1b). Figure 1a.! Figure 1b.! ! 2.1.2 Baumeister's self-focus theory! Baumeister's (1984) theory of choking has the core structure depicted in figure 1a, with several additional features (figure 2). Baumeister characterizes performance pressure as any factor or combination of factors that increase the importance of performing well on a particular occasion (p. 610). He characterizes choking as inferior performance that occurs in response to pressure (p. 610). Baumeister's model of choking (pp. 610-11) proposes that choking occurs because pressure increases self-consciousness. He describes both physiological and cognitive mechanisms as contributing to this process, with heightened arousal possibly responsible for increased selfconsciousness, accompanied by a cognitive realization that it is important that The basic self-focus model performance pressure self-consciousness attention to and control of motor execution disruption of automatic motor processes 0 1 2 3 impaired performance (choking)4 The basic distraction model performance pressure worries about the situation reduced working memory available for task control task control imperfectly implemented 0 1 2 3 impaired performance (choking)4 the behavior is executed correctly. This prompts an attempt to consciously monitor and control the motor processes involved in the behavior, such as the coordination and precision of the muscle movements. However, 'consciousness' lacks the knowledge required for this type of control, with the ironic effect that performance quality is reduced. Baumeister & Showers' (1986) further specify that conscious attention disrupts or inhibits automated motor processes.! Figure 2.! ! In addition, Baumeister & Showers (1986) identify a number of forms of performance pressure and features of the situation and individual that may play a role in 'mediating' choking. These include reward contingency, punishment contingency, ego-relevance, task complexity, efficacy expectancies, anxiety, self-consciousness, skill level, and self-esteem Baumeister & Showers do not systematize these conceptualizations of potential features of choking in the form of a structured explanation or model so they can't be considered part of a theory. They are, rather, a collection of ideas that might be relevant to understanding choking. ! ! 2.1.3 Masters' reinvestment theory! Like Baumeister (1984), Masters (1992) characterizes choking as performance failure under pressure, and claims that choking occurs as a Baumeister's (1984) self-focus model performance pressure arousal self-consciousness awareness of importance of correct execution conscious attention to and control of motor execution disruption of automated motor processes incompetence of consciousness for motor control (inadequate knowledge) impaired performance (choking) 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 result of attention to motor execution (p. 345). He identifies the mechanism responsible for performance impairment as the disruption of the automated processes that normally produce the action (p. 344). Masters differs from Baumeister in claiming that explicit knowledge about the skill plays a critical role in promoting efforts to consciously control the skill (figure 3a). Specifically, Masters claims that when under pressure the performer begins to think about how they are executing the skill, and tries to control it using explicit knowledge of its mechanics (p. 345). He calls this a 'reinvestment' of knowledge in skill control because it involves applying the knowledge that was employed for skill control at earlier stages of skill learning. This leads Masters to propose that skills acquired in distracting conditions which prevent the acquisition of explicit knowledge about the skill will be less susceptible to choking (p. 345).! ! Figure 3a. Masters' (1992) 'reinvestment' model performance pressure thoughts about how the skill is being executed efforts to control motor execution using knowledge of mechanics of execution disruption of automated processes responsible for execution impaired performance (choking) less knowledge results in less capacity for conscious control 0 1 2 3 4 ! Figure 3b.! ! The presentation of 'reinvestment theory' by Masters & Maxwell (2008) adds some additional features to the account and expands its scope. Rather than being a theory of choking in particular, Masters & Maxwell intend reinvestment theory as an explanation for performance impairment in sensorimotor skills in a wide range of contexts. Pressure is listed as only one of many contingencies that can produce self-focus induced impairment, and many of the examples they discuss, such as self-focus after injury, are not responses to performance pressure in the sense intended by Baumeister.! ! The various ideas described by Masters & Maxwell as part of their account are not easy to integrate into a single coherent model. They describe three different things that can influence attention to motor processes – goal-based performance evaluation, propensity for self-focus, and explicit skill knowledge – and it isn't clear how these all relate to each other. Masters & Maxwell claim that in the context of performance pressure the individual evaluates their performance relative to their goals, and if it is not satisfactory they increase self-regulation (p. 160). This will presumably take the form of the conscious control of motor processes. Propensity for self-focus also increases the Masters & Maxwell's (2008) 'reinvestment' model performance pressure direction of attention to motor processes reinvestment 1: skill knowledge used to monitor motor processes reinvestment 2: skill knowledge used to control motor processes disruption of automated processes responsible for execution impaired performance less knowledge results in less capacity for conscious control regression to an earlier form of skill control less knowledge results in less ability to think about motor processes propensity for self-focus goal-based evaluation of performance 0 1 2 3 4 5 likelihood that the individual will focus on and attempt to control motor processes. In addition, explicit skill knowledge affects attention to and control of motor processes. Figure 3b is one interpretation of how these could operate together. Here, skill knowledge is depicted as playing a role after the initial direction of attention to motor processes, but it's also possible that it would influence the direction of attention. Figure 3b characterizes explicit skill knowledge as contributing to the ongoing capacity to monitor and control motor execution. The effect of the reinvestment of skill knowledge in control is disruption of automatic motor processes and a regression to an earlier stage of skill development (p. 164). Like Baumeister & Showers, Masters & Maxwell list a range of factors that can affect choking, but which do not form a systematic part of their theory.! ! 2.1.4 Beilock & Carr's explicit monitoring theory! Beilock & Carr's (2001) account largely follows that of Baumeister. They describe self-focus theories as claiming that performance pressure raises selfconsciousness and anxiety, which increases attention to the step-by-step control of skill processes. This disrupts proceduralized motor programs (p. 701). They use a characterization of the disruption of motor processes that they attribute to Masters (1992), but they don't adopt Masters' claim that knowledge about the skill plays a strong role in the capacity for monitoring and control of motor processes. Here they follow Baumeister in claiming that extended experience performing in conditions of self-focus should protect against choking rather than increase susceptibility. ! ! Beilock & Carr suggest that 'explicit monitoring' is a better label than 'selffocus' for this kind of theory because the key mechanism that is postulated to be responsible for choking is the direction of attention to the processes of skill execution (p. 701). We think this attempted clarification is a mistake, however, because the 'self-consciousness' described by Baumeister incorporates a broader 'self' than just the motor processes of action production. Baumeister & Showers are especially clear in emphasizing that the individual takes into account performance goals and other aspects of the personal, situated self when judging under pressure that it is important to execute the actions involved in the task correctly. Goal-based performance evaluation is also part of Masters & Maxwell's account.! ! Formulated as a model, Beilock & Carr's account is in essence the same as that depicted in figure 1a, with some minor differences in wording. They emphasize monitoring of motor performance, and Jackson et al. (2006, p. 64) and Hill et al. (2010b, p. 27) see this as an important conceptual difference from Masters' account, with the latter emphasizing conscious control. However, Beilock & Carr don't draw a clear distinction between conscious monitoring and conscious control, and it's not clear from their account that monitoring and control are markedly distinct sources of impairment. ! ! Another important feature of Beilock & Carr's account is that they describe the mechanisms posited by self-focus and distraction theories as "complete opposites". They suggest that the two theories may have different domains of application, with distraction theory applying to skills that rely on working memory, and self-focus theories applying to automated skills whose control structures operate outside working memory (p. 701). Beilock & Gray (2007) provide a more detailed characterization of this distinction that is worth quoting in full:! It is important to note that it does not seem to be merely a cognitive versus motor distinction that predicts how a skill will fail under pressure. That is, just because one is performing an academically based cognitive task does not mean this task will show signs of failure via pressure-induced distraction. Likewise, sports skills do not necessarily fail via pressureinduced explicit monitoring. Rather, it appears to be the manner in which skills utilize online attentional resources that dictates how they will fail (though often, this is related to skill domain). Thus, sports skills that make heavy demands on working memory, such as strategizing, problem solving, and decision making (i.e., skills that involve considering multiple options simultaneously and updating information in real time), will likely fail as a result of pressure-induced working memory consumption, similar to a working memory-dependent academic task. In contrast, motor skills that run largely outside of working memory (e.g., a highly practiced golf putt or baseball swing) will fail when pressure-induced attention disrupts automated control processes. (Beilock & Gray 2007, p. 434, emphases added.)! ! This contrast echoes Baumeister & Showers' claim, described above, that each of the types of theory may explain some forms of choking, but is more specific and sharply drawn. Baumeister & Showers emphasize at a number of points that the two types of approach can overlap, and they note that on some views self-focus is a form of distraction. Beilock on the other hand predominantly emphasizes the idea that the forms of explanation are distinct and apply to different domains, although Beilock & Gray do note that there could be hybrid forms of skill that involve both automated motor control and cognitive processes that perform strategic control functions, and they suggest that in such cases choking could involve both self-focus and distraction (p. 434). ! ! 2.1.5 Summary! In sum, the core idea sketched in figure 1a is popular, and several theories have been based on it. These various accounts differ in their details and emphasis, with Baumeister being concerned with the psychological processes of personal self-consciousness that induce motor self-focus, Masters emphasizing the deleterious effects of the acquisition of explicit skill knowledge, and Beilock & Carr drawing a strong contrast between self-focus and distraction theories that sees them as having markedly different domains. ! ! 2.2 Experimental research! A substantial body of research has been conducted that has tested and developed the self-focus view of choking. We'll concentrate here on the research performed by Sian Beilock, Rob Gray and collaborators because it constitutes the most developed body of experimental research in support of the self-focus account of choking. There are other important bodies of experimental work that are relevant, including Wulf's research on the effects of attention on the performance of motor skills (Wulf 2007), but we won't consider this here for reasons of space and because it is less directly concerned with choking.! ! The research by Beilock and Gray appears to support the picture presented by Beilock & Carr (2001), including the existence of a strong distinction between automated and non-automated skills, and, accordingly, between the domains of applicability of self-focus and distraction theories. More specifically, the research appears to show an overall pattern of dissociation in performance patterns that is summarized in table 1. Individuals performing tasks that clearly rely on working memory, such as mathematical problem solving, or sensorimotor tasks for which they are novices, show the patterns of performance expected for tasks that are dependent on working memory, while individuals performing sensorimotor tasks at which they are expert show the performance patterns expected for automated sensorimotor skills.! