target sport performers can indeed “switch on” their concentration processes at will.
Interestingly, a recent study by Radio, Steinberg, Singer, Barba and Melnikov (2002)
reported that dart-throwers’ heart rates may vary in accordance with the type of
attentional focus that they adopted. For example, when they used an external attentional
strategy, their heart rates tended to decline just before they threw the darts. As yet,
however, the psychophysiological significance of this heart rate change is unknown.
The next methodological innovation in this paradigm occurred with the development
of equipment designed to measure continuous patterns of electrical activity in the brain.
This “brain wave” technology included electroencephalographic (EEC) methods and
those based on “event-related potentials” (or ERPs). In a typical EEC experiment, an
electrode is attached to a person’s scalp in order to detect the electrical activity of
neurons in the underlying brain region. Another electrode is then attached to the person’s
earlobe, where there is no electrical activity to detect. Then the EEC is recorded to
indicate the difference in electrical potentials detected by the electrodes (Kolb and
Whishaw, 2003). In recent years, a considerable amount of research has been conducted
on EEC activity in athletes (Hatfield and Hillman, 2001). From such research, certain
cerebral asymmetry effects are evident. For example, in keeping with previous findings
from heart rate studies, research suggests that just before expert archers and pistol
performers execute their shots, their EEC records tend to display a distinctive shift from
left-hemisphere to right-hemisphere activation (ibid.). This shift is believed to reflect a
change in executive control from the verbally based left hemisphere to the visuo-spatially
specialised right hemisphere. Put differently, target-shooters display a marked reduction
in the extent of their verbal-analytical processes (including self-talk) prior to shot
execution. In the light of this finding, perhaps the snooker player Mark Williams’s
strategy of covert singing (see earlier in chapter) was not so daft after all because it may
have helped him to avoid thinking too much prior to shot execution. More generally,
EEG research findings suggest that top-class athletes know how to regulate their
physiological processes as they prepare for the performance of key skills (see also
Chapter 6 for a discussion of expertise in sport). Unfortunately, this theory has not been
tested systematically to date as the EEG is a relatively blunt instrument because its data
are confounded with the brain’s global level of electrical activity. Nevertheless, EEG
research in sport has had at least one practical implication. Specifically, it has led to the
use of biofeedback techniques designed to help athletes to become more effective at
controlling their cortical activity (Boutcher, 2002). Staying with brain wave measurement
in sport, event-related potentials (ERPs) are brief changes in EEG signals that are
synchronised with or “time locked” to some eliciting event or stimulus. Unlike the EEG,
which is a measure of continuous electrical activity in the brain, ERPs reflect transient
cortical changes that are evoked by certain information-processing events. Typically,
ERPs display characteristic peaks of electrical activity that begin a few milliseconds after
the onset of a given stimulus (e.g., a loud noise) and continue for up to a second
afterwards (see Kolb and Whishaw, 2003, for more details).
The most recent methodological wave in neuroscientific research on attention
concerns the use of functional brain imaging techniques. With these procedures (e.g.,
positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging; see also
Chapter 5), researchers can obtain clear and dynamic insights into the specific brain
regions that are activated when people perform specific cognitive tasks. Unfortunately,
Sport and exercise psychology: A critical introduction 104