HELPING ATHLETES
STAY FOCUSED:
ATTENTION BASICS
Damon Burton & Bernie Holliday
Vandal Sport Psychology Services
University of Idaho
What is attention?
WILLIAM JAMES’ DEFINITION
OF ATTENTION
 “Everyone knows what
attention is.
It is taking possession by the mind,
in clear and vivid form, of one out of
what seems several simultaneous
possible objects or trains of
thought. Focalization, concentration
of consciousness are the essence.
It implies withdrawal from some
things in order to deal effectively
with others (1890, pp. 403-404).
SIMPLIFIED DEFINITION
OF ATTENTION

Attention is a cognitive process whereby you
direct and maintain awareness of stimuli
detected by the senses and use that
information to make decisions and choose
responses.




You continually receive information about your internal
and external environment through your senses.
You can not be aware of all the sensory information
coming into your senses.
Perception occurs when you attend to sensory
information.
Decision-making and response selection require
attention directed toward key perceptual informant.
What are the two (2)
dimensions of attention?
DIMENSIONS OF
ATTENTION

Width of attention (broad or narrow)



Broad focus would attend to a large number of
stimuli at the same time (e.g., QB reading a
defense or point guard executing a 3 on 2 fast
break).
Narrow focus (e.g., golfer lining up a putt).
Direction of attention (internal or external)


Internal focus is directed inward on thoughts and
feelings (e.g., monitor your body’s responses and
mental skills).
External focus is directed to events happening in
the environment (e.g., evaluating playing
conditions).
Does attention impact
sport success?
DOES ATTENTION IMPACT
SPORT SUCCESS?
When experiencing Flow, athletes are
completely focused on the task at hand,
quiet the mind and block out external
distracters.
 Successful athletes report being able to
maintain their focus better, being less
distracted, and able to regain focus with
minimal effort compared to less
successful performers.

DOES ATTENTION IMPACT
SPORT SUCCESS?

Research confirms that the primary
differences between expert and novice
athletes is due to differences in sportspecific attention factors.

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Experts have superior pattern recognition
skills.
Experts anticipate better because they can
use advanced cues to predict behavior better.
Experts make smart decisions and choose
appropriate responses quickly.
DQ 4: Detail a situation that validates this slide.
What is attentional
capacity and how
does it impact
performance?
ATTENTIONAL CAPACITY
You have a limited “attentional capacity.”
 Controlled Processing – occurs when
athletes consciously focus on performing
the sport skill (e.g, focusing on the
mechanics of how to execute a tennis
serve).
 Controlled processing is slow, conscious,
deliberate, step-by-step and attentiondemanding process.

ATTENTIONAL CAPACITY
Automatic Processing – when you
perform a skill without conscious
attention thought.
 Automatic processing is fast, holistic,
occurs below the conscious level, and is
not attention demanding (e.g., can dribble
in traffic while looking for an open player
to pass to).

ATTENTIONAL DEMANDPROCESSING TRADEOFF
 The
greater the amount of
information to process . . .
greater the attentional demands
(e.g., more choices to choose between,
disguise pitches or be more
unpredictable).
 The longer the processing time.
 The
What is selective
attention?
SELECTIVE ATTENTION
 Selective Attention
– is the process
of attending to some information
coming into our senses and ignoring
or screening out other information.
 Experts must be able to select the
correct cues from countless
irrelevant and competing stimuli
(e.g., information to focus on when
returning serve).
DQ 5: Give an example from academics that shows selective
attention.
SELECTIVE ATTENTION
GUIDELINES
 You
attend to cue you find
meaningful and interesting.
 You attend to things that you have
been instructed to attend to or have
learned through experience to focus
on.
 You attend to novel or unexpected
stimuli that grab your attention.
What are the
“orienting response”
and “habituation
effects?”
“ORIENTING RESPONSE”
 The
“orienting response” commands
your attention under the following
conditions . . .
 The
stimulus is very intense (e.g.,
sudden loud noise or bright light).
 The stimulus is unusual or contrasts
with the background environment.
 The stimulus moves.
“HABITUATION EFFECTS”
 Habituation
– occurs when one
becomes accustomed to stimuli that
remain unchanged and don’t attend
to them.
 Implications -- add common
distractions to practice so athletes
learn to habituate to them.
DISTRACTIONS
Internal
Negative
self-talk
External
Visual
 Auditory
Doubt
 Gamesmanship
 Crowd
Past/future thoughts  Opponent’s
performance
 Coach
Physical state
 Mistakes

