Sport And Exercise Psychology: A Critical Introduction

Doherty in the 2003 world championship final. But can psychological techniques help
athletes to turn on and turn off their concentration systems like a shower? What other
strategies can they use to achieve and maintain an optimal focus for competition? What is
concentration anyway and why do athletes lose it so easily in competitive situations?
The purpose of this chapter is to answer these and other relevant questions using the
principles and findings of cognitive sport psychology: that part of the discipline that is
concerned with understanding how the mind works in athletic situations. In order to
achieve this objective, the chapter is organised as follows. To begin with, I shall explore
the nature, dimensions and importance of concentration in sport psychology. Then I shall
outline briefly the principal methods used by psychologists to measure attentional
processes (including concentration) in athletes. The third section of the chapter will
summarise some key principles of effective concentration that have emerged from
research on attention in sport performers. Next, I shall address the question of why
athletes are vulnerable to lapses or loss of concentration. In the fifth section, I shall
review various practical exercises and psychological techniques that are alleged to
improve concentration skills in athletes. The sixth section will outline some old problems
and new directions for research in this field. Finally, I shall suggest some ideas for
possible research projects on concentration in athletes.

Nature and importance of concentration in sport psychology

In cognitive sport psychology, concentration is regarded as one component of the
multidimensional construct of “attention” (Moran, 1996). For cognitive psychologists,
this latter construct refers to “a concentration of mental activity” (Matlin, 2002, p. 51) or
the “concentration of mental effort on sensory or mental events” (Solso, 1998, p. 130).
Let us now consider the main dimensions and types of attention before examining the
special importance of concentration in sport.

Dimensions of attention

At least three separate dimensions of attention have been identified by cognitive
psychologists. The first one is called “concentration” and refers to a person’s ability to
exert deliberate mental effort on what is most important in any given situation. For
example, football players concentrate when they attempt to absorb coaching instructions
delivered before an important match. The second dimension of attention denotes a skill in
selective perception—namely, the ability to “zoom in” on task-relevant information while
ignoring potential distractions. In other words, this dimension refers to the ability to
discriminate relevant stimuli (targets) from irrelevant stimuli (distractors) that compete
for our attention. To illustrate, a tennis player who is preparing to smash a lob from his or
her opponent must learn to focus only on the flight of the ball, not on the distracting
movement of the player (s) on the other side of the net. The third dimension of attention
refers to a form of mental time-sharing ability whereby athletes learn, as a result of
extensive practice, to perform two or more concurrent actions equally well. For example,
a skilful basketball player can dribble with the ball while simultaneously looking around
for a team-mate who is in a good position to receive a pass. As you can see, the construct

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