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Table 1.! ! Performance attributes Automated sensorimotor skills WM-dependent skills dual-task performance tolerant impaired pressure that creates distraction tolerant impaired instructed self-focus impaired tolerant pressure that induces selffocus impaired tolerant episodic memory reduced enhanced novice-expert differences strong differences: novices show WM-dependence; expertise strengthens the characteristics associated with automation not examined 2.2.1 Experimental conditions! The experimental demonstration of this pattern is based on the comparison of the performance of a skill in different conditions, and comparison between experts and novices. Fairly standard conditions have been employed, and in order to evaluate the results of the experiments we need to consider in detail the nature of the conditions, which are as follows.! ! Primary tasks! The primary tasks used are often versions of a real-world skill adapted for the requirements of the experiment. Thus, in Beilock & Carr's (2001) experiment 1 participants performed golf putts in the laboratory on a carpet, aiming to make the ball stop at a target 1.5 meters away (p. 704). Gray (2004) used a simulated baseball batting task in which participants swung a baseball bat at a virtual ball that was displayed on a screen as coming towards them (p. 44). ! ! DeCaro et al. (2011) employed artificial tasks thought to depend either on working memory or on procedural memory. Two were categorization tasks: ! 'rule-based' categorization depends on explicit cognitive processing in working memory, while 'information-integration' categorization is thought to be based on procedural memory (Ashby & O'Brien 2005). They also employed the serial reaction time task (SRTT), which is a simple sensorimotor task that involves implicit learning.! ! Single task conditions! In a single task condition only the primary task is performed.! ! Extraneous dual-task conditions! In addition to the primary task, participants perform a secondary task that is designed to draw attention away from the primary task. This can be taken to provide a test for the distraction approach to choking inasmuch as the secondary task can be viewed as mimicking the effects of distraction on performance posited by the basic distraction model (figure 1b). In Beilock & Carr (2001) experiment 3 the secondary task involved monitoring a recorded list of words for a target word (p. 716). In Gray (2004) experiment 1 the secondary task involved monitoring tones that were presented at random times during the batting task. The tones were of a high or low frequency and the participant had to report whether the tone was high or low (p. 45). ! ! Skill-focus conditions! Participants are either instructed to focus on the execution of the skill or perform a secondary task that requires attention to the execution of the skill. Beilock et al. (2002) experiment 2 involved a primary task in which participants dribbled a soccer ball through a slalom course. Tones were presented randomly and at the time a tone occurred participants had to report whether they had just touched the ball with the inside or outside of their foot (pp. 10-11). Gray (2004) presented tones during the batting task, as with the extraneous condition, but required the participants to report whether the bat was moving upwards or downwards at the time the tone occurred by saying "up" or "down". ! ! Pressure conditions! Participants perform the primary task in the context of a scenario designed to create performance pressure. Using golf putting as the primary task, Beilock & Carr (2001) employed a pressure condition in which the participant was told they would receive $5 if they improved their performance by 20% in the next set of putts. The individual was also told that the reward was based on team effort, they had been paired with a second participant, and that both needed to achieve the performance target to receive the prize. The participant was then told that the second person had already completed the task and had achieved the 20% performance improvement. Gray (2004) employed a very similar pressure condition with baseball batting as the primary task; the improvement criterion was 15% and the prize was $20.! ! DeCaro et al. (2011) distinguished between outcome and monitoring pressure conditions. The outcome pressure condition was the same as the pressure condition used by Beilock & Carr (2001) (the prize was slightly more: $10). In the monitoring pressure condition the participants were told that their performance would be videotaped, and that students and professors would view the footage to see how people perform the skill. In addition, the video might be used as part of a film that would be distributed to universities nationally (p. 396). ! ! 2.2.2 Results! The results from this research appear to conform to the overall pattern shown in table 1. We can group the findings according to the main question that they address.! ! Are complex motor skills like golf putting automated?! In an effort to show this Beilock & Carr (2001) performed a novice-expert comparison of memory for performance using a golf-putting task. Immediately after completing a round of putts participants were given a questionnaire designed to elicit episodic memories for the last putt performed. Beilock & Carr (2001) found that experts had reduced memory for performance compared with novices, as expected for an automated sensorimotor skill.! ! Are these skills impaired by self-focus and tolerant of distraction?! For the soccer dribbling task Beilock et al. (2002) showed in experts a pattern of tolerance for the extraneous dual-task condition and impairment in the skillfocus condition, just as would be expected for an automated motor skill. They also showed a clear novice-expert distinction, with novices harmed by distraction but unaffected by the skill-focus condition. Gray (2004) found a similar pattern using the baseball batting task: experts tolerated distraction but were impaired by the skill-focus condition, while novices were impaired by distraction and unaffected by the skill-focus condition. ! ! Are these skills impaired by performance pressure?! As part of a more complex experiment, Beilock & Carr (2001) found that participants who had been trained on the golf putting task showed impaired performance when subjected to the pressure condition. Gray (2004) likewise found that the batting performance of the baseball experts deteriorated during the pressure condition.! ! Is the impairment in response to pressure caused by self-focus?! Gray (2004) found that when performing the baseball batting task under pressure participants were better at the skill-focus judgment task than in low pressure conditions. In contrast, their accuracy on the extraneous judgment task was unaffected. He interpreted this as showing that skill-focused attention is greater under pressure.! ! Do different kinds of pressure have selective effects?! According to Beilock & Carr's account choking in non-automated skills is caused by distraction, and in automated skills is caused by self-focus. For this to be right it must be the case that performance pressure can cause both distraction and self-focus. This raises the possibility that particular forms of performance pressure might tend to specifically induce distraction or selffocus, and that these forms of pressure would selectively impair nonautomated and automated skills, respectively. The results of DeCaro et al. (2011) supported this. They found that outcome pressure harmed the task thought to depend on working memory (rule-based classification), but not the tasks thought to be based on procedural memory (information-integration classification and the SRTT). Monitoring pressure had the opposite effect, harming information-integration classification and the SRTT but not rulebased classification.! ! Thus, a significant body of research has yielded what to first appearances seems to be a consistent set of results that fit the pattern summarized in table 1 and support the central claims of the self-focus approach.! ! 3 Problems with this research! There are, however, a number of problems with these studies. In this section we'll examine several problems which limit the empirical support that they provide for self-focus theory. First, the research doesn't compare self-focus theory with the most developed contemporary versions of distraction theory. Second, these studies don't directly test the central claims of self-focus theory. Third, the research is conflicted: on close examination, similar experimental conditions have yielded contradictory results and been given contradictory interpretations. Fourth, the poor ecological validity of the experiments means that it is unsafe to use them as a basis for conclusions about real-world choking. ! ! 3.1 Failure to compare self-focus theory with the most developed forms of distraction theory! The studies described above are conceptually framed as comparisons of selffocus and distraction theories of choking, and they appear to support the selffocus approach by showing that expert performance of automated skills is impaired by the skill-focus and pressure conditions, but not the extraneous dual-task conditions. As we noted above, the extraneous dual-task conditions can be interpreted as a test for the basic distraction model. However, these studies don't address more developed distraction theories, which differ in significant ways from the basic distraction model. ! ! Eysenck & Calvo's (1992) processing efficiency theory (PET) extends the basic distraction model by introducing a concept of compensatory effort (figure 4a). According to this account performance anxiety generates worries which take up working memory resources. But in addition to this, worry can prompt compensatory effort that increases the resources devoted to the task and may initiate remedial strategies (pp. 415-6). If this effort is not sufficient, then performance will be impaired. Attentional control theory (ACT) (figure 4b) is a further development of processing efficiency theory (Eysenck et al. 2007). According to this account anxiety is experienced when there is a threat to a current goal, and this has a number of effects on attention. It directs attention to the source of the threat, and it alters the balance of influence between two attentional systems: a top-down goal-directed system and a bottom-up stimulus-driven system (p. 338). The influence of the bottom-up system is increased, and the effect of this is to reduce the ability to inhibit task-irrelevant information. As with processing efficiency theory, compensatory effort can mitigate performance impairment, but will fail when resources are insufficient for the demands of the task.! Figure 4a.! Figure 4b.! ! The differences between these theories and the basic distraction model have at least two important implications for the research described above. Firstly, PET would not necessarily predict that distraction will affect performance in Processing efficiency theory performance anxiety worries about the situation reduced working memory available for task control task control imperfectly implemented 0 1 2 3 compensatory effort4 impaired performance resources insufficient 5 Attentional control theory performance anxiety attention to the source of the threat reduced focus on the task task control imperfectly implemented 0 1 2 3 compensatory effort4 impaired performance resources insufficient 5 reduced ability to inhibit task-irrelevant information these conditions because of the role of compensatory effort, but it might predict that distraction will affect performance in more realistic, demanding performance conditions. We'll discuss this further below. Secondly, the extraneous dual-task conditions do not provide a good model for the kind of distraction that ACT proposes occurs in choking. The extraneous dual-task conditions have no emotional significance; they simply load working memory with cognitive processes irrelevant to the primary task. In contrast, according to ACT perceived threat has a biasing effect on attentional control. While the capacity limits of working memory play a role in ACT, the impairing effects of distraction are not solely caused by the overloading of working memory. ! ! More specifically, in the case of a non-emotionally significant secondary task, compensatory effort can be used to re-organize cognitive processes to improve efficiency and reduce interference between the tasks. Significant performance impairment should occur only when working memory capacity is exceeded and performance of task control processes breaks down. In contrast, according to ACT a salient threat, such as the prospect of an embarrassing failure, will tend to draw attention to the threat. Compensatory effort can be used in an effort to counter this distraction, but interference to normal task control can occur even when working memory is not overloaded. Thus, to put it simply, the kind of distraction created by a secondary task with no emotional significance is quite different to the kind of distraction created by threat, at least as this is characterized by ACT. ! ! Since these studies don't provide a proper contrast between the self-focus approach and the most advanced distraction theories, the extent to which they can be taken as providing support for the self-focus approach in comparison with the distraction approach is correspondingly limited. ! ! One reason why distraction theories may not have been considered in detail in this research is because the dominant view is that motor skills are largely automated, and it is consequently not expected that they will be sensitive to distraction. PET and ACT are intended to explain the effects of anxiety on cognitive tasks that rely on working memory (Eysenck & Calvo 1992, p. 414, Eysenck et al. 2007, p. 336), so based on the background view of motor skills it would seem unlikely that these distraction theories apply in the motor domain. This is an unsatisfactory situation, however, because it creates a circularity that reduces the value of the evidence. Distraction is considered an unlikely cause of choking in motor skills, only perfunctory tests of distractionbased explanation are performed, and it is concluded that distraction does not cause choking in motor skills.! ! 