Concentration in sport: New horizons

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Bibliographische Detailangaben
Deutscher übersetzter Titel:Konzentration im Sport: neue Horizonte
Autor:Moran, Aidan
Erschienen in:Psychology of sport and exercise : enhancing the quality of life ; proceedings of the 10th European Congress of Sport Psychology - FEPSAC, Prague 1999. Part 1
Veröffentlicht:Prag: Univerzita Prag (Verlag), 1999, S. 36-44, Lit.
Format: Literatur (SPOLIT)
Publikationstyp: Sammelwerksbeitrag
Medienart: Gedruckte Ressource
Sprache:Englisch
ISBN:8086317005
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Erfassungsnummer:PU199912406913
Quelle:BISp

Einleitung

Over the past decade, research psychologists have shown increasing, interest in the mental processes of athletes. For example, within the past few years, publications have appeared on such cognitive topics as working memory, perceptual expertise and movement imagery in sport performers. At first glance, these developments suggest that cognitive psychologists have begun to appreciate the possibility that the domain of sport is a rich medium in which to explore how the mind works. Unfortunately, this conclusion is premature as the subject indices of recent textbooks in this discipline contain no references to research on athletik performance. Perhaps these authors regard sport as a frivolous activity - far removed from the serious business of studying how students think while sitting in front of computer screens in psychology laboratories. Alternatively, the dearth of references to athletic performance in cognitive texts may be due to the fact that sport scientists offer little theoretical analysis of problems like distractibility in sport. To explain, although there are many practical intervention packages available for athletes with concentration problems, there have been few studies of why sport performers suffer attentional lapses (especially those caused by their own thoughts and feelings) in the first place. Without such research, there can be no cross-fertilisation of ideas between the disciplines of sport psychology and cognitive psychology. So, in an effort to rectify this oversight, the present paper will examine a simple yet challenging question raised by the study of concentration in sport. Specifically, why do athletes find it difficult to control their thoughts and emotions when attempting to "focus" during competition? Hopefully, the attempt to answer this question will lead to some new horizons in sport psychology as well as to increased collaboration between cognitive and sport psychologists. The paper is organised as follows: The author begins by explaining the significance of research on concentration in sport. Then, he examines the nature and possible theoretical mechanisms of concentration "loss" in athletes. The next section explores some problems arising from failure of mental control in sport performers. Included here are such difficulties as "choking" under pressure and "actions slips". Finally, having re-capitulated the theme of this paper, the author sketches some new directions for research on concentration in athletes. Einleitung