Sport And Exercise Psychology: A Critical Introduction

(1985) compared rifle-shooters’ performance on a primary target-shooting task with that
on a secondary auditory task, while they competed under low-stress and high-stress
conditions. Results showed that when the difficulty of the primary task was increased
(e.g., by increasing time demands), performers in the high-stress condition took longer to
react to the auditory stimuli (i.e., secondary task) than they did when performing in the
low-stress condition. This result suggests that as their level of arousal increased, the
shooters had less spare attentional capacity available to monitor the peripheral auditory
task. More recently, Beilock, Carr, MacMahon and Starkes (2002) investigated the
attentional demands of dribbling skills in soccer for players of different skill levels. In
this study, expert and novice soccer players were required to dribble a ball through a
series of pylons (the primary task) while simultaneously listening to a series of words for
the occurrence of a specified target (the secondary task). Results showed that the
secondary task impaired the performance of the primary task for the less skilled players
regardless of which foot they dribbled with—but had no effect on experts’ dominant foot-
dribbling performance. But Beilock et al. (2002) also discovered that the experts’
dribbling performance deteriorated in the presence of the secondary task when they had
to use their non-dominant foot for dribbling. These findings corroborate the view that the
skills of expert athletes in any sport require minimal attentional scrutiny.
Unfortunately, despite its ingenuity, the dual-task paradigm has not been used widely
to measure attentional processes in athletes—although it may offer researchers a way of
validating athletes’ reports of their imagery experiences (see Chapter 5). A
comprehensive review of this paradigm in research on attention in athletes is provided by
Abernethy (2001).
To summarise this section of the chapter, the self-report approach to the measurement
of concentration processes is favoured by most sport psychologists for reasons of brevity,
convenience and economy. Given the issues raised in Box 4.2, however, the results
yielded by psychological tests of concentration must be interpreted cautiously. Also, few
if any of the available measures of attention deal explicitly with concentration skills.
Moreover, no consensus has emerged about the best combination of these methods to use
when assessing athletes’ attentional processes in applied settings. Now that we have
explained the nature, importance and measurement of concentration in sport, let us
consider some psychological principles which govern an optimal focus in athletes.

Principles of effective concentration

Based on general reviews of the relationship between attention and athletic performance
(Abernethy, 2001; Moran, 1996), at least five theoretical principles of effective
concentration in sport may be identified (see Figure 4.2). As you will see, three of them
concern the establishment of an optimal focus whereas the other two describe how it may
be disrupted or lost.
The first principle of effective concentration is that a focused state of mind requires
deliberate mental effort and intentionality on the part of the athlete concerned. In short,
one must prepare to concentrate rather than hope that it will occur by chance. This
principle was endorsed by Oliver Kahn, the German international and Bayern Munich

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