On the fragility of skilled performance: What governs choking under pressure?

“Why does the execution of a well-learned skill fail under pressure? Research investigating skill and expertise has produced a number of important findings regarding the variables that mediate optimal skill performance (Allard & Starkes, 1991; Anderson, 1982, 1987; Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Romer, 1993; Keele, 1986; Lo…”

“To others, however, a problem will come immediately to mind: There is well-known evidence suggesting that expertise serves to enhance episodic recollection, not degrade it. For example, in their classic chess study, Chase and Simon (1973) found that chess masters were better able to recall briefly presented chess posi…”

“Modern theories of skill acquisition and expert performance concur that it is not so much the attention being diverted, but conscious attempts to exert control over the action that lead to failure under pressure (Beilock & Carr, 2001; Masters, 1992, 2000; Willingham, 1998).”

“For one, athletes may have developed more automatic action-control routines, which frees capacity-limited processes from engaging and action monitoring and control (Beilock and Carr, 2001; Schneider and Chein, 2003).”

“…of impaired performance resulting from an internal FOA is the constrained action hypothesis (Wulf, 2007, 2012), which posits that an internal FOA increases explicit monitoring of otherwise implicit motor behaviors, slowing processing and hurting performance (see also Beilock & Carr, 2001).”

“…skills that exhibit paradoxical dissociations between explicit knowledge and implicit knowledge: practitioners of high-level skills know how to perform very well but do not know much about how they do it (Beilock & Carr, 2001; Beilock, Carr, MacMahon, & Starkes, 2002; Terzuolo & Viviani, 1980).”

“Furthermore, other studies testing distraction versus self-focus accounts of choking in motor skill tasks have been more supportive of self-focus accounts (e.g., Beilock & Carr, 2001; Gucciardi & Dimmock, 2008; Masters, 1992).”

“Beilock and Carr (2001) demonstrated that performance on primary tasks with greater working memory requirements is more vulnerable to secondary-task interference.”

“Taking a different perspective, self109 focus theories (explicit monitoring, Beilock & Carr, 2001, and reinvestment, Master & Maxell, 110 2008) centre on the excessive reinvestment of attention on movement execution.”

“Expert performance can be harmed when movements are consciously controlled because this is proceduralized or automated with extended practice, especially in high pressure situations (Beilock & Carr, 2001).”

“Of the above mentioned studies most are based upon suggestions made in prior related publications (Beilock & Carr, 2001; Boutcher & Crews, 1987; Czech et al., 2004; Foster et al., 2006; Gould & Udry, 1994; Harle & Vickers, 2001; Holder, 2003; Shaw, 2002; Singer, 2002; Wrisberg & Penn, 1992) which…”

“Pressure has a different effect on these kinds of proceduralized skills as suggested by prominent self-focus theories (Baumeister, 1984), such as the explicit monitoring hypothesis (e.g., Beilock & Carr, 2001), or the conscious processing hypothesis (Hardy et al., 1996; Masters, 1992).”

“Using this combined pressure, researchers have increased anxiety levels significantly (e.g., Beilock & Carr, 2001; Lewis & Linder, 1997; Masters, 1992).”

“Failure to secure such control is seen to be implicated in the phenomenon of “choking under pressure”, which results in sub-optimal task performance [5-8] The Distraction version, on the other hand, claims that under pressure the sports performance of athletes suffers as a result of shifting their attention outside, o…”

“Research on “choking” in sport has illuminated our understanding of anxiety across both cognitive skills (e.g., Lyons and Beilock, 2012) and motor skill contexts (e.g., Beilock and Carr, 2001; Beilock and Gonso, 2008; DeCaro et al., 2011; Toner and Moran, 2011; Toner et al., 2013).”

“…in these perceptual processes: neural and cognitive systems contribute to action production and are active during the observation of others’ actions (Beilock & Carr, 2001; Chartrand & Bargh, 1999; Decety, Chaminade, Gr!zes & Meltzoff, 2002; Di Pellegrino, Fadiga, Fogassi, Gallese & Rizzolatti,…”

“One characteristic of expert performance is flexibility—the ability to act on and anticipate novel occurrences in one’s skill domain ( Beilock & Carr, 2001 ).”