3.2 Absence of direct tests for the central claims of self-focus theory! The research described above supports a number of elements of Beilock & Carr's self-focus account, and the apparent consistency of the overall pattern seems to provide strong abductive support for this account. That is, Beilock & Carr's self-focus theory would seem to provide a better explanation for this pattern of evidence than any apparent rival. It is nevertheless important to recognize that the research doesn't directly test the key claims of this account. As outlined above, we interpret Beilock & Carr's version of self-focus theory to include the basic self-focus model (figure 1a), a strong distinction between automated and non-automated skills, and the view that complex motor skills like golf putting and baseball batting are automated.! ! We can characterise the basic self-focus model as making two defining claims:! 1. (a) Performance pressure causes self-consciousness, which directs attention to motor execution. (b) Attention to motor execution disrupts automatic motor processes, impairing performance.! 2. The mechanism described by C1 is responsible for the performance impairment that occurs in choking.! ! C1 incorporates two sub-claims, which themselves include sub-claims. We group them this way because together they describe a complete mechanism for performance impairment. C2 asserts that this mechanism is responsible for the performance impairment that occurs in choking. Because C1 and C2 express the core ideas of the basic self-focus model, accepting or rejecting the model hinges on accepting or rejecting these two claims. Accordingly, the most informative and compelling empirical tests for the theory will be direct tests of these claims. Tests of component claims made by the basic self-focus model, or background claims made by the larger theory, are inherently less informative and so provide weaker support.! ! 3.2.1 The demonstration argument! One way to conceptualize this is in terms of an idealized argument for the basic self-focus model, which we'll call the demonstration argument. This argument proceeds in three steps, each based on direct empirical tests for key claims. The tests involved in each step would involve comparisons between predictions of the basic self-focus model and fully elaborated versions of the most plausible alternative accounts. Step 1 shows that attention to motor execution can impair performance. Step 2 establishes that this mechanism is responsible for performance impairments that occur in response to performance pressure. That is, steps 1 and 2 together establish C1. Step 3 shows that this mechanism causes choking. That is, it establishes C2. ! ! The experiments employing the skill-focus conditions succeed fairly convincingly in establishing step 1 of this argument: they show that attention to motor execution can impair performance. But this is not sufficient to establish C1. For this it must be shown that impairments in response to pressure are caused by this mechanism. The closest to a direct test of C1 is Gray's experiment examining performance on skill-focused and extraneous judgments in the context of performance pressure. If the impairments of the primary task in response to pressure are caused by attention to execution then performance on the skill-focus judgment should improve in comparison with low pressure conditions, while performance on the extraneous judgment task should be unaffected. This is what Gray found. ! ! This experiment nevertheless doesn't provide a strong, direct test for C1 because it doesn't show causation, only correlation. Moreover, there are reasons why increased attention to execution might occur under pressure even when it isn't the primary cause of impairment. It might, for example, occur as a secondary effect of the performance impairment. In other words, the performance of the participants deteriorated under pressure, and this caused an increase in attention to execution. ! ! It's also notable that the research doesn't include any direct tests for C2. Performance impairment in response to pressure is choking according to Baumeister's definition, but this research has included no empirical validation of Baumeister's definition. There is consequently no clear empirical basis for claiming that the performance impairments produced in the laboratory constitute choking. Stronger explicit tests for C2 would involve using an empirically validated definition of choking as a basis for assessing effects found in the laboratory, and also direct investigation of real-world choking that probes the causal mechanisms involved.! ! The research thus fails to satisfy the criteria required by the demonstration argument. But it might be argued in response that the research substantially strengthens the plausibility of Beilock & Carr's theory of choking, even if it doesn't directly test the main claims of the basic self-focus model. That is, it provides the basis for a strong abductive argument for the self-focus theory of choking. ! ! 3.2.2 The indirect argument! A loose formulation of this argument, which we'll call the indirect argument, is as follows. The self-focus theory of choking sees the performance impairment that occurs in choking as arising from a disruption to automaticity, and is consequently closely linked to a widespread view that advanced stages of skill acquisition are marked by a high level of automaticity (Fitts & Posner 1967, Dreyfus & Dreyfus 1996). It may be the case that not all skills proceed to a high level of automaticity, but motor skills like golf putting and baseball batting are paradigm examples of skills that have been thought to automate. This view of skill learning and control lends a great deal of initial plausibility to the self-focus theory of choking, since automated skills should be disrupted by conscious attention and control, but tolerant of distraction. If these skills are tolerant of distraction then distraction is on the face of it an unlikely source of impairment during choking, which leaves conscious attention to execution as the strongest candidate for being the impairing mechanism.! ! The main force of the research is that it supports this picture and provides evidence for some specific claims of self-focus theory. The idea that motor skills such as golf putting and baseball batting are automated is supported by the experiments showing reduced memory for performance and tolerance for distraction. The experiments showing impairment in skill-focus conditions support the idea that attention to execution is disruptive. The experiments showing performance impairment in the pressure condition provide an initial basis for linking this mechanism to pressure. Since the skills have been shown to be tolerant of distraction it is likely that the performance impairments that occurred in the pressure conditions were caused by self-focus since this is the only other candidate mechanism. Gray's experiment showing elevated attention to execution in pressure conditions further strengthens this inference, even if it doesn't directly show that this attention is causing the impairment. And while the research may not have directly shown that this form of impairment is responsible for real-world choking, this is a reasonable conclusion to draw based on the overall set of results and the background theory. In other words, given this evidence together with the background theory, the self-focus theory of choking is more likely to explain choking in motor skills like golf putting than is any apparent alternative account. ! ! Furthermore, it could be argued, given the complexity of the phenomena and the difficulty of conducting controlled experiments on such phenomena, we should accept indirect abductive arguments like this. Insisting that we should only accept claims that have been directly tested would be requiring an epistemic standard that is unreasonable.! ! We agree that abductive arguments are a reasonable basis for accepting theories. Indeed, the interpretation of even the most 'direct' empirical tests relies on a conceptual background, so the evaluation of evidence is always abductive. The point of seeking empirical tests for theory that are as direct as possible is not to escape from a reliance on abduction, it is to strengthen the abductive case for the theory by providing the most direct checks possible on the assumptions and inferences that contribute to the abductive argument. A complex argument like the indirect argument is inevitably vulnerable to potentially faulty assumptions and inferences. If there are few or no direct empirical tests of the main claims of the theory then we need to be appropriately cautious in our regard for the theory. Including tests of the main claims that are as direct as possible doesn't eliminate the potential for error but it does increase confidence. ! ! 3.2.3 Potential weaknesses of the indirect argument! There are, moreover, a number of possible weaknesses in the indirect argument. At the conceptual base of the account, there is room to doubt that working memory really plays little role in the performance of motor skills like golf putting. The view that these skills are largely automatic is widespread, but as Papineau (this issue) observes, it is also fairly evident to practitioners that "having one's mind right" plays an important role in good performance. Doubt about whether motor skills are strongly automatic raises the possibility that distraction might contribute to choking in motor skills, and since this research has not carefully examined and tested distraction-based explanations it doesn't provide a strong basis for ruling them out. ! ! There is also room to doubt that distraction and self-focus are the only two mechanisms of impairment that should be seriously investigated as potential causes of choking. Reasonable prima facie plausibility can be given to other potential mechanisms. For instance, very strong negative emotional arousal might interfere with normal task control by altering processing in the sensory and motor systems. Choking might also potentially involve reduced task effort because of perceived low prospects for success, or fear of an embarrassing outcome. And so on. The background theory that the indirect argument relies on simply doesn't consider such possibilities so it doesn't provide any argument against them, and the experimental research provides no basis for ruling them out.! ! The strength of the indirect argument is also affected by the consistency of the evidence and the ecological validity of the experiments. The apparent consistency of the evidence suggests that the methods are reliable and that the theory is productive, yielding numerous confirmed predictions. If there is inconsistency in the evidence, however, it will undermine confidence in the methods and theory. To view the evidence as supporting the background view of motor skills and the self-focus theory of choking also requires assuming that the results of the experiments can be generalized from the laboratory context to real-world performance. Doubts about the ecological validity of the experiments will reduce confidence in this generalization. We'll now argue that there are problems with the consistency and ecological validity of the research.! ! 3.3 Inconsistent results and interpretations! As described above, DeCaro et al. (2011) found that distinct forms of pressure had selective effects. What they called outcome pressure impaired a skill dependent on working memory, but did not impair skills thought to operate independently of working memory. What they called monitoring pressure impaired skills that were thought to be automated, but not a skill dependent on working memory. If we focus on the way the experiments are conceptualized they appear to extend the prior research, but when viewed more closely the experiments raise some serious difficulties. This is because the 'outcome' pressure condition used by DeCaro et al. (2011) is essentially the same as the pressure condition employed by Beilock & Carr (2001) and Gray (2004) to induce impairments in sensorimotor skills that are supposedly automated (golf putting and baseball batting). In other words, this pressure scenario did cause impairment to putatively automated skills in the experiments of Beilock & Carr (2001) and Gray (2004), where it is interpreted as causing attention to skill execution, but did not cause impairment to putatively automated skills in the experiments of DeCaro et al. (2011), where it is interpreted as causing distraction rather than attention to skill execution. ! ! This inconsistency is perplexing. Based on the earlier findings and their interpretation we should predict that the results of the DeCaro et al. experiments would be different to what they actually were. That is, the 'outcome' pressure condition should have caused attention to execution and impaired the skills thought to be automated. Conversely, if we accept the DeCaro et al. findings and their interpretation of them it is hard to understand why the Beilock & Carr (2001) and Gray (2004) studies obtained the results that they did. The pressure condition should have caused distraction, but not attention to execution, and should have had no effect on the putatively automated golf putting and baseball batting tasks. Consequently, we are unable to draw conclusions from any of the experiments involving the pressure condition; unless reasons can be found to reject some of these results we don't know which experiments to trust. ! ! If we have to set aside the results that involve the pressure condition the strength of support that the research contributes to the indirect argument is significantly weakened. We argued above that the research doesn't directly show that the performance impairments that occurred in the pressure condition were caused by attention to execution. Nevertheless, the evidence is suggestive. Without this evidence the research provides no empirical basis for drawing a link between performance impairments that result from attention to execution and impairments in response to pressure. This link can still be made based on the theoretical expectations for automated skills and the evidence that appears to show that golf putting and baseball batting are automated. But the research no longer provides empirical support for these expectations.! ! 