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…”

“Beilock & Carr, 2001; Markman et al., 2006; Gray, 2004; Beilock et al., 2004).”

“The automatic “don’t think” idea is obviously enshrined in the “Inner Game” series (Gallwey, 1986), supported by evidence regarding choking (Beilock & Carr, 2001) and underpinned by reinvestment theory (Masters, 1992).”

“As it turns out, people with different motor skill experiences not only rely on different cognitive and neural operations in overt action execution (Beilock and Carr, 2001), but also in the comprehension of action-related language.”

“These two studies [22,23] support the notion that in choking, individuals lose their capacity to access implicit learned motor programs.”

“…is resolved by proposing two different kinds of knowledge: procedural knowledge, which is implicit and supports skilled performance directly, and declarative knowledge, which is explicit and does not support skilled performance directly (Anderson, 1976; Beilock & Carr, 2001; Cohen & Squire, 1980).”

“If test-anxious students choke under pressure (Beilock & Carr, 2001), they should perform more poorly than expected in evaluative situations given their knowledge or skills.”

“Regarding the effects of psychological stress on motor skills most publications found a negative effect of high levels of anxiety on gross motor performance [9,10,11,12,13,14].”

“…al., 2013) and that is because in such tasks the analytic cognitive processes often have much more opportunities to interfere with the focused attention of flow and facilitate a distracted attention that is characteristic of anxiety (distraction theory; Beilock & Carr, 2001; Lewis & Linder, 1997).”

“According to Beilock and Carr’s (2001) explicit monitoring hypothesis, consciously attending to step-by-step skilled behaviour impairs expert performance significantly as high-level execution is thought to be governed by proceduralized knowledge that is run without conscious attention to task components. This predicti…”

“Explicit monitoring theories attribute choking to the increased attention paid to the value of carrying out the task carefully in high‑stakes situations which interferes with the automated cognitive processes necessary for task progress (Baumeister, 1984; Beilock & Carr, 2001).”

“Beilock and Carr (2001) assign those kinds of “deautomatization” approaches to the family of explicit monitoring theories for “choking under pressure” (in contrast to distraction theories).”

“…skills are usually executed outside working memory (i.e., automatically; Beilock & Carr, 2001; Fitts & Posner, 1967) so that attention to proceduralized skills may lead to their deautomatization (e.g., Baumeister, 1984; Beilock & Carr, 2001; Deikman, 1969; Kimble & Perlmuter, 1970; Masters, 1992).”

“To study thought and attention processes, Beilock and colleagues’ (Beilock & Carr, 2001; Beilock et al., 2002) used controlled environmental conditions in which analysis of environmental settings relevant to performance were not present (e.g., terrain slope, grass height).”

“Accounts of skill that emphasize automaticity suggest that highly skilled individuals will have minimal awareness of their actions (e.g., Beilock & Carr, 2001; Dreyfus, 2013; Brownstein, 2014).”

“…has been observed in diverse situations such as those involving public speaking or sports and games, and investigations of the underlying mechanisms have become prevalent in the sport and exercise sciences (Baumeister, 1984; Baumeister & Showers, 1986; Beilock & Carr, 2001; Beilock & Gray, 2007).”

“However, “execution focus model” argues that limited attentional resources cannot explain the negative effects of anxiety upon performance [12].”

“A possible explanation for this phenomenon is that high-pressure situations harm performance by diverting individuals’ attention to task-irrelevant thoughts, such as worries about the situation and its consequences (Beilock & Carr, 2001).”

“…appear in the literature on choking under pressure, which finds that people’s performance worsens when they lose confidence in their own skills (Beilock & Carr, 2001) and that people even may quit when performance expectations are very high and they no longer believe in themselves (Dai et al.,…”

“For instance, participants who had proceduralized their golf putting skills under conditions of low performance pressure underperformed under high performance pressure, as operationalized by video-taping (Beilock and Carr 2001; Studies 3 and 4).”

“It can provide a common metric for comparisons with previous studies that did not separate distance and aiming in evaluating performance (e.g., Beilock & Carr, 2001; Beilock et al., 2002; Crews & Landers, 1993).”

“For example Beilock and Carr (2001) showed that participants did not choke when—during a fake competition—they had to solve a secondary cognitive task in addition to the primary motor task.”

“…of expertise has been examined using novel tasks, dual tasks, instructions to induce a specific attentional focus, and inducing pressure to perform (Beilock & Carr, 2001; Beilock, Carr, MacMahon, & Starkes, 2002; Castaneda & Gray, 2007; see Abernethy, Maxwell, Masters, van der Kamp, & Jackson,…”

“However, some empirical investigations have suggested that instructions with an internal focus emphasis could still be effective, especially for novice learners (e.g., Beilock & Carr, 2001; Beilock, Carr, MacMahon, & Starkes, 2002).”

