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…”

“…or in a sports arena, where an entire team or nation may be * Julianne B. Herts jherts@uchicago.edu 1 Department of Psychology, The University of Chicago, 5848 S. University Ave, Chicago, IL 60637, USA heavily invested in an athlete’s performance (Beilock and Carr 2001; Beilock and Carr 2005).”

“This “freezing” effect results in the decomposing of individual movement elements, which inadvertently attenuates performance (see also, Beilock & Carr, 2001 and Masters, 1992).”

“As expert 33 performance is typified by increased automaticity, less demand is placed on working-memory 34 (Beilock & Carr, 2001), freeing space for metacognitive assessment and implementing a 35 strategy to achieve one’s goals (MacIntyre et al., 2014).”

“In other words, the (moving) advertisement may function as a distractor (e.g., Beilock and Carr, 2001).”

“The significant increase in upper arm BTV by the experts in the dual-task condition (relative to control) could be interpreted as being consistent with a traditional automaticity-based explanation of expertise (e.g. Beilock and Carr 2001).”

“In fact, research indicates that prior exposure to stressful conditions which promote self-consciousness (explicit monitoring of task processes and procedures), help to inoculate against future stress, resulting in maintained and even improved performance (Beilock & Carr, 2001).”

“Performance pressure has been demonstrated to cause impairments performance on a variety of tasks, especially cognitively demanding tasks (Baumeister, 1984; Beilock & Carr, 2001; Lewis & Linder, 1997).”

“WILL MECHANICAL THOUGHTS DURING MY SWING FACILITATE GOOD PERFORMANCE? Consciously being aware of movements during a well-learned skill may lead to unravelling the automaticity of that skill [42, 43].”

“BEILOCK, S. L., & CARR, T. H. (2001) On the fragility of skilled performance: what governs choking under pressure?”

“In order to assess the memory structures and attentional processes that govern high-level sensorimotor skill execution, Beilock and Carr (2001) conducted a series of experiments to explore generic and episodic memories of particular putts in expert and novice golfers.”

“6:1037. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01037”

“Such an approach has been taken by researchers examining anxiety and choking under pressure to preserve motivation during LP conditions (Beilock & Carr, 2001; Mesagno & Mullane-Grant, 2010; Wang et al., 2004).”

“…choking indicates that the phenomenon is a result of the combined action of self-perception, state anxiety, and coping methods, leading to the obstruction of automatic execution, preventing athletes from capturing competition-related information and reducing working memory (Beilock and Carr, 2001).”

“…e.g. keep the wrist aligned with the racquet’s handle, rotate the hip,. when it comes to cognitive resources that pertain to memory (Beilock, Wierenga, and Carr 2003), attention (Beilock and Carr 2001) and sensorimotor skills (better articulated as skillful movement) (Beilock and Carr 2004).”

“In particular, Baumeister (1984) and Baumeister and Showers (1986) showed that pressure increases with the existence of competition between agents (see also, e.g., Beilock and Carr (2001), DeCaro et al. (2011), Porcelli et al. (2012), Yu (2015)).”

“Paying attention to the execution of a motor action is thought to be detrimental to the performance of a well-learned motor action, yet beneficial when performing a relatively new one (Beilock & Carr, 2001; Carr, this issue).”

“Any information processing that occurs which is unrelated to skill, such as environmental distractions, or the trainee’s own thoughts, arousal, anxiety, or focus, can impede a surgeon’s learning process.(38)”

“Beilock and Carr (2001) asserted that attentional control may shift from external to internal attention while performance is being evaluated, impairing automaticity of movements.”

“Some research has documented the choking under pressure phenomenon among experts in a given task, such as expert golfers in a putting task (Beilock & Carr, 2001) and expert baseball players in a batting task (Gray, 2004).”

“Previous studies (e.g., Beilock and Carr, 2001; Cooke et al., 2010; Tanaka and Sekiya, 2010) have adopted this experimental procedure in order to prevent reduced motivation during the non-pressure condition after participants had already experienced the pressure condition.”

“For a review of the findings on skill learning, refer to the work of Beilock and Carr (2001); Beilock et al. (2002); Ericsson et al. (1993); Masters (1992); Wulf (2007); and Wulf, Höß, and Prinz (1998).”

“Various studies have shown that incentive-triggered performance decrements are caused by momentary impairments in working memory and attention regulation (Beilock and Carr, 2001; Beilock et al., 2004; Lewis and Linder, 1997).”