3.4 Problems of ecological validity! The experimental research described above is intended to support conclusions about skill control and choking in real world conditions. But to draw such conclusions with confidence we need to be able give an account of how the experimental conditions are related to real-world conditions, specifying the grounds for taking particular experimental conditions as representative of real world conditions, and identifying dissimilarities that might affect our ability to generalize from the experimental results to skill in its real-world context. Ideally, the interpretation of a particular set of findings would take the form of an explicit bridging theory that specifies clearly how the findings relate to real-world phenomena.! ! Several researchers have raised concerns about the ecological validity of the tasks and attentional manipulations employed in laboratory-based experiments on choking, including Wilson et al. (2007), Gucciardi & Dimmock (2008) and Hill et al. (2010a). These criticisms have centered on the unusual nature of the skill-focus conditions and the general dissimilarity of the laboratory tasks in comparison with performance in real-world situations. Expanding on these points, we think that there are at least six areas where the ecological validity of the research is questionable: (1) the low difficulty and monotony of the tasks used to assess experts, (2) the unusual nature of the skill-focus conditions in comparison with patterns of attention we might expect in natural conditions, (3) the relatively low intensity of the pressure conditions, (4) the unusual nature of the context, (5) the relatively mild nature of the performance impairments found, and (6) the consistency of the performance impairments. ! ! 3.4.1 The unfamiliar nature of the context and task! In much of the experimental work we have just described, both the laboratory context and the tasks the participants are required to perform are unfamiliar and significantly dissimilar to the tasks that the athletes would perform as part of normal competition. For instance, the putting task employed by Beilock & Carr (2001) was in the laboratory on carpet, and involved making the ball stop at a target on the carpet (p. 704). The pressure condition described in section 2.2 has general features that are common – incentive to perform well and dependence of others on good performance – but in its specific features the scenario is quite unlike any that the individuals are likely to have encountered as part of their normal golf experience, and the nature of the 'team' and its criteria for success are distinctly odd. There is no obvious, intuitive rationale for composing and evaluating a team this way. ! ! The significance of this is that these experiments are intended to reveal the nature of skill control and responses to pressure that occur in real-world contexts. But elite athletes and other highly skilled individuals develop very specific performance techniques and strategies, such as pre-shot routines, which help them perform at a high level and cope with pressure. The unfamiliar and peculiar nature of the tasks makes it much less likely that they would draw on these techniques and strategies. If so, the experiments would then fail to reveal either the normal forms of control employed by the athletes, or the way that they would respond to pressure in real-world performance conditions.! ! 3.4.2 The low difficulty and monotony of the tasks used to assess experts! The difficulty of the tasks employed to assess expert performance has been very low in comparison with the performance conditions and pressure that experts normally experience when they are performing at a high level. For example, in Beilock and Carr's (2001) study golf experts were required to perform 70 putts on an indoor carpeted putting green from a fixed location 1.5 meters from the target. In Gray's (2004) experiments baseball experts were required to complete between three and five hundred trials attempting to hit a virtual ball, where there were only two kinds of pitches (fast and slow). In each case these are simple and monotonous conditions in comparison with the conditions experts face in high level competition. ! ! To generalize from the experimental conditions to the real-world skills we have to assume that the nature of skill control is unaffected by the difficulty and variability of performance conditions. This is very unlikely to be true. Thus, Beilock & Gray found that the experts performing golf putts experienced reduced episodic memory in comparison with novices ('expertise-induced amnesia'), while Gray found that the experts performing the baseball batting task were unaffected by a distracting secondary task. These are attributes expected of automated sensorimotor skills, as depicted in table 1. But there is room to doubt that these same effects would be found in performance conditions that are realistic and challenging for experts. That is, it may not be the case that an elite golfer will show reduced episodic memory for putts taken in the context of a competition on a challenging golf course against high quality opponents. Equally, the performance of a baseball player facing an 1 excellent pitcher in a complex game situation may well be impaired if the player were required to perform an irrelevant task while batting. ! ! This has implications for the comparison between self-focus and distraction theories. The finding that for these kinds of skills self-focus conditions impair performance but distraction doesn't seems to support the self-focus view applied to sensorimotor skills, at least if we restrict our understanding of distraction to the basic distraction model. But the experiments examine the skills in very easy conditions from an expert's point of view. If working memory makes a contribution to performance there are reasons to think that this contribution would be greatest in difficult conditions (see below). That is, we might expect experts to show much greater sensitivity to distraction in difficult conditions as compared with very easy conditions. These experiments thus leave open the possibility that distraction makes an important contribution to choking, given that real-world choking tends to occur in conditions that are highly demanding.! ! 3.4.3 The unusual nature of the skill-focus conditions! With regard to the unusual nature of the instructions used to get participants to focus on skill execution, the patterns of attention that are involved are Some anecdotal evidence suggests that there may be large individual differences in the nature of 1 individual experts瀞 memory for specific competitive performances, even within particular sports like golf and cricket (Sutton 2007). abnormal in comparison with the patterns of attention we might expect in normal performance, and may also differ from those that occur in choking. Thus, Beilock et al. (2002) asked soccer players to attend to the side of the foot that contacted the ball, while Gray (2004) instructed participants to attend to whether the bat was moving up or down at the point when a tone sounded. In one respect the unusual nature of these attentional instructions is not unreasonable: the hypothesis being investigated is that during choking the individual adopts an abnormal self-focused pattern of attention, and this impairs performance. However, the patterns of attention that are induced by these instructions might be different to the kinds of self-focus involved in choking, if indeed self-focus does play a role in choking. To generalize from the experimental conditions to real-world choking we need to assume either that all forms of self-focused attention are equivalent, and equivalently bad, or that these particular kinds of self-focus occur in choking. But both assumptions might be wrong.! ! An issue of concern to philosophers is whether these experiments support the view that skilled action is non-reflective. That is, can we reasonably infer from these experiments that reflective awareness plays no role in skilled action? The abnormal nature of the self-focus instructions makes this inference dubious. The fact that unusual forms of self-focus harm the performance of these skills in these (fairly simple) conditions doesn't show that selfawareness plays no role in sensorimotor skill. These experiments leave open the possibility that experts develop forms of self-awareness that assist action control. ! ! In general, we should expect that experts develop highly tuned patterns of attention (Sutton et al. 2011, Christensen et al. submitted). Because these patterns of attention will be finely structured we can't use crude, abnormal attentional instructions as an effective, sensitive assay for determining what the natural targets of expert attention are. Crude attentional instructions to focus on a particular target during performance can disrupt the performance even if the target forms part of the natural attentional pattern of the expert. For example, drivers use patterns of attention that are spread across multiple targets so as to allow them to maintain integrated awareness of the situation, monitoring their position in the lane, relations to nearby cars, and their instruments, checking speed in particular. It's quite likely that a driver who was instructed to look for red cars and identify their make would exhibit impaired driving performance, even though being aware of nearby cars is an important part of normal driving. !2 ! The fact that the skill-focus conditions employed in the experiments tend to differentially impair performance in comparison with extraneous distraction does indicate that these kinds of self-focus can be especially harmful compared with other unnatural attentional distortions. That is, the research shows convincingly that unnaturally induced self-focus is not just a kind of distraction. But the method employed is not sufficiently sensitive to be a reliable guide to the natural patterns of attention and awareness in experts. Indeed, we should distinguish self-awareness from self-consciousness and self-focus. In ordinary usage being self-conscious is usually interpreted as impairing and something to be avoided, but being self-aware in contrast is thought of as enabling and desirable. We suggest that this folk-conceptual distinction probably corresponds to distinct forms of attention that both include information about the self. ! ! Further, it's possible that this basic difference encompasses a variety of forms of self-perception. Thus, there may be forms of skill awareness that are distinct from skill self-consciousness, forms of motor awareness that are distinct from motor self-consciousness, and so on. The skill-focus conditions succeed in producing impairing forms of attention to the motor and bodily self, but this doesn't rule out the possibility that there are forms of body, motor and skill awareness that are beneficial for skilled performance.! ! Thanks to Barbara Montero for this example (personal communication).2 3.4.4 The low intensity of the pressure conditions! As we've discussed, the interpretation of the experiments involving the pressure condition is clouded by the inconsistency in the results. But even if this inconsistency is resolved, for example by providing grounds for viewing the findings of DeCaro et al. (2011) as anomalous, there are further problems with the ecological validity of the scenario employed in pressure condition. ! ! One of these problems is that the intensity of the pressure is much lower than the intensity of the performance pressure likely to be experienced in realworld choking. In the pressure condition some of the main consequences of failing to meet the performance criterion are missing out on a small money reward and disappointing an entirely nominal teammate. This is very mild pressure in comparison with high stakes performance situations, such as a trial to make the national team, or a soccer penalty shootout in which scoring will win the competition. In the latter case a whole year of effort by the entire team is at stake, with all the emotional significance of the social bonds to team mates that this involves, together with the very focused hopes of the team's fans. In the former case an entire career is at stake, along with what might be a decade of preparation for this opportunity. ! ! To generalize from the experimental conditions to real-world choking we need to assume that these large differences in the intensity and nature of the pressure don't affect the basic mechanisms in operation, but this may not be the case. It's likely that a sense of obligation to specific emotionally important others has different psychological effects to a somewhat arbitrarily imposed transient obligation to an unknown individual. It's also possible that severe stress has qualitatively distinct effects on cognitive and motor systems in comparison with mild stress. For instance, it may be that severe stress produces more generalized disorder and dysregulation, as well as feedback loops that generate cascading performance failures. ! ! In addition to low intensity, the incentive structure of the laboratory pressure conditions is predominantly negative, which makes generalization problematic because real-world performance situations can have a wide range of incentive structures. We discuss this issue in section 5.3 below.! ! 