“The assumptions of skill-focus theories have been empirically supported in several studies (e.g., Beilock & Carr, 2001; Gray, 2004; Gucciardi & Dimmock, 2008; Jackson, Ashford, & Norsworthy, 2006; Mullen & Hardy, 2000; Mullen et al., 2005).”

“…performance is both beneficial (in line with the distraction theory) and detrimental to performance (in line with the explicit monitoring theory) (Beilock & Carr, 2001; Beilock, Carr, MacMahon, & Starkes, 2002; Ford, Hodges, & Williams, in review) Baumeister (1984) tested a model stating…”

“The evidence from these laboratory studies reliably shows that experts in a variety of domains often exhibit poor performance in pressure-packed situations (Baumeister, 1984; Beilock & Carr, 2001; Beilock, Carr, MacMahon, & Starkes, 2002; Gray, 2004; for a review, see Beilock, 2010).”

“This heightened attention is thought to adversely impact performance (Kimble and Perlmuter, 1970; Masters, 1992), and has been referred to as “choking” (Baumeister, 1984; Baumeister and Steinhilber, 1984; Lewis and Linder, 1997; Beilock and Carr, 2001).”

“Based on Baumeister’s self-focused model, Beilock and Carr (2001) hypothesized (explicit monitoring hypothesis) that the increase in self-focus produced by performance pressure leads to an increased monitoring of the step-by-step processes of movement execution.”

“When the pressure leads to performance deterioration, often referred to as choking under pressure (e.g., Baumeister, 1984; Beilock & Carr, 2001; Geukes, Mesagno, Hanrahan, & Kellman, 2012), the decrease in performance is also often related to these changes in attention.”

“” Participants were then asked to recall their generic understanding of a netball shot [23].”

“Within the self-focus model, researchers (e.g., Baumeister, 1984; Beilock & Carr, 2001; Jackson, Ashford, & Norsworthy, 2006; Masters, 1992) explain that choking occurs because under pressure athletes direct attention to the task execution itself, due to increased effort to perform correctly.”

“…even influence it positively (Zhang et al., 2016) – conscious control appears to disrupt motor performance, as predicted by the theory of reinvestment (Masters & Maxwell, 2008), explicit monitoring theory (Beilock & Carr, 2001) and the constrained action hypothesis (Wulf & Lewthwaite, 2010).”

“According to this line of research, highly practiced actions are automated; they are, as Beilock and Carr put it, “controlled in real time by procedural knowledge” (2001, p. 702). Procedural knowledge couples well-worn neural programs—programs which run without the intervention of conscious control, programs that run…”

“In keeping with the many theories that conceive expertise as relying on procedural memory (e.g., Beilock & Carr, 2001; see also H ø ffding & Montero, 2019, Chris-tensen, Sutton & McIlwain, 2016), one can usually navigate the traffic situation without conscious attention or in a seemingly automatic…”

“Anecdotal evidence from participants raised the issue of reinvestment (Masters & Maxwell, 2008) or explicit monitoring (Beilock & Carr, 2001) in the early occlusion condition.”

“It is more adaptive to have attention directed towards the 3 task at hand rather than a self-focus, as research suggest that a focus on the self during 4 pressurised performance can cause performance decrements (Beilock & Carr, 2001).”

“Novices may be able to describe the steps in which they engaged to perform specific task episodes better than experts can, due to the novices’ greater reliance on attention and working memory for task performance, but the experts possess more detailed declarative knowledge of a generic nature about how the tasks are p…”

“…to identify who is most susceptible to the internalization of attention and hence choking (e.g., Baumeister, 1984; Baumeister & Showers, 1986; Beilock & Carr, 2001; Beilock, Bertenthal et al., 2004; Gray, 2004; Jackson, Ashford & Norsworthy, 2006; Lewis & Linder, 1997; Liao & Masters, 2002;…”

“This conscious effort frequently causes expert performers to perform significantly below their usual level, resulting in what scholars have coined “choking under pressure” [30,31].”

“reinvestment of declarative knowledge of how a skill works [22] as well as explicitly monitoring a skill [11] and constrained action [19] all consistently conclude that focusing on the execution of well-learned motor tasks has a negative effect on performance by interfering with automatic movement control.”

“In high-stakes sporting situations, the desire to perform as well as possible is thought to create performance pressure (Beilock & Carr, 2001).”

