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…”

“…Selection: allocation Performance Detection Attrition Reporting Other Alder et al. (2016) Unclear Unclear Unclear Unclear Unclear Low Low Beilock & Carr (2001) Unclear Unclear Unclear Unclear Unclear Low High Beseler et al. (2016) Unclear Unclear High Unclear High High Low Lawrence et…”

“Some research has been used to suggest that many hours of practice might be required to tune these implicit motor representations before an external focus can have an advantage (Beilock & Carr, 2001; Gray, 2004).”

“Similarly, Beilock and Carr (2001) have shown that individuals who are accustomed to performing in pressure situations can become inoculated against the effects of pressure.”

“Moreover, Brass et al. (2001) had individuals execute specific finger movements in response to viewing either compatible or incompatible finger movements.”

“…trend of empirical research has highlighted the harmful effects of experimentally induced evaluative pressure on cognitive performance (Baumeister, 1984; Beilock & Carr, 2001, 2005; Beilock, Kulp, Holt, & Carr, 2004; DeCaro, Rotar, Kendra, & Beilock, 2010; Gimmig, Huguet, Caverni, & Cury, 2006).”

“It could be expected that stressing genetic causes could cause decreased performance due to the apprehension not to be able to confirm the stereotype suggested by the instructions, an effect called “choking under pressure” (Beilock & Carr, 2001).”

“The manipulation used to elicit anxiety was based on the one adopted by Beilock and Carr (2001) in their study of golf putting under pressure.”

“For expert actions that are nominally skill-based, directing attention at the motor activity can weaken the skilled performance by diverting perceptual resources from the surrounding context (Beilock & Carr, 2001; Beilock et al., 2002; Masters, 1992).”

“There is strong experimental evidence that attending to procedural knowledge degrades the quality of skilled performance (Beilock & Carr, 2001).”

“…1985; Baumeister & Showers, 1986; Baumeister & Steinhilber, 1984) asserted that in the specific context of deciding games in a championship series, a home disadvantage may exist – an assertion that has been thoroughly investigated more recently (e.g. Beilock & Carr, 2001; Lewis & Linder, 1997).”

“Taken together, these results suggest that the influences of declarative, effortful and nondeclarative, automatic memory processes guiding motor control and learning were quantitatively different between the two learning groups: mainly declarative and effortful for single-task learners and mainly nondeclarative and au…”

“In fact, experts can perform worse when they explicitly try to focus on the components of their skills [ 3 , 4].”

“According to self-focus theories of attention (including Beilock and Carr, 2001, “explicit monitoring hypothesis” and Masters, 1992, “conscious processing hypothesis”) attending to the stepby-step component processes of a proceduralized skill results in its control structures being broken down into…”

“Similarly, competitive pressure can reduce the performance of professional athletes, causing them to “choke under pressure” (8, 9).”

“…aspects of what she did and how she did it must have been accessed by working memory; and if so, the agent should be able to report them (since reportability and working memory seem to be closely linked) (see Beilock and Carr, 2001; more on the link between reflection and working memory below).”

“In the area of motor control, research has shown that stress and anxiety have detrimental effects on performance (Baumeister, 1984; Beilock and Carr, 2001).”

“Researchers have also studied the influence of task complexity on motor performance by altering the equipment used to perform sporting skills (Beilock & Carr, 2001 ; Beilock, Bertenthal, Hoerger, & Carr, 2008 ; Lam, Maxwell, & Masters, 2010 ).”

“For example, altering the physical attributes of the putter may necessitate changes in putting action that increase the associated attention demands, either by causing more errors, which is likely to result in greater use of processing resources to generate and test hypotheses related to the movement outcomes (Maxwell…”

“The research by Beilock and Gray appears to support the account given by Beilock and Carr (2001), including the existence of a strong distinction between automated and non-automated skills, and, accordingly, between the domains of applicability of selffocus and distraction theories.”

“…repeated measures (RM) MANCOVA was used to analyze the reaction time, arousal, pleasantness, and HR data; LTA rating was used as a between-subjects mean-centered covariate (see Delaney & Maxwell, 1981), because level of expertise may mediate performance under pressure (Beilock & Carr, 2001).”