How can you better
attend to the right
cues in sport?
SELECTIVE ATTENTION
GUIDELINES
 Develop a
mindset.
 Videotape training.
 Performance-related cue words.
 Process-oriented goals.
 Simulations.
 Imagery.
 Redirect attention.
1. DEVELOPING A
MINDSET
 Analyze your
sport and identify the
cues that are critical to top
performance.
 Devise strategies to learn how to
focus on these cues.
 Minimize the number of cues and
keep them as simple and
straightforward as possible.
2. VIDEOTAPE TRAINING
Help improve perceptual skills necessary
to maximize anticipation.
Batters learn to predict pitch locations
and tennis players can anticipate whether
passing shots will be cross-court or
down-the-line.
Enhance knowledge of important cues.
Stop video and ask specific questions
about what is going to happen or what
strategy to use.
3. PERFORMANCERELATED CUE WORDS
An archer might keep their attention on
their shooting by using the key words,
“pull, anchor, hold, and release.”
Diver Greg Louganis used the key words,
“relax, see the platform, sport the water,
spot the water, spot the water, kick out,
and spot the water again!”
Larry Bird use the cue words “nothing but
net” when he shot free throws.
4. PROCESS-ORIENTED
GOALS
Focus on the present.
Don’t focus on the past.
Focus on specific process
cues.
Don’t focus on outcome.
5. SIMULATION TRAINING
 NASA commonly uses flight simulations to
train astronauts to cope with various
flight and equipment problems they might
encounter.
 Prepare to handle . . .



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Poor weather conditions.
Bad officials’ calls.
Sub-par performance.
An opponent’s hot streak.
6. IMAGERY
 Using models, videos and photos of
performance venues, practice facilities
and living quarters at competitive sites,
imagery is used to enhance site
familiarity.
 Athletes imagine competing in this
environment and effectively coping with
potential distracters.
 Performers often report a “déjà vu”
experience when they compete because
their preparation has been so effective.
7. REDIRECT ATTENTION
 Even with the best-laid plans, athletes will
inevitably lose focus in some situations.
 Champion athletes have a “recovery plan”
to put the distraction behind them and
regain focus.
 Recovery plans use a systematic routine
to relax, control self talk, refocus goals
and imagine goal attainment.
What is concentration
and what is the
concentration
paradox?
CONCENTRATION:
SUSTAINING ATTENTION
Concentration – is the ability to
sustain attention on selected stimuli
for a period of time.
Concentration can easily be broken
by . . .
 External
distractions.
 Our own thoughts and feelings.
 Planned “psych out” strategies.
 The intense energy demands of intense
concentration.
PARADOX OF
CONCENTRATION
 Because intense concentration is
energy demanding, performers often
confront tasks with fierce mental effort
and try really hard to concentrate.
 The harder athletes try to concentrate,
the more elusive concentration
becomes.
 Effective concentration is a passive
process that requires effortless effort.
EFFORTLESS EFFORT: THE
CONCENTRATION SECRET
 Allow your mind to become absorbed in the
here and now (i.e., the present).
 Lance Armstrong, Tour de France winner,
reports, “I think about cycling. My mind
didn’t wander. I didn’t daydream. I thought
about my techniques at various stages.”
 Concentration comes naturally when the
mind is interested and completely engrossed
with the task at hand.
 Your body and mind must become totally
absorbed in what you’re doing, picking up
those cues needed to achieve your goals.
What are some
common concentration
roadblocks?
CONCENTRATION
ROADBLOCKS
 Factors
that interfere with quieting
or “parking” the mind include . . .
 Excessive thinking.
 Stress.
 Pain.
 Fatigue.
EXCESSIVE THINKING
 Coach Phil Jackson believes, “Basketball
is a complex dance that requires shifting
from one objective to another at
lightening speed. To excel, you need to
act with a clear mind and be totally
focused on what everyone else is doing.
The secret is not thinking. That doesn’t
mean being stupid; it means quieting the
endless jabbering of thoughts so that
your body can do instinctively what it’s
been trained to do without the mind
getting in the way.”
GALLWEY’S “INNER GAME”
APPROACH
Gallwey emphasizes, “Quieting the
mind means less thinking,
calculating, judging, worrying,
fearing, hoping, hoping, trying,
regretting, controlling, jittering or
distracting. The mind is still when it
is in the here and now in perfect
oneness with the action and the
actor.”
PROBLEM THOUGHTS
 Letting go of mistakes is difficult because we
play the mistake over and over in our mind,
“beating ourselves up” for the silly error.
 We become preoccupied with poor calls or
let an opponent’s “trash talking” take us out
of our game.
 Becoming “future oriented” is problematic
because you forget to concentrate on what
you’re doing at the moment.
 Michael Jordan believes, “You have to block
out everybody and everything from your
mind. If you let yourself think “what if” as
you are doing it, you won’t.”
LACK OF TRUST
 Trust – is the ability to release conscious
control over movements and allow yourself
to perform automatically without conscious
thought.
 In important competitions, we want to
perform well so we try to control our
performance rather than trusting our body to
perform the skills the way it was trained to do
through thousands of hours of practice.
 A pitcher may try to aim the ball rather than
throw it or a mountain biker may try to guide
his bike through a technical section rather
than letting it run naturally.
UNDERAROUSAL
PROBLEMS
 Underaroused athletes feel flat and have a
broad attentional focus that prompts them to
easily lose focus.
 Tennis great Rod Laver believes, “Staying
interested in a match is a lot harder than
many people think. Throughout my career,
I’ve always had trouble in the early rounds of
a tournament mainly because it was hard fo
me to psychologically get up until the
quarters or semis. What happened a lot of
times is I would fall behind early, maybe even
lose the first couple of sets in a five-set
match, and then begin to concentrate.”
STRESS & OVERAROUSAL
PROBLEMS
 Overaroused athletes develop “tunnel vision”
and begin scanning to search for taskrelevant cues.
 Scanning makes athletes more susceptible to
distraction and more easily panicked.
 Overarousal prompts attention to be focused
inward. Performers dwell on a constant
stream of anxiety-producing thoughts and
overanalyze events, prompting careless
mistakes and poor decisions.
How can you improve
your concentration?
CONCENTRATION
IMPROVEMENT GUIDELINES
1. Learn to manage stress,
 Effective stress management allows
performers to shift attention from
negative thoughts and excessive
muscular tension to task relevant
stimuli.
2. Recognize energy demands of
concentration.
 Learn to turn concentration on and off.
MORE CONCENTRATION
IMPROVEMENT GUIDELINES
3. Practice concentrating:
 Concentration improves with practice, so
gradually try to extend the amount of time you
concentrate.
 Goals promote increased concentration.
4. Use “performance plans”:
 Kayaker, Alan Edge “always had a very
detailed race plan with carefully defined
process-oriented goals about how he wanted
to paddle each section of the course. He
attached great significance to having this sort
of plan, and used it to help him focus his
attention and feel in control.”
MORE CONCENTRATION
IMPROVEMENT GUIDELINES
5. Implement “recovery plans”:
 Losing concentration is easy when something
unanticipated occurs.
 Expecting distractions and having a plan to
deal with them helps regain concentration
quickly and effectively.
6. “Quieting drills”:
 Rather than emptying our mind, we should
strive to quiet our minds by becoming
absorbed in the activity.
 Gallwey’s “bounce and hit” drill.
MORE CONCENTRATION
IMPROVEMENT GUIDELINES
7. Experience the skill:

