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Putting pressure on theories of choking: towards an expanded perspective on breakdown in skilled performance

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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 both 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.

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Notes

  1. Below we discuss the idea that choking should be characterized as a severe performance impairment.

  2. We are not suggesting that all forms of negative emotion impair performance; to the contrary, emotions such as anxiety and anger can sometimes facilitate high performance (Lazarus, 2000; Hanin, 2007; Lane et al., 2012).

  3. In section 5 below and +Christensen et al. (submitted, in preparation), we give theoretical grounds for thinking that task difficulty will affect dual-task sensitivity.

  4. Some anecdotal evidence suggests that there may be large individual differences in the nature of individual experts’ memory for specific competitive performances, even within particular sports like golf and cricket (Sutton, 2007).

  5. Our mountain bike examples are based on discussions with Kath Bicknell, who conducts research on embodied cognition in mountain bike racing (Bicknell, 2010) and is an experienced rider, on Lopes and McCormack, 2010, and on the experiences of Christensen as novice mountain biker.

  6. In section 5 below we discuss ways of improving the ecological validity of experimental research.

  7. Barbara Montero helped us to refine this example (personal communication). Engstrom et al. (2005) show that increases in visual and cognitive load can adversely affect driving performance.

  8. The concept of an action set that we are employing here is based on that of a ‘task set’ (Sakai, 2008). A task set is a control configuration required for performing a particular task, while an action set, as we are employing the term, is a control configuration specific to a particular action.

  9. We base this concept of an attentional magnet on the related notion of a ‘motivational magnet’ (Berridge and Robinson, 2003).

  10. See Chaffin and Logan (2006) and Geeves et al. (2008, 2014) for a discussion of flexible attentional focus in music performance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia

    Wayne Christensen & John Sutton

  2. Department of Psychology, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia

    Doris McIlwain

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  1. Wayne Christensen
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  2. John Sutton
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  3. Doris McIlwain
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Correspondence to John Sutton.

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Christensen, W., Sutton, J. & McIlwain, D. Putting pressure on theories of choking: towards an expanded perspective on breakdown in skilled performance. Phenom Cogn Sci 14, 253–293 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-014-9395-6

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