“Thus, our subjects appear to “choke”under pressure, as others have found (Ariely, Gneezy, Loewenstein, and Mazar, 2005; Beilock and Carr, 2001; Dohmen, 2005; Markman and Maddox, 2006). This finding speaks to the potential adaptiveness (or lack thereof) of motivations to perform. Logg, Moore, and Haran (2013) re-analyz…”

“They were told they would be videotaped, which we employed to heighten the stress factor and better simulate a competition situation (Beilock & Carr, 2001).”

“Choking under pressure and the subsequent decrements in performance that result is an area of research that has attracted a great deal of research (Beilock & Carr, 2001; Gucciardi et al., 2010; Lewis & Linder, 1997; Mesagno & Mullane-Grant, 2010).”

“As we suppose, one explanation for the poor performance of HSC participants can be found in the literature on the choking under pressure phenomenon (Beilock & Carr, 2001).”

“One potential avenue through which emotions may interfere with sensorimotor skill performance has been identified in the research on choking (Beilock & Carr, 2001; Beilock, Kulp, Holt, & Carr, 2004).”

“They found the home team won 60% of the time in the first two games of the series but only 41% of the time in the last game; when the series went seven games, the home team won 39% of the time. However, when Schlenker, Phillips, Boniecki, and Schlenker (1995) updated the Baumeister and Steinhilber (1984) data to inclu…”

“…predictions about the effect of motivation on low-contact perceivers ’ mentalizing accuracy, it is possible that these perceivers ’ relatively diminished face processing expertise led to increased explicit monitoring in the motivation condition, which in turn impaired their performance [46,47].”

“…have shown divergent effects of MPA on musicians: while some experience performance decrements under high MPA, such as increased muscle stiffness and impaired memory recall (1; 21), others continue to excel, challenging the view that high MPA levels necessarily hinder performance (19; 24; 31).”

“Choking is when, as compared to past achievements and current expectations, athletes underperform (Baumeister, 1984; Beilock & Carr, 2001; Markman, Maddox, & Worthy, 2006).”

“The explicit monitoring hypothesis [48, 49] further suggests that individuals under ST may shift their focus to step-by-step process of the task that are typically automatic.”

“The others, explicit monitoring theory (Beilock & Carr, 2001), self-focused model (Lewis & Linder, 1997), and the theory of reinvestment (Masters, 1992) share considerable commonality.”

“When pressure to perform is high, people often perform worse than without this pressure (“choking under pressure”) probably because conscious reflection about the reward distracts their attention from the task (Beilock and Carr, 2001).”

“The latter task is believed to promote conscious processing of the execution, which, according to self-focus theories of choking, causes motor skill failure (Baumeister, 1984; Beilock & Carr, 2001; Masters, 1992; Masters & Maxwell, 2008).”

“Indeed, paying too much attention to what have been termed proceduralized skills can be counterproductive and result in “choking” under pressure (Beilock & Carr, 2001).”

“attempt to split attentional focus between executing a motor task and worrying about the outcome of the performance, by creating a dual task-scenario (35).”

“In essence, such a partnership might further our understanding of why and how one chokes under pressure (Beilock & Carr, 2001).”

“The scientific literature has shown the critical role of athletes’ perceptions of competence, and this applies also to the decision making (Beilock & Carr, 2001).”

“This result is supported by distraction theory where pressure produced by external or internal sources results in performance decline attributed to divided attentional resources (Beilock & Carr, 2001; Lewis & Linder, 1997; Wine, 1971).”

“Other related simulations of motivation or motivation-cognition interaction may be found in Wilson et al. [65, 66], especially in relation to effects of anxiety [7, 8, 22].”

“However, research to date is limited that has demonstrated an overcompensatory effect in response to avoidant instructions [5,18] especially under ecologically valid experiments and pressure (e.”

“For instance, explicit monitoring theories of performance degradation suggest that pressure induces control of proceduralized knowledge that would be more efficient as an automatic structure (Baumeister, 1984; Beilock & Carr, 2001).”

“…underlying decreased performance in HP scenarios are typically argued to impair sensorimotor skills in tasks that rely on automatic, well-practiced routines, such as operating machinery or concerting a free-throw in basketball (Baumeister, 1984; Beilock & Carr, 2001; Mesagno & Beckmann, 2017).”

“…of choking-under-pressure suggests that it is the appropriation of cognitive resources to concerns about failure and its consequences that is at the root of the uncharacteristically depressed performances that come about during highstakes situations (Beilock & Carr 2001; Ramirez & Beilock 2011).”

“Consistent with the above description are results from a study by Beilock and Carr (2001), where intercollegiate golf team members were asked about the steps involved in a typical golf putt.”

“Based on what we have learnt from explicit processes theory [21], one may suggest that unlike beginners, elite participants show better performance in attentional strategies irrelevant to the tasks due to the lack of step-by-step Table 2: Means and standard deviations for the differential attentional focus strategies…”