“Likewise, attending to the execution of an automated skill, assumed to increase the involvement of the prefrontal cortices, results in poorer performance (Beilock and Carr, 2001; Beilock et al., 2002; Gray, 2004).”

“Thinking about what you are doing can interfere with skilled performance, a phenomenon known as choking (Beilock and Carr, 2001).”

“…physiological and psychological states (Foster et al., 2006; Marlow et al., 1998; Schack et al., 2005), and reducing the unravelling of automaticity (Beilock & Carr, 2001; Beilock, Carr, MacMahon, & Starks, 2002), exploring how localized PGRs could be integrated formally into PPRs to facilitate…”

“This may even lead to outcomes that allow humans to overcome current deficiencies such as the law of reversed effort [264] and tendency to choke under pressure [265], [266]) that currently characterize human decision making when stakes are high.”

“To assess resource demands attributed to primary and secondary tasks, researchers utilize dual-task methodology (Beilock, Bertenthal, McCoy, & Carr, 2004; Beilock & Carr, 2001; Beilock & Gray, 2012; Gray, 2004).”

“As a result, attention to execution at the step-by-step level is thought to disrupt the automated functioning of such skills (Beilock & Carr, 2001).”

“…rate (Fredrikson and Gunnarsson 1992; Gramer and Saria 2007), abnormal cognitive functions, such as a degradation in attention and working memory (Beilock and Carr 2001; Lee and Grafton 2015; Yu 2015), and muscular cramping characterized by coactivation of the flexor and extensor muscles…”

“…cognition emerge in ap-prenticeship, these accounts of skill highlight the integrated bodies of knowledge, accessed and applied fast and fl exibly in real time, that are treated as disruptive of embodied skills on alternative, “ mindless ” skill theories (Beilock and Carr 2001; Dreyfus 2007).”

“…traits and performance used mainly gross motor tasks (Jackson et al., 2006: dribbling; Masters et al., 1993: golf putting; Wang, Marchant, Morris, & Gibbs, 2004: basketball free throw) that at an expert stage are processed outside working memory (Beilock & Carr, 2001; Fitts & Posner, 1967).”

“On the other hand, the explicit monitoring hypothesis (Beilock & Carr, 2001) predicts a relationship between attention and motor performance for novices under a general skill focus, but does not make clear predictions regarding the difference between internal skill focus and external skill focus.”

“However, very high-stress situations have also been linked to breakdown of well-learned skills in experienced performers, leading to suboptimal performance (Beilock & Carr, 2001).”

“…with studies demonstrating that expert performers are able to perform well-learned actions in conjunction with other tasks (Gray, 2004; Leavitt, 1979), support the automaticity view which posits that experts require less cognitive effort and memory for skilled execution (Beilock & Carr, 2001).”

“Past research, primarily conducted on well-trained performers (Beilock & Carr, 2001; Lewis & Linder, 1997), suggests experienced performers “choke,” or perform worse than expected, as feelings of pressure and anxiety mount.”

“These have been identified as the ‘choking’ and ‘panicking’ stages (Lehner et al., 1997; Beilock and Carr, 2001; Bourne and Yaroush, 2003).”

“Other researchers have also shown that increasing attention to well-learned processes can lead to decrements in skillful execution (eg, Beilock & Carr, 2001 ; Beilock, Kulp, Holt, & Carr, 2004 ; Wicklund, 1975 ).”

“Explicit monitoring theories (Masters, 1992; Beilock & Carr, 2001; Pijpers, Oudejans, Holsheimer, & Bakker, 2003; Gray, 2004; Jackson, Ashford, & Norsworthy, 2006) have suggested that anxiety raises self-consciousness, which turns attention inward toward an explicit focus on the execution of…”

“However, in the aviation context—and especially in the emergency context—the emotional response has a relevant role in the activities accomplishment (Beilock and Carr, 2001), since it can affect the muscular tone, breathing, cardiac, and endocrine activity.”

“Thus, these results extend findings from stereotype threat research regarding gender identification (Schmader, 2002), and findings from the general choking under pressure literature regarding self-consciousness (Baumeister, 1984; Beilock & Carr, 2001).”

“Specifically, participants were asked to describe the last putt they had taken in enough detail so that a friend would be able to replicate it (adopted from Beilock and Carr, 2001).”

“In addition, in the stress condition, participants used a “funny putter” (Beilock & Carr, 2001).”

“The lore which sees thought as inevitably obstructive to absorbed coping, and expert skills as therefore essentially ‘mindless’, finds apparent support in some philosophical and psychological theory (Beilock & Carr, 2001; Ennen, 2003; Dreyfus, 2007; Flegal & Anderson, 2008).”