3.4.5 The mild nature of the performance impairments found! The issue of the low intensity of the pressure is related to the relatively small performance impairments found, which are modest in comparison with the severe performance breakdowns that can occur in cases of real-world choking. For example, Beilock & Carr (2001, p. 717) found that a single task group performing a putting task suffered an increase of 2.21 centimeters in the mean distance to the target in an 18 putt high pressure test in comparison with an immediately preceding 18 putt low pressure test, where the putting distance was between 1.2 and 1.5 meters from the target. This is not a striking performance decline, and, indeed, the performance of the group in the high pressure test was little different to their performance in the 18 putt bout preceding the low pressure test.! ! Hill et al. (2009) argue that the standard definition of choking taken from Baumeister (1984; Baumeister & Shower 1986) fails to capture the phenomenon as it occurs in real sporting contexts. Based on the views of experts in applied sports psychology who conducted research on anxiety and performance and who worked with athletes they suggest that choking should be understood as a significant or catastrophic drop in performance, rather than a mere decline (pp. 206-7). We think this is reasonable, but regardless of the specific definition of choking employed it's certainly possible that different mechanisms are involved in severe performance failures as compared with mild performance decreases. It is consequently not safe to assume that the performance impairments found in these studies are the same as those that occur in real-world choking.! ! 3.4.6 The within-study consistency of the performance impairments! The effects of the pressure scenario were not consistent across studies, but they were consistent within studies. Beilock & Carr (2001) and Gray (2004) found that the pressure scenario produced a statistically reliable decrease in performance in the groups performing skills thought to be automated. DeCaro et al. (2011) found that the pressure scenario, in this case labeled 'outcome pressure', produced no impairment in supposedly automated skills, but reliably impaired a skill dependent on working memory. ! ! If we set aside the DeCaro et al. finding and consider the first two studies, the finding that the pressure scenario produced consistent decreases in performance is, ironically, a reason for doubting that the mechanism involved is the same as that involved in real-world choking. Not all highly skilled individuals choke, and those who do choke do not usually choke every time they experience some performance pressure. Beilock and Gray note the problem, saying that "[i]t may be the case that choking studies in the lab lead us to overestimate the extent to which the phenomenon occurs in real life" (2007, p. 428). However, they don't register the conceptual significance of the problem: if real-world choking has a very different pattern of incidence to the phenomenon found in the laboratory, then different mechanisms are at work. It may be the case that the laboratory research identifies some of the mechanisms involved in real-world choking, but at the very least additional mechanisms are required to explain why there is much greater interand intra-individual variability in the occurrence of real world choking.! ! 3.5 Preliminary assessment! In section 3 we've critically examined the body of empirical research conducted by Beilock, Gray and colleagues in support of the self-focus theory of choking. One key problem is that the research hasn't compared self-focus theory with the most developed versions of distraction theory, which reduces the ability to rule out distraction accounts of choking. Another key problem is that the research doesn't directly test the main claims of the basic self-focus model, which means that the plausibility of the model is still strongly dependent on the prior plausibility of the background theory of skill automaticity and the expectations this gives for choking in automated skills. The experiments provide some support for this account, but fail to show that attention to motor execution occurs in response to pressure, or that this is the mechanism responsible for choking. The inconsistency in the results of the experiments employing the pressure condition further limits the support provided for the basic self-focus model. This leaves us with just the findings showing tolerance for distraction and impairment from self-focus. These results are consistent with expectations for skills that are automatic, and based on the background theory of skill automaticity it might still be argued that the self-focus model is more plausible than any alternative.! ! This argument has a number of weaknesses, however. There is some initial basis for thinking that cognitive control might play an important role in complex sports skills. And there are at least two reasons for thinking that distraction might play a role in choking, notwithstanding the evidence showing tolerance for distraction. Firstly, as we saw, the extraneous dual-task conditions are arguably not a good model for the kind of emotionally charged distraction likely to occur in choking. Secondly, the low difficulty and monotony of the experimental tasks makes it likely that they present much lower attentional control demands than would golf putting or baseball batting in elite competition conditions. Tolerance for distraction in very easy conditions shouldn't be taken as showing that a skill will exhibit tolerance for distraction in demanding conditions. It is, thus, not at all clear that we should expect skills like golf putting and baseball batting to be susceptible to self-focus but not distraction in complex, realistic performance conditions. In addition, there are other potential impairing mechanisms that might play a role in choking, including interference to motor control from strong negative emotion, and reduced effort as a result of fear.! ! Thus, while performance-impairing forms of skill-focus might occur during choking, there are a number of other possible causes of choking. The experimental research doesn't rule these possibilities out, and neither does it help to make self-focus more plausible than other possibilities.! ! More broadly, a variety of problems of ecological validity limit our ability to draw conclusions about choking from these experiments. The unfamiliar nature of the context and tasks means that the expert participants may not have been employing the same attentional and task control strategies that they would use in normal performance. The unusual nature of the skill focus conditions means that we shouldn't conclude that all forms of awareness of skill execution are impairing. In addition to the problem of inconsistent results across studies, the low intensity of the pressure means that it might not evoke the same mechanisms as the more intense forms of pressure that occur in real-world performance conditions. The consistency of the performance impairments in response to pressure in two of the studies raises further doubts about whether the experiments are evoking the same mechanisms as real-world performance pressure, since not everyone chokes, and individuals who choke do not choke every time they experience performance pressure.! ! 4 Contrary evidence! A further problem for the self-focus approach is that qualitative studies of choking have yielded a substantially different picture. As several researchers have emphasized (Gucciardi & Dimmock 2008; Hill et al. 2009), a crucial weakness in the experimental approach has been the lack of a detailed characterization of real-world choking. In response to this problem several qualitative studies of real-world choking have been conducted. Qualitative methods have important limitations, such as relying on memory and personal understanding of the choking process, but they do provide a depiction of the phenomenon under investigation. It is consequently a significant problem for the self-focus approach that the results of these studies have tended to give more emphasis to distraction than self-focus as a key mechanism involved in choking. ! ! Specifically, Gucciardi et al. (2010), Hill et al. (2010a), and Oudejans et al. (2011) each found that individuals who had experienced choking tended to report distraction as the main cause, with few describing attention to execution as playing a role. In addition, Gucciardi et al. (2010) and Hill et al. (2010a) described a number of contributing factors that are not directly addressed by the self-focus theories, including unrealistically high expectations in chokers and a tendency to use performance outcomes for self-validation. Hill et al. (2010a) found that, in contrast, individuals who did well under pressure had more realistic expectations for performance, adopted a task-focused approach, and maintained a neutral stance towards particular outcomes during performance.! ! 5 An expanded approach to choking! One potential response to this situation is to develop refined experimental designs in an effort to produce more consistent results in support of the selffocus account that have stronger ecological validity. Another possible response is to take the qualitative findings as providing support for the application of distraction theories to choking in these kinds of skills. A third 3 response involves developing an expanded approach to choking that includes theory that is more systematically developed, and which addresses a wider range of issues.! ! The first two responses each have merit, but we think the third response is the right one. Developing well-designed experiments with good ecological validity requires theory that is more elaborated than either self-focus or distraction approaches currently provide. The problems of ecological validity faced by the self-focus research can in part be attributed to an unsystematic approach to theory construction. Moreover, a good theory of choking needs to incorporate a broader range of issues in order to achieve high levels of predictive and explanatory adequacy. Indeed, as we noted, both Baumeister & Showers and Masters & Maxwell discuss many factors that influence choking that aren't part of their respective theories. A full theory of choking needs to explicitly address these issues. We now attempt to identify some of the key features that an expanded approach should have.! ! See e.g. Wilson (2008) for an example of the application of contemporary distraction theories to a 3 sporting context. We discuss these theories in section 6.4 below. 5.1 An elaborated descriptive picture of choking! The problems of ecological validity and the mismatch with the qualitative evidence are symptoms of a basic theoretical weakness in the self-focus approach, namely a poorly developed characterization of the phenomenon that is the target of explanation, or explanandum. The ability to develop good theory the explanans is fundamentally constrained by the quality of the characterization of the explanatory target. The self-focus approach has suffered from using a characterization of choking that has had little detail, and which was not given careful empirical validation. The qualitative evidence is particularly important in this respect because it is a starting point for developing a clearer, empirically validated picture of the nature of choking. A variety of methods will be required to overcome the limits of the self-report methods that the qualitative studies rely on, but an elaborated descriptive picture of choking will have many benefits for research. It can inform more specific and detailed models, richer theory, and experimental design with greater ecological validity.! ! 5.2 A more nuanced and elaborated account of normal skill control! As we've discussed, the idea that many skills become automated in the course of skill acquisition – with motor skills as paradigm cases – is the primary source of support for the self-focus view of choking. But there are also some initial reasons to think that cognitive control might play an important role in the real-world exercise of these skills. Performance conditions can be complex, variable, and demanding. Cognitive control might be important for keeping track of the detailed structure of the situation, generating and revising goals, and adjusting action appropriately. There is thus an unresolved theoretical tension. On the one hand, theories of skill acquisition like that of Fitts & Posner (1967) have emphasized increasing automaticity for good reason: phenomenologically, increasing automaticity is a very salient feature of automaticity, and processes which improve the efficiency of action production should result in greater automaticity (Anderson 1982). On the other hand, there are plausible reasons for thinking that cognitive control might play an important role even in highly advanced stages of skill acquisition. ! ! This tension is reflected in the evidence that we've discussed. On the one hand there is the evidence showing that golf putting and baseball batting show sensitivity to skill focus conditions and tolerance for distraction. These are characteristics expected for automated skills. On the other hand, there is the evidence from the qualitative studies that distraction plays a large role in choking in golf and other sporting skills. ! ! The development of a good theory of choking will require a theory of normal skill control that is able to resolve this tension. Elsewhere we have developed a theory of skill learning and control that is framed by this issue (Christensen et al. submitted, in preparation), and this account illustrates one way that the tension can be reconciled. The theory is called Mesh because it proposes that cognitive control plays an important ongoing role in advanced skill, with cognitive and automatic processes being closely integrated. This integration involves a broadly hierarchical division of responsibilities, with cognitive control often focused on strategic aspects of performance and automatic processes typically more concerned with implementation. In addition, the role of cognitive control becomes increasingly important as performance difficulty increases.! ! According to Mesh, the fundamental reason why advanced skills do not automate fully is because the performance demands of most skills are too complex and variable for this