“The finding that high-level skills are disrupted by attention directed toward processes that normally run outside conscious awareness (Beilock & Carr, 2001; Beilock et al., 2002; Lewis & Linder, 1997; Masters, 1992; Masters, Polman, & Hammond, 1993) has also been reported for baseball batting…”

“Stressful situations can also be induced by manipulating the context in which the problem is presented, such as punishing poor performance with social consequences, in order to interfere with cognition (Beilock and Carr, 2001, 2005).”

“Similar to high-skilled players without neurological disorders [75,76], the dribbling performance of high-skilled soccer players with CP was not adversely affected by the secondary task, suggesting that dribbling was automatised.”

“…attention on those proceduralized components, which normally run under reduced levels of conscious control (i.e., more automatically), skill processes are brought back into working memory, where the skill becomes decomposed into smaller units (see also Beilock & Carr, 2001; Masters, 1992).”

“When the instructions drive responding towards extreme speed, at some point performance will simply break down (known as choking under pressure, Beilock & Carr, 2001).”

“…& Tam, 2007; Moran, 1996), enhancing ability to focus and the recall of physiological and psychological states (Foster, Weigand, & Baines, 2006; Marlow, Bull, Heath & Shambrook, 1998), and reducing the unraveling of automaticity (Beilock & Carr, 2001; Beilock, Carr, MacMahon, & Starks, 2002).”

“, “conscious processing hypothesis” [28]; “constrained action hypothesis” [14]; “explicit monitoring” [29]).”

“Beilock and Carr [6] showed that golf putting performance was worse when participants were under pressure (due to video taping and other setups that induced pressure).”

“Explicit monitoring of movement execution demands the working memory to process movement information (type 2 processing, a slow process) differently from the fast movement responses required from the athletes in competitive sport contexts [50].”

“Advocates of the self-focus model (e.g., Beilock & Carr, 2001; Jackson, Ashford, &”

“The second set are the self-focus theories (Baumeister, 1984 ), which include the conscious processing hypothesis (Masters, 1992 ), and are collectively termed “explicit monitoring” (Beilock & Carr, 2001 ).”

“…suggests that increased attention drawn to one’s own performance can result in performance decrements or “choking under pressure” (Baumeister, 1984; Beilock and Carr, 2001, 2005; Ramirez et al., 2013), so the presence of a female competitor may increase pressure in a learning environment if…”

“Although the explanations of failure under pressure when learning using explicit as opposed to more implicit methods is still open to debate (e.g., Beilock & Carr, 2001; Masters, 1992; Smeeton et al., 2005; Ward, Szalma, & Hancock, 2003), a number of sport psychology researchers have reported that…”

“…suggested that well-learned motor skills fail under pressure because such environments prompt individuals to increase the amount of attention they devote to controlling step-by-step performance in order to ensure a positive outcome (Baumeister, 1984; Beilock & Carr, 2001; Lewis & Linder, 1997).”

“This is especially true for highly practiced performances, such as free throws, which over many years of practice have become highly automatic (i.e., they require little conscious attention; Beilock & Carr, 2001).”

“Choking was diminished by self-consciousness training, which deals with situations that raise self-awareness and self-focusing (Beilock and Carr, 2001).”

“Beilock S represents research on the slightly wider concept of choking under pressure (e.g., Beilock & Carr, 2001; Beilock & Gray, 2007) that can be seen as meta-concept under which various explanations (e.g., attentional, drive, and behavioral theories) for why people choke under pressure are…”

“…his attention on the successful execution of his silver medal-winning horizontal bar routine; on the contrary, this might even disturb smooth execution as predicted by the ‘paralysis by analysis’ hypothesis (e.g. Baumeister, 1984; Beilock & Carr, 2001; Hardy, Mullen, & Jones, 1996; Masters, 1992).”

“…directed attentional systems might account for the monitoring of movement effects described in self-focus accounts of choking (e.g., Masters, 1992; Beilock and Carr, 2001), as attention may become inefficiently pulled toward salient but disruptive movement cues when anxious (see also Eysenck and…”

“However, Beilock and Carr (2001) later proposed that conscious monitoring of the skill is responsible for skill failure.”

“The video-monitoring training was deliberately designed to raise the participants’ self-consciousness during practice (Beilock and Carr, 2001).”

“…of skill execution) when under pressure and that this is a critical mechanisms in choking under pressure (Baumeister, 1984; Lewis and Linder, 1997; Beilock and Carr, 2001), researchers assessing exertional experiences and tolerances note that attention is drawn internally (primarily onto…”

“Indeed, typical studies have considered the effects of debilitating cognitions ( Beilock & Carr, 2001 ; Masters, 1992 ) and their associated effects on performance in sport.”