“These findings are in agreement with reports that distracting attention away from movement execution can benefit motor performance, as long as the motor skill is sufficiently automated and the secondary task is relatively easy [46,47].”

“Given that our scenarios have no lead car to follow, we ask participants to maintain a constant speed, and will use their ability to do so as an additional measurement.”

“This hypothesis was derived from reinvestment theory (Masters & Maxwell, 2008), which argues that experts have more resources than novices to devote to error monitoring and correction (Beilock & Carr, 2001; Lam et al., 2010).”

“While anxious, skilled athletes tend to return to a step-by-step processing instead of maintaining an automatic action operation (Baumeister, 1984; Beilock & Carr, 2001).”

“This might be the case because given extra time experts may attend to the movements involved in the task in a way that can be counterproductive (Beilock & Carr, 2001 ; Beilock et al , 2002 ; Beilock, Bertenthal, McCoy, & Carr, 2004 ).”

“While this may sometimes support performance, the present research shows that such a money-induced task focus is not always a good thing (Beilock & Carr, 2001; Dijksterhuis & Nordgren, 2006; Olivers & Nieuwenhuis, 2006).”

“This is an important issue because in elite sports, motor skills should be fully automatised in order to benefit performance (Beilock & Carr, 2001).”

“As attention to one’s skilled performance impairs the performance [59,60] (even if this is not subjectively perceived [61]), automated movements are more inconsistent.”

“In addition, the questions concerning conscious movement awareness were based on items used to measure conscious knowledge of a golfputting task in the Beilock and Carr (2001) study.”

“…choking under pressure has been used to describe the phenomenon whereby people perform more poorly than expected given their skill level in situations where incentives for optimal performance are maximal and the negative consequences associated with poor performance are high (Beilock & Carr, 2001).”

“Similar results were reported by Calmeiro and Tenenbaum (2011) where beginners focussed on mainly technical aspects during TA and high level golfers reported greater use of gathering information and planning.”

“Similarly, for basketball players, rather than leading to “choking” (Beilock and Carr 2001; Cappuccio 2017), it is important that they pay deliberate attention to their dribbling of the ball at just the right moments in the play (Montero 2016, p.”

“This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ COGNITIONS IN PROFESSIONAL SNOOKER 22 reinvestment (e.g., Beilock & Carr, 2001; Masters, 1992).”

“In accordance with the research fi eld ´choking under pressure´, it is known that performance in sports can be negatively in fl uenced by pressure (Baumeister, 1984; Beilock & Carr, 2001).”

“Specific examples include experts such as golfers (Beilock & Carr, 2001) and baseball batters (Gray, 2004) who perform worse on complex, proceduralized tasks when under pressure.”

“Studies have shown that performance decrements under stress may be the result of devoting conscious attention and/or explicit monitoring to what would ordinarily be an automatic response [30, 31].”

“Specifically, an athlete’s ability to focus on taskrelevant information in the present moment can be compromised by heightened levels of anxiety (Beilock & Carr, 2001).”

“Psychological literature refers to these performance decreases as a form of “choking under pressure” (Baumeister, 1984; Beilock and Carr, 2001).”

“Conversely, automatic action control is hampered by conscious reflection on the purpose of one’s actions (Baumeister 1984; Beilock and Carr 2001).”

“According to Beilock and Carr (2001), one-step skills may be unaffected by conscious monitoring of task execution because they do not involve the integration and sequencing of multiple steps or parts.”

“Explicit monitoring largely embraces conscious control with the modification that the final mechanism of skill breakdown is the monitoring of the ‘step by step’ processes of execution (Beilock & Carr, 2001, p. 701).”

“The explicit monitoring hypothesis (EMH; Beilock & Carr, 2001) proposes a subtly different mechanism and states that when anxious, performance is disrupted by consciously monitoring the step-by-step execution of skill, interrupting proceduralised motor programmes.”

“Choking can be defined as “performance decrements under circumstances that increase the importance of good or improved performance” (Baumeister, 1984). Various theories exist about causes of choking, which are related to concentration difficulties, including distraction (Wine, 1971), a high self-focus (Baumeister, 198…”

“Individuals choking on difficult or complex tasks under pressure were found to improve performance in simple or easy tasks under the same pressure conditions ( Beilock & Carr, 2001 ; Cottrell, Rittle, & Wack, 1967 ; Masters, 1992 ).”