to be possible. It is conceptually easy to see why maths expertise is not a fully automated skill: there are simply too many mathematical problems for it to be possible to individually learn and store in memory solutions in the way that the multiplication table is memorized in childhood. Arguably, the same point is true for complex motor skills like golfputting. Real-world performance conditions characteristically present a very rich set of parameters that exhibit a great deal of variation. Expert performance requires precise adjustment to the specific features of the situation, and this requires very detailed situation awareness and adjustment. ! ! It is equally true, though, that precise adjustment to a complex situation depends on a great deal of automation in perception, judgment and action control. Experts achieve the highest levels of ability by integrating cognitive and automatic processes closely. A musician can focus on expression rather than technique, while a sportsperson can focus on the strategic and tactical demands of the situation, relying on lower order technique to handle the detailed implementation of action. But expert attention also roams, and when strategically required can focus on relatively specific features of implementation, such as the fingering in a difficult passage in the case of a pianist, or performing a particular movement in a specific way in the case of a dancer. This roaming flexible allocation of mindful attention is in itself a skill that may be honed through learning, and with practice, may take up fewer attentional resources in its own right (Geeves et al 2008).! ! We won't provide a detailed defence of Mesh here, but it is a virtue of this account that it can reconcile the theoretical grounds for expecting both automaticity and cognitive control in skill, as well as the empirical evidence for automaticity and conscious control discussed above. Skills like golf putting do incorporate significant automaticity, and on the basis of Mesh we can expect the results obtained by Beilock, Gray and colleagues in the experiments assessing the effects of skill-focus and distraction. That is, skill-focus can sometimes be impairing, and in easy conditions performance should be tolerant of distraction. But using Mesh we can also account for the results obtained by the qualitative studies. That is, in demanding real-world conditions cognitive control plays a very important role in performance, and distraction will accordingly have a substantial impairing effect on performance.! ! Our account is not the only way to reconcile cognitive and automatic control in skilled action. The general point to make is that a good theory of choking will need to be based on a theory of normal skill control that provides some reconciliation of this kind. The Fitts & Posner view of skill acquisition, on which the self-focus theory is based, can't accommodate this mixed pattern of evidence, and is arguably implausible on theoretical grounds. But if we abandon the Fitts & Posner view of skill, the self-focus approach to choking is unlikely to survive in its current form. The self-focus approach relies on the idea that the only plausible candidate mechanism for impairment in automated skills is attention to execution. In contrast, an enriched picture of normal skill control will recognise that there are other mechanisms that can play a role in choking. Attention to skill execution might contribute to choking, perhaps in some cases more than others, and for some people more than others, but it is not likely that attention to execution is the sole cause of choking, even in skills like golf putting that involve significant automaticity.! ! 5.3 Appraisal of the performance situation! A major theoretical weakness of the self-focus approach is that it hasn't properly addressed the problem of why choking occurs in some cases and not others. The most fundamental question for a theory of choking is not 'Why does choking occur?', but rather, 'Why does choking sometimes occur?' The failure to tackle this issue systematically is especially problematic because Baumeister & Showers were sharply critical of existing drive or 'inverted-U' theories of choking on the grounds that they failed to adequately explain why choking occurs in only some cases (1986, p. 363-4). Yet, taken at face value, all of the self-focus models of choking described above (figures 1a, 2, 3a, 3b) imply that choking should always occur in response to pressure. Distraction theories (figures 1b, 4a, 4b) also have limited resources for explaining why choking occurs in some cases and not others. ! ! A crucial problem for both approaches is that they begin with the assumption that performance pressure produces a negative psychological response, either self-consciousness (figure 1a) or worry (figure 1b). Framing the issue properly requires an explicit account of the features of the objective pressure situation that influence choking and the appraisal process that interprets the situation and can produce varied responses to it (see figure 5). As a first approximation we'll characterize the pressure situation as having two key elements: incentive structure, by which we mean the positive and negative consequences of performance outcomes for the individual, and narrow task difficulty, by which we mean the challenge posed by the task for the individual, given his or her abilities under ideal incentive conditions. ! Figure 5.! ! We need to distinguish narrow task difficulty from a broader notion because, understood in a wider sense, the difficulty of a task includes the effects of its incentive structure on performance. Thus, the difficulty of a 2 meter putt from a particular location on a particular green with a $100 bet on the outcome includes the subjective effects of the bet. In contrast, narrow task difficulty is the degree of challenge posed by a task when the incentive structure is such that it allows the individual to fully express their ability to perform the task. Thus, the narrow difficulty of a 2 meter putt from a particular location on a particular green is the difficulty it has for an individual when the incentive structure allows the individual to perform at their best. This approximately corresponds to the ordinary notion of difficulty as applied to sensorimotor tasks, and distinguishing narrow from broad difficulty makes it possible to capture the idea that performance pressure can make it difficult to perform an 'easy' task. In our discussion, though, we're going to focus primarily on cases where the consequences have high impact and the task is very challenging in the narrow sense. This will be the most typical situation in elite sports competition. ! ! The individual's response to the situation depends on an appraisal that takes these and other features of the situation into account. The qualitative pressure situation incentive structure high value narrow task difficulty challenging appraisal facilitative response neutral response debilitative response ? evidence indicates that different individuals are interpreting performance situations in very different ways, which lead to very different kinds of responses. In figure 5 we depict three kinds: a debilitative response, in which there is substantial performance impairment, a neutral response, in which the appraisal has no negative or positive impact on performance, and a facilitative response, in which the appraisal results in improved performance. ! ! The participants in the Gucciardi et al. and Hill et al. studies claimed that performance anxiety could be a spur to higher performance, suggesting that pressure does sometimes produce a facilitative response. This is compatible with Mesh, as we've described it above, because increased cognitive effort could produce strengthened implementation of higher order technique such as the pre-shot routine, and improved situation awareness and action targeting. The self-focus approach, on the other hand, offers no theoretical basis for understanding what a facilitative response could be. It sees optimal performance as fully automatic, so cognitive effort should always interfere. This is encapsulated in Baumeister's (1984; Baumeister & Showers 1986) characterization of choking as 'paradoxical': performers do worse because they try to improve their performance. ! ! One of the differences between the individuals who tended to choke and those who did well under pressure in the Hill et al. (2010a) study was a difference in viewing the situation as threatening or an opportunity. Thus, one participant said "I enjoy first tee nerves, as I think of it as a positive thing. It makes me concentrate more. You want to do it even more, because you want to impress. I practice for those moments" (p. 228). This raises the possibility that an appraisal of threat tends to lead to a debilitative response to pressure whereas an appraisal of opportunity tends to result in a facilitative response. ! ! In light of these considerations it's worth reconsidering the nature of the pressure conditions employed in the self-focus research. We argued above that the intensity of the pressure is low in comparison with the performance pressure that elite performers experience in real-world conditions. But it should also be noted that the incentive structure of the conditions is strongly slanted towards threat rather than opportunity. The threat in the pressure condition lies in the risk of failing to match the performance standard of the teammate, of being negatively compared to the teammate, of causing the teammate to miss out on the money prize when they've fulfilled their part of the requirement, of disappointing them, and in the fact that the risk of failure is high because the performance criterion is hard to achieve (a 20% improvement). Conversely, the best that the participant can achieve is to match the performance of the teammate, not 'let the team down', and win a very small prize. This very distinctive, slanted incentive structure is another reason for doubting that the results of the self-focus experiments should be viewed as a general guide to response to pressure. Real world performance pressure can have a wide range of incentive structures, including incentive structures that offer much greater opportunity.! ! One way to address this problem experimentally would be to vary the components of pressure independently and examine the effects on performance. For instance, the size of the reward could be varied while holding other components constant, or the criterion for success could be varied, etc. It's possible that some combinations might have very different performance effects. For example, a pressure condition with no social component, a more substantial reward (e.g., $50), and a more attainable success criterion (e.g., 10% improvement), might result in improved performance rather than a performance decline. Similarly, a realistic opportunity to beat the performance of a teammate or other participant, rather than simply match it, might produce improved performance.! ! To understand variation in the incidence of choking we need to distinguish between two issues. The first concerns the way that variation in the situation can make choking more or less likely. Thus, some situations can have a structure that makes choking especially likely. The second issue concerns the way that variation in the interpretation of the situation affects the likelihood of choking. Thus, in a given situation, some individuals interpret the situation in a way that makes choking more likely, while others interpret the situation in a way that reduces the likelihood of choking. To help distinguish these two issues we'll draw a contrast between the pre-interpreted structure of a situation and the interpreted structure of a situation. The pre-interpreted structure of a situation for a given individual includes the objectively determined incentive structure and difficulty of the task for that individual. That is, it includes the individual's abilities and the general nature of the incentive values of the various outcomes that are possible for that individual. The interpreted structure of the situation is the way that the individual perceives the task and its incentive structure. This can differ substantially from the preinterpreted structure. Thus, a particular individual may see themselves as lacking the ability to succeed in a given situation, when in fact their abilities are more than adequate. Likewise, a given individual can fail to appreciate the value that a particular outcome has for them, for instance by not properly understanding the impact that winning or losing a particular game will have on their career.! ! A full theory of choking needs to address the roles of both pre-interpreted situation structure and interpretation in influencing choking. The manipulations of pressure described above alter the pre-interpreted situation structure. If such manipulations have consistent effects, which we think is very likely, it will be because different individuals tend to have similar responses to similar situations. But this is a matter of degree, and at a finer grain it is necessary to understand how divergent responses can occur. It may be that the consistency of response to a situation is itself influenced by the preinterpreted situation structure: some situations may be such that almost everyone responds in the same way, while others may produce comparatively divergent responses. Thus, our criticisms of the pressure condition used in the self-focus experiments in part concern the fact that the nature of the scenario imposes strong constraints on likely interpretations. That is, the preinterpreted structure of the situation is such that few if any participants are likely to interpret it positively, as an opportunity.! ! So far we haven't addressed the nature of the cognitive mechanisms involved in appraisal. In our view these will be complex, including conscious and unconscious processes, and processes that are partly conscious. Thus, in