“Recently, significant conceptual advances have been made in an attempt to explain the primary mechanisms relevant to choking (see Beilock & Carr, 2001; Beilock, Kulp, Holt, & Carr, 2004).”

“One consequence of such a change is that performance might suffer when experts attend to the elementary steps of their proceduralized skill during execution (e.g., Baumeister, 1984; Beilock & Carr, 2001; Lewis & Linder, 1997).”

“Choking is a paradoxical phenomenon in which raising the importance of success leads people to perform more poorly than might be expected given their level of skill (Baumeister & Showers, 1986; Beilock & Carr, 2001).”

“Two prominent self-focus theories to date are the Explicit Monitoring Hypothesis (EMH; Beilock & Carr, 2001) and the Conscious Processing Hypothesis (CPH; Masters, 1992).”

“23 Payton, Kim, and Bird are reporting what Beilock and Carr (2001) call ''expertise-induced amnesia.''”

“Multiple lines of inquiry have identified self-focused attention as detrimental to performance (e.g., self-focus, Baumeister, 1984; explicit monitoring, Beilock & Carr, 2001; skill-focused attention, Gray, 2004; internal focus of attention, Wulf, 2013).”

“In controlled laboratory environments, performance decrements under pressure is induced on a wide range of sensorimotor tasks including golf putting (Beilock and Carr, 2001), bimanual coordination (Baumeister, 1984), and a variety of novel motor tasks (Mobbs et al., 2009; Chib et al., 2012).”

“Motor skills that are acquired explicitly tend to be less resilient under psychological [7, 18, 19, 32, 39] and physiological fatigue [31, 54], tend to interfere with the normal automatic”

“This study used a camera to induce self-focus and promote reinvestment, a technique successfully used in previous studies (Beilock & Carr, 2001; Lewis & Linder, 1997; Liao & Masters, 2002; Gray, 2004).”

“For example, Beilock and Carr (2001) presented evidence on the explicit monitoring theory based on putting in golf that represents a complex sensorimotor task, which is best performed when executed as an automated action.”

“Other evidence for the idea that mindfulness may undermine adaptive unconscious processes comes from the literature on skilled performance which demonstrates that trying to exert conscious control over automated behaviors can be counterproductive (Beilock & Carr, 2001).”

“…to infer changes in “efficiency” related to attentional resources, such as assessments of dribbling speed in football or ice hockey when players are simultaneously counting backwards or trying to memorise spatial positions (e.g., Beilock & Carr, 2001; Ford et al., 2005; Runswick et al., 2018).”

“It might be hypothesized that earlier in the season the import of a win is lower or the lack of practice renders the shooting of a free throw less internalized and, in turn, less susceptible to the choking effect (Beilock & Carr, 2001).”

“Selffocus or reinvestment theories of choking propose that, under pressure, performers consciously attempt to focus their attention on the process of how to perform the task, thus disrupting the normal automatic processing of the task (Masters, 1992; Beilock & Carr, 2001).”

“…to which threatening situations elicit anxiety is known to be highly individual, we performed a within-subject manipulation of threat (see also Baumeister, 1984; Beilock & Carr, 2001; Cañal-Bruland, Pijpers, & Oudejans, 2010; Causer, Holmes, Smith, & Williams, 2011; Wilson, Vine, & Wood, 2009).”

“By turning to sport science work centering around differences in the cognitive operations supporting expert and novice performers (e.g., Beilock & Carr, 2001; Beilock et al., 2002; Beilock et al., 2004), we are able to address such issues.”

“…make Phenom Cogn Sci (2015) 14:295–308 DOI 10.1007/s11097-014-9383-x 1On the habitualist side are Dreyfus (2005, 2007a, b), Beilock (2007, 2010) and (Beilock and Carr 2001, 2004; Beilock et al. 2002); intellectualism is defended in various ways by McDowell (2007), Stanley (2011), Sutton (2007),…”

“Choking is particularly likely to occur when high expectations are accompanied by self-focus (Lewis & Linder, 1997) or explicit monitoring of performance behaviors (Beilock & Carr, 2001).”

“…would be that even though motor skills are normally executed implicitly, performing new or unlearned skills requires a high degree of conscious control and active involvement of working memory (e.g. Abernethy, Maxwell, Masters, van der Kamp, & Jackson, 2007; Beilock & Carr, 2001; Masters, 1992).”