Ren Pengfei, Song Tingwei, Chi Lizhong, Wang Xiaoting, Miao Xiuying
School of Psychology, Beijing Sport University, Beijing, China.
School of Physical Education, Yan'an University, Yan'an, China.
Front Psychol. 2022 Mar 3;13:823989. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.823989. eCollection 2022.
Anticipation is a crucial perceptual-cognitive skill in fast-ball sports, and the effect of high anxiety on performance has attracted more attention from sports psychologists. Related studies mainly focus on the effect of anxiety on influencing processing efficiency and attentional control (top-down vs. bottom-up) during information processing in sport. Attentional Control Theory (ACT) has been supported by several studies. However, these studies have been criticized by the low ecological validity of task design, such as neglecting the dynamic process of anticipation, and inadequate performance analysis, such as analyzing response accuracy and time separately. Using temporal occlusion paradigm, we tested ACT in a dynamic anticipation process. Eighteen skilled and eighteen less-skilled table tennis players were required to anticipate the serves of opponents under dynamic task constraints