the emotions literature a distinction is drawn between primary appraisal, which is an initial evaluation of the significance of the situation that is often nonconscious, and secondary appraisal, which involves more complex interpretation and is often conscious (Lazarus 1991, Lambie & Marcel 2002). Personality traits such as dispositional self-consciousness and trait anxiety will influence appraisal, but the qualitative evidence suggests that conceptual schemas for interpretation play a crucial role in conscious appraisal. Thus, individuals with a propensity to choke appeared to interpret performance situations in a way that accentuated the personal significance of particular performance outcomes, while those who did well tended to de-emphasize the personal significance of outcomes. One effect of accentuating the personal significance of outcomes will be to increase the perceived potential threat presented by the performance situation.! ! However, it is important to keep in mind that non-conscious appraisal mechanisms are also likely to play an important role. The contribution of these mechanisms is evident in the Iowa Gambling Task. In the standard version of this experimental paradigm participants select cards from four decks, where a given card can provide rewards or penalties that can be high or low, specified in amounts of money. The decks are structured such that two provide high rewards and high penalties and will yield a net loss, while the other two provide small rewards and small penalties, and will yield a net gain. For our purposes the relevant point is that normal participants learn to select from the advantageous decks before they are consciously aware of the reasons why they should make this choice, and they develop hunches prior to full conscious understanding (Bechara et al. 1997). Non-conscious evaluative mechanisms may make a contribution to choking by tracking recent performance history and generating expectancies about the likelihood of success in the current situation. Hill et al. (2010) found that chokers tended to have less rigorous preparation for competition than those who did not choke, and described themselves as feeling overloaded. It's possible that they had lower expectancies of success compared with athletes who prepared rigorously, though they might not have been consciously aware of low confidence prior to encountering the situation.! ! An important, challenging performance event inevitably presents significant risk, but for an individual with hardiness and strong expectancies of success the situation predominantly presents opportunity. Moreover, in the face of particular misses and errors, confidence in ability should lead to a response that maintains and strengthens normal task control. In contrast, an individual with low expectancies of success is likely to experience an important performance situation primarily as a threat. In the face of misses and errors, low confidence may lead to a reduced commitment to normal task control.! ! In sum, there are two basic points to be made. Firstly, a good theory of choking needs to explain the way that the nature of the situation affects the likelihood of choking. Secondly, a theory of choking needs to address the issue of divergent responses to situations whose pre-interpreted structure is similar. An account of appraisal will be central to this. Personality traits, conceptually-based interpretive strategies, and non-conscious evaluative mechanisms are all likely to play a role in appraisal, influencing the nature of the response to performance pressure.! ! 5.4 Distraction! All extant theories of choking see it as involving a departure from normal patterns of attentional control. By characterizing the mechanisms posited by self-focus and distraction theories as "complete opposites" Beilock & Carr (2001) conceptualized the issues in a way that is misleading. The difference between self-focus and distraction theories is not that the latter involve distraction and the former don't, it is that they see two different kinds of distraction as causing choking. Accordingly, a good theory of choking – even one developed within the self-focus approach – must include an account of the mechanisms of distraction that overwhelm normal attentional control. The importance of distraction is further reinforced by the qualitative studies, which all prominently emphasize distraction (understood as contrasting with selffocus) as a reason for the performance impairment that occurs in choking. The distraction theories we described in section 3.1, PET and ACT, provide some conceptual resources for understanding how attentional control fails, but are arguably incomplete.! ! As discussed above, they assume that the situation is perceived as sufficiently threatening to provoke a substantial threat response, so an account of appraisal is required to understand the circumstances in which this will be the case. The question then is why the psychological response to the threat overwhelms the resources of attentional control. PET and ACT suggest that task difficulty and compensatory effort play important roles. ! ! We suggested two related reasons why the extraneous dual-task conditions described in 2.2 didn't produce significant performance impairment in the primary tasks. The first is because the task difficulty was low in comparison with the abilities of the expert participants. The experts were consequently likely to have possessed sufficient working memory capacity for both the primary and secondary tasks. Secondly, they may have been able to use compensatory effort to mitigate the effects of the distraction. ! ! The limitations of the capacity to compensate for distraction provide an initial answer to the question of why attentional control can fail under pressure. Narrow task difficulty, in the sense defined above, will typically be high in elite sports competition, which means that even limited misdirection of attention and intrusion of extraneous thoughts is likely to affect task control, and there is little spare capacity for compensatory effort. In addition, ACT proposes that attentional control is fundamentally altered by strong threat, which will tend to make it difficult to exert voluntary control over attention when there is a perception of strong threat.! ! Nevertheless, PET and ACT don't fully explain why attentional control fails in some cases. One issue that needs to be addressed is the nature of compensatory effort. Here we can distinguish between at least two kinds of compensatory control. One type involves the direct maintenance of effective task control, and includes reorganizing task control processes more efficiently and increased monitoring of task processes, such as the pre-shot routine in golf, to ensure proper implementation. A second type includes strategies for emotional self-regulation, such as acknowledging to oneself that misses can occur because of features of the situation that can't be controlled. 'Self-talk', or talk that a performer directs to themselves to influence their performance, is a form of compensatory control that may perform both roles (Hatzigeorgiadis et al. 2009, Miles & Neil 2013). As we saw, Masters & Maxwell regard self-talk as one of the potential triggers for attention to motor control and impaired performance, but it's possible that it sometimes or often plays a positive role in self-regulation. This could occur by providing nudges (Sutton 2007) or more complex interpretations that alter the emotional and cognitive response. To understand why attentional control sometimes breaks down we need to understand the comparative efficacy of different kinds of compensatory strategies, and neither PET nor ACT illuminate this. ! ! A second issue that needs further explanation is the attention-drawing attributes of the things that are distracting. All elite athletes will have acquired attentional control abilities that allow them to maintain task focus in difficult conditions, so why is the distraction sometimes so powerful that it overrides these abilities? The biasing of attention to threat-related stimuli proposed by ACT provides a partial explanation, but there may be more involved in the power of the distraction than this. Another possible causal element is the fact that the personal self and highly significant outcomes can be very strong attentional magnets. By this we mean that the motivational significance associated with these things has a biasing effect on attention, drawing attention to them when they are salient. Thus, a strongly hoped-for or feared 4 outcome may draw attention powerfully when it becomes salient in the On the related notion of a 酉motivational magnet瀞 see Berridge & Robinson 2003.4 situation, even though the individual knows that it is better to focus on task processes. Equally, it may be hard to avoid self-evaluation in response to significant performance outcomes, and, once they begin, it may be very hard to stop self-evaluative thoughts from proceeding, even when the individual knows that these thoughts are interfering with performance. Indeed, there may be an amplifying feedback effect in which self-critical thoughts increase the perceived significance of the threat, increase the biasing of attention to threat, and generate further worry and self-criticism.! ! These considerations reinforce the importance of the appraisal processes we discussed in the previous section. Appraisal doesn't simply occur at the beginning of a performance situation, it continues throughout performance, and the nature of the interpretive strategies can have an effect on whether an initial performance impairment in response to pressure progresses into a serious performance breakdown or is effectively mitigated by compensatory processes.! ! 5.5 Attention to motor execution! Attention to motor execution might contribute to choking in some cases, but to identify which cases these are self-focus models require more specific accounts of the mechanisms involved. As discussed in section 2.1.2, Baumeister claims that under pressure performers consciously decide to monitor motor execution in order to ensure correct performance, and that this disrupts automatic motor processes (1984, p.610; figure 2). But as we've argued, some forms of attention to execution may make a positive contribution to high level performance. Another possibility that should be considered is that there are forms of attention to execution that play an ameliorative role when things are not going well. We've suggested that attention to execution might occur as a secondary effect of impairment rather than as the primary cause, and it's possible that this is sometimes beneficial. Five of the chokers in Hill et al's study claimed that self-focus could prevent a more severe performance breakdown, even if it didn't allow optimal performance (2010, pp.228-9).! ! The skill-focus experiments show that some kinds of attention to execution are deleterious, but they don't show that all forms of motor awareness and attention to execution cause impairment. It's important, then, to clarify which kinds of self-focus cause impairment, or provide a stronger case that all forms of attention to execution are damaging. Putting this in terms of Baumeister's model as depicted in figure 2, steps 4 and 5 require further elaboration: the nature of the attention to motor execution and the nature of the impairment both need further specification. ! ! The model also requires a more detailed account of the mechanisms that produce damaging forms of attention to execution. In Baumeister's account attention to execution occurs simply because in response to pressure the individual consciously decides to monitor and control performance. It's not clear why an elite athlete or other highly skilled individual would consciously decide to adopt a damaging form of attention that departs from normal attentional control, however. A more rational response to a high pressure situation would be to try to adopt the pattern of attention that the individual has when performing well. We're not suggesting that elite athletes and other highly skilled individuals always act rationally, but we do think it likely that experts often have a considerable degree of awareness of the differing patterns of attention they have in different conditions, such as in practice as compared with competition, and when performing well as compared with performing poorly.! ! Relatedly, Masters & Maxwell need to explain why there should be a straightforward positive relation between the possession of 'skill knowledge' (by which they mean declarative knowledge of motor technique) and tendency to apply that knowledge to performance. While an individual might use knowledge of technique to try to control motor processes in ways that are maladaptive, it's not clear why highly skilled individuals would typically do so under pressure. Highly skilled individuals will often have a great deal of explicit knowledge concerning technique, but as we suggested above, they will in addition have acquired higher order knowledge about the processes and conditions involved in performing well as compared with those where they perform poorly. This higher order knowledge can be used to control where and how knowledge of motor technique is applied. For 5 instance, a golfer might have exquisitely detailed knowledge of motor technique, and use this knowledge during practice to focus on and improve specific components of her action. Yet during competition the golfer might focus entirely on higher order technique (such as correctly implementing the pre-shot routine) and the goal (position of the hole, the path of the ball, etc.), because she knows that it is with this pattern of attention that she performs at a high level. ! ! One approach that might be taken to this issue is to employ some of the conceptual resources discussed above for understanding distraction, including stereotypical attention biases and attentional magnets. One possibility is a model in which high threat triggers a stereotypical selfregulatory response to threat, and motor processes form a salient part of the threat because of the perceived risk of poor execution (figure 6). This might induce sustained monitoring and control, but it's also possible that cognitive control will override this attentional focus. If the individual is particularly worried about aspects of motor technique then motor execution may act as an attentional magnet, making it difficult to avoid attending to it.! ! A model like this could potentially help to explain why a maladaptive focus on motor execution could occur and persist even when the individual 'knows better'. It could also help to explain why attention to motor control might occur in only some cases of choking, and might only be part of the choking process. This is because the stereotypical self-regulatory response can have other attentional targets in addition to or instead of motor execution.! ! See Chaffin & Logan (2006) and Geeves et al. (2008, 2014) for a discussion of flexible attentional 5 focus in music performance. Figure 6.! ! 