Sport And Exercise Psychology: A Critical Introduction

Ideas for research projects on concentration in athletes

Here are six ideas for possible research projects on attentional processes in athletes.

1 It would be interesting to investigate precisely what athletes of different levels of
ability, and also from different sports, understand by the term “focusing”.
Unfortunately, many studies in this field assume that athletes interpret this term in the
same way as researchers. Is this assumption valid?
2 You could fill a gap in the field by exploring the nature and extent of expert-novice
differences in athletes’ “meta-attentional awareness” (i.e., their understanding of, and
control over, how their concentration system works). Little is known about this topic
so far.
3 You could address some of the unresolved questions in research on flow states in
athletes. For example, do athletes ever experience such states when practising or
training? Or do they occur only in competitive situations?
4 It would be a good idea to evaluate the reliability and validity of Nideffer’s (1976)
‘Test of Attentional and Interpersonal Style” (TAIS) using a large sample of athletes.
5 It would be helpful to test Wegner’s (1994) theory of ironic control in a sport setting.
For example, using the methodology developed by Dugdale and Eklund (2002), can
ironic rebound effects be reduced by manipulating athletes’ attentional focus?
6 Do concentration techniques such as pre-performance routines and cue-words increase
athletes’ performance of self-paced skills such as golf putting, tennis serving or rugby
place-kicking in actual sport settings? Surprisingly few field studies have been
conducted in this area.

Summary

I began this chapter by explaining that the term “concentration” refers to the ability to
focus mental effort on what is most important in any situation while ignoring distractions.
As we discovered, this ability is a crucial prerequisite of successful performance in sport.
For example, research suggests that the ability to focus effectively is associated with peak
performances in athletes. Unfortunately, despite a century of empirical studies on
attentional processes, there is still a great deal of confusion about what concentration is
and how it can be measured and improved in athletes. Therefore, the purpose of this
chapter was to alert you to the progress and prospects of research in this field.

• We began by examining the nature, dimensions and importance of the construct of
  concentration in sport.


• In the next section, we outlined briefly three approaches to the measurement of
  attentional processes (including concentration) in athletes.


• The third section of the chapter explained the main principles of effective concentration
  that have emerged from research on the ideal performance states of athletes.

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