“Unfortunately, thinking about a skilled movement is a sure way to disrupt it, a phenomenon known in sports as“choking”(Beilock and Carr, 2001).”

“The predominant focus in skills research has been on automatization of responses (Fitts and Posner 1967; Anderson 1982; Logan 1985; Beilock and Carr 2001), but experts must perform well in complex domains where they often encounter situations that differ significantly from past experience.”

“By contrast, in studies by Beilock and colleagues (Beilock & Carr, 2001, Experiment 240 2; Beilock et al., 2002, Experiment 1; Beilock et al., 2004, Experiment 1), putt distances 241 varied only from 1.2 - 1.5 m (3.9 - 4.9 feet), and Toner and Moran (2011) used a uniform putt 242 distance of 2.5 m…”

“Similar to the research findings on performance routines [43, 44], this suggestibly allows experts to manage more effectively their emotions; attentional focus [45, 46]; concentration [47] and enhance consistency of performance [48, 49].”

“Performance pressure has been shown to degrade performance on cognitively demanding tasks (Baumeister, 1984; Beilock & Carr, 2001; Lewis & Linder, 1997), such as ethical-decision-making (Mumford et al., 2006).”

“Because other studies have found that “choking” occurs in relatively complex tasks, including putting (e.g., golf; Beilock & Carr, 2001; Masters, 1992), free throw shooting (e.g., basketball; Mesagno, Harvey, & Janelle, 2012; Wang et al., 2004), and a roll-up game performed bimanually (Baumeister,…”

“This reinvestment of explicit knowledge leads to the automatic control structures that normally run uninterrupted to be dechunked, resulting in smaller sequences of independent units, which must be run and activated separately (Beilock and Carr, 2001).”

“Using the former information source, performers may engage in “execution monitoring” (attending to the step-bystep unfolding of motor execution; Beilock & Carr, 2001 ) and make judgments about how successfully those steps are being taken.”

“Research on choking under pressure has shown that choking, the decreased performance on sensorimotor tasks in the presence of an audience, decreased after participants underwent training during which they grew accustomed to performing in front of an audience (Beilock & Carr, 2001).”

“The results of Jordet and Hartman (2008) appear somewhat contradictory to alternative explanations of performance in highpressure situations (e.g., Baumeister, 1984; Baumeister & Showers, 1986; Beilock & Carr, 2001; Masters, 1992).”

“However, when performing routine and familiar tasks (such as dribbling a soccer ball through a series of cones), conscious control has been found to be highly disruptive to expert movement and performance proficiency (Beilock & Carr, 2001; Jackson, Ashford, & Norsworthy, 2006).”

“Furthermore, for skilled officers, devoting additional mental resources to shooting performance might paradoxically have a negative effect on performance, as they “overthink” the task and to some degree “choke” (block normal breathing) [14, 15, 16].”

“Indeed, this assertion is consistent with previous research on choking under observer pressure (Baumeister & Steinhilber, 1984; Beilock & Carr, 2001; Cheryan & Bodenhausen, 2000; Wallace et al., 2005).”

“It can also undermine performance by leading people to overthink their jobs in ways that contribute to choking (Beilock & Carr 2001).”

“As a result there is a gap in each unit which creates more room for error, which would not be present in the integrated autonomous structure (Masters, 1992; Beilock and Carr, 2001).”

“…situations, such as the effect of interactions between individual-level heterogeneity—for example, resilience to psychological pressure (e.g., Baumeister, 1984; Beilock & Carr, 2001; González-Dı́az et al., 2012)—and situation-specific factors, such as the lagging-behind and valence effects.”

“For example, attentional theories propose that, in response to anxiety, athletes either divert attention towards the self (e.g. self-focus theories; Beilock & Carr, 2001), or away from task-relevant cues (e.g. distraction theories; Oudejans et al., 2011).”

“The mechanisms of choking are found to operate on proceduralized task control structures (Beilock and Carr, 2001).”