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8.
Quality practice develops greater awareness of
what feelings and sensations are experienced
when executing a movement.
Golf instructors sometimes have students hit
balls quickly on the driving range to prevent
getting overanalytical and become absorbed in
feeling their natural swing.
Develop external sensory awareness:

Gallwey’s awareness drills focus on be aware of
flight, trajectory and spin of the ball in order to
hit better shots.
MORE CONCENTRATION
IMPROVEMENT GUIDELINES
9.
Employ “triggers”:

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Triggers may be words or actions that remind
athletes to concentrate.
Archer Darrell Pace turns his concentration on
and off with this trigger, “I look either straight
down at the ground in front of me (i.e., off) or at
the center of the target (i.e., on).”
10. “Releases”:

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Releases let go of negative thoughts and
feelings that prevent concentration.
“Parking” involves touch their locker when they
go to practice and imagine any outside concerns
flowing from their mind to the locker. Concerns
must be unparked and dealt with after practice.
MORE CONCENTRATION
IMPROVEMENT GUIDELINES
11. Direct attention away from
distracting thoughts and feelings:
Tennis players play with their strings
between points to keep their attention
focused externally so they don’t
experience anxiety-provoking thoughts.
12. Focus on the controllable:
Concentration improves when you
decrease your areas of concern (I.e.,
scoring a goal, winning the game, not
letting others down, etc) and increasing
your areas of control.
MORE CONCENTRATION
IMPROVEMENT GUIDELINES
13. Think nonjudgmentally:
The moment start evaluating yourself in terms
of how good or bad you’re performing, you
have lost focus and the constant flow of
thoughts evaluating, criticizing and instructing
begins.
Rather than ignore mistakes, just view your
performance with a neutral detachment.
A nonjudgmental attitude requires you to
become aware of what you are doing rather
than focusing on what you should be doing.