5.6 Other performance-impairing mechanisms! Baumeister's conceptual framework for choking research narrows the focus of investigation to the comparison of self-focus and distraction theories. Given how little is known about skill control, especially in real-world performance conditions, this narrow focus is arguably premature. In section 3.2.3 we suggested that prima facie plausibility can be given to other mechanisms, including interference to sensory and motor processing by negative emotions, and reduced task effort as a result of the perception of low prospects for success, or to escape from a painful situation. As we noted, because the research in support of the self-focus approach hasn't considered these possibilities it is unable to rule them out.! ! There is some empirical basis for thinking that negative emotions might interfere with sensorimotor control in ways other than self-focus or distraction. For instance, it has been found that anxiety negatively affects postural control by altering visual processing (Wada et al. 2001, Ohno et al. 2004). In connection with this, it is intriguing that there are a number of reports of impaired imagery during choking and the yips (Sachdev 1992, p. 328; Bawden & Maynard 2001, p. 942; Hill et al. 2010a, p. 232). Since imagery draws on brain areas involved in perception and motor implementation (Kosslyn et al. 2001), these impairments might be a symptom of altered processing in these regions as a result of stress, and perhaps also of altered interactions between these areas and executive control. Such problems could A 'self-regulatory response' model of attention to motor control under pressure performance anxiety a stereotypical self-regulatory response to threat attention directed to motor processes efforts to consciously regulate motor processes 0 1 2 3 increased vigilance increased propensity for conscious control of task processes motor processes are salient because of risk of poor execution potentially affect the planning and implementation of actions. While it is speculative to suggest that mechanisms like this might contribute to choking, it may be worth exploring such possibilities.! ! 6 Conclusions! The self-focus approach to choking in sporting skills has been popular but, as we've discussed, suffers from a number of empirical and theoretical problems. The distraction approach can make an important contribution, but also lacks the resources to furnish an adequate theory of choking. We've argued that an expanded approach to choking is required, going beyond either type of theory in their current forms. This in effect means abandoning the conceptual framework for choking research presented by Baumeister & Showers. Perhaps the most basic element needed in an expanded approach is the development of a detailed descriptive picture of choking. This will help in the construction of better specified theory and models, and should also assist in the development of experimental designs with stronger ecological validity.! ! Another key element needed for an expanded approach to choking is a systematic treatment of pressure, and the features of pressure situations that influence the various kinds of responses that occur, some negative, some positive. A systematic experimental investigation of pressure might also help to resolve the inconsistency in the results that have been obtained.! ! Following from this, an expanded approach to choking should include a systematic account of appraisal. This will in part concern the personal situated self. Performances occur in situations that have larger personal significance and form part of an extended career, and highly skilled individuals have often developed sophisticated forms of interpretation and emotional self-regulation that help them manage the stresses of these situations. To study choking, we must understand how these forms of self-regulation break down. Another part of a systematic account of appraisal will concern non-conscious evaluative mechanisms that track performance history and generate predictions of success or failure.! ! An elaborated understanding of appraisal will help to clarify the nature of the mechanisms that cause performance impairment in choking. It's possible, and we think likely, that multiple mechanisms are involved, and that the specific mix varies with circumstances. Indeed, it's possible that there is such heterogeneity that 'choking' isn't really a single phenomenon. Regardless of what the final picture looks like, however, more detailed models of distraction, self-focus, and other potential mechanisms are needed that recognize the complexities of the situations in which choking occurs.! ! ! References! Anderson, J. (1982). Acquisition of cognitive skill. Psychological Review, 89(4), 369–406.! Ashby, F. G., & O'Brien, J. B. (2005). Category learning and multiple memory systems. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9(2), 83–89.! Baumeister, R. F. (1984). Choking under pressure: Self-consciousness and paradoxical effects of incentives on skillful performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46(3), 610–620.! Baumeister, R. F., & Showers, C. J. (1986). A review of paradoxical performance effects: Choking under pressure in sports and mental tests. European Journal of Social Psychology, 16(4), 361–383.! Bawden, M., & Maynard, I. (2001). Towards an understanding of the personal experience of the "yips" in cricketers. Journal of Sports Sciences, 19(12), 937–953.! Bechara, A., Damasio, H., Tranel, D., & Damasio, A. R. (1997). Deciding Advantageously Before Knowing the Advantageous Strategy. Science, 275(5304), 1293–1295.! Beilock, S. L., & Carr, T. H. (2001). On the Fragility of Skilled Performance: What Governs Choking Under Pressure? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130(4), 701–725.! Beilock, S. L., & Gray, R. (2007). Why Do Athletes Choke Under Pressure? In G. Tenenbaum & R. C. Eklund (Eds.), Handbook of Sport Psychology (pp. 425–444). John Wiley & Sons, Inc.! Beilock, S. L., Wierenga, S. A., & Carr, T. H. (2002). Expertise, attention, and memory in sensorimotor skill execution: Impact of novel task constraints on dual-task performance and episodic memory. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A, 55(4), 1211–1240.! Berridge, K. C., & Robinson, T. E. (2003). Parsing reward. Trends in Neurosciences, 26(9), 507–513.! Chaffin, R., & Logan, T. (2006). Practicing perfection: how concert soloists prepare for performance. Advances in Cognitive Psychology, 2(2-3), 113– 130.! Christensen, W. D., Sutton, J., & McIlwain, D. (in preparation). Cognitive control in skilled action: explaining the persistence of cognitive control in advanced skill.! Christensen, W. D., Sutton, J., & McIlwain, D. (2013 submitted). Cognitive control in skilled action: the phenomenology and architecture of skill control.! DeCaro, M. S., Thomas, R. D., Albert, N. B., & Beilock, S. L. (2011). Choking under pressure: Multiple routes to skill failure. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 140(3), 390–406.! Dreyfus, H. L., Dreyfus, S. E., & Athanasiou, T. (1986). Mind Over Machine: The Power of Human Intuition and Expertise in the Era of the Computer. New York: Free Press.! Eysenck, M. W., & Calvo, M. G. (1992). Anxiety and Performance: The Processing Efficiency Theory. Cognition & Emotion, 6(6), 409–434.! Eysenck, M. W., Derakshan, N., Santos, R., & Calvo, M. G. (2007). Anxiety and cognitive performance: Attentional control theory. Emotion, 7(2), 336– 353.! Farrow, D., Baker, J., and MacMahon, C. (2013). Developing Sport Expertise. Routledge.! Fitts, P. M., & Posner, M. I. (1967). Human performance. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.! Geeves, A., McIlwain, D. J. F., Sutton, J., & Christensen, W. (in press 2014). To Think or Not To Think: The apparent paradox of expert skill in music performance. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 0(0), 1–18.! Geeves, A., Christensen, W. D., Sutton, J., & McIlwain, D. (2008). Review: Roger Chaffin, Gabriela Imreh & Mary Crawford, Practicing Perfection: Memory and Piano Performance. New York: Laurence Erlbaum Associates, 2002. Empirical Musicology Review, 3(3), 163–172.! Gray, R. (2004). Attending to the Execution of a Complex Sensorimotor Skill: Expertise Differences, Choking, and Slumps. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 10(1), 42–54.! Gucciardi, D. F., & Dimmock, J. A. (2008). Choking under pressure in sensorimotor skills: Conscious processing or depleted attentional resources? Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 9(1), 45–59.! Gucciardi, D. F., Longbottom, J. L., Jackson, B., & Dimmock, J. A. (2010). Experienced golfers' perspectives on choking under pressure. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 32(1), 61–83.! Hatzigeorgiadis, A., Zourbanos, N., Mpoumpaki, S., & Theodorakis, Y. (2009). Mechanisms underlying the self-talk–performance relationship: The effects of motivational self-talk on self-confidence and anxiety. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 10(1), 186–192.! Hill, D. M., Hanton, S., Fleming, S., & Matthews, N. (2009). A re-examination of choking in sport. European Journal of Sport Science, 9(4), 203–212.! Hill, D. M., Hanton, S., Matthews, N., & Fleming, S. (2010a). A qualitative exploration of choking in elite golf. Journal of Clinical Sport Psychology, 4(3), 221–240.! Hill, D. M., Hanton, S., Matthews, N., & Fleming, S. (2010b). Choking in sport: a review. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 3(1), 24– 39.! Jackson, R. C., Ashford, K. J., & Norsworthy, G. (2006). Attentional Focus, Dispositional Reinvestment, and Skilled Motor Performance Under Pressure. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 28(1), 49–68.! Kosslyn, S. M., Ganis, G., & Thompson, W. L. (2001). Neural foundations of imagery. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2(9), 635–642.! Lambie, J. A., & Marcel, A. J. (2002). Consciousness and the varieties of emotion experience: A theoretical framework. Psychological Review, 109(2), 219–259.! Lazarus, R. S. (1991). Emotion and adaptation (Vol. xiii). New York, NY, US: Oxford University Press.! Masters, R., & Maxwell, J. (2008). The theory of reinvestment. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 1(2), 160–183.! Masters, R. S. W. (1992). Knowledge, knerves and know-how: The role of explicit versus implicit knowledge in the breakdown of a complex motor skill under pressure. British Journal of Psychology, 83(3), 343–358.! Masters, R. S. W., Polman, R. C. J., & Hammond, N. V. (1993). "Reinvestment": A dimension of personality implicated in skill breakdown under pressure. Personality and Individual Differences, 14(5), 655–666.! McIlwain, D., & Sutton, J. (2011). Yoga from the mat up: how words alight on bodies. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 1–22.! Miles, A., & Neil, R. (2013). The use of self-talk during elite cricket batting performance. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 14(6), 874–881.! Ohno, H., Wada, M., Saitoh, J., Sunaga, N., & Nagai, M. (2004). The effect of anxiety on postural control in humans depends on visual information processing. Neuroscience Letters, 364(1), 37–39.! Oudejans, R. R. D., Kuijpers, W., Kooijman, C. C., & Bakker, F. C. (2011). Thoughts and attention of athletes under pressure: skill-focus or performance worries? Anxiety, Stress, and Coping, 24(1), 59–73.! Sachdev, P. (1992). Golfers' cramp: Clinical characteristics and evidence against it being an anxiety disorder. Movement Disorders, 7(4), 326–332.! Starkes, J. L. and K. A. Ericsson, eds. (2003). Expert Performance in Sports Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.! Sutton, J. (2007). Batting, Habit and Memory: The Embodied Mind and the Nature of Skill. Sport in Society, 10(5), 763–786.! Sutton, J., McIlwain, D., Christensen, W. D., & Geeves, A. (2011). Applying intelligence to the reflexes: embodied skills and habits between Dreyfus and Descartes. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 42(1), 78–103.! Wada, M., Sunaga, N., & Nagai, M. (2001). Anxiety affects the postural sway of the antero-posterior axis in college students. Neuroscience Letters, 302(2–3), 157–159.! Williams, A. M., K. Davids, and J. G. Williams (1999). Visual Perception and Action in Sport. London: E. & F.N. Spon.! Williams, A. M. and N. J. Hodges eds. (2004) Skill Acquisition in Sport: Research, Theory, and Practice. Routledge.! Wilson, M. (2008). From processing efficiency to attentional control: a mechanistic account of the anxiety–performance relationship. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 1(2), 184–201.! Wilson, M., Chattington, M., Marple-Horvat, D. E., & Smith, N. C. (2007). A comparison of self-focus versus attentional explanations of choking. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 29(4), 439–456.! Wulf, G. (2007). Attention and motor skill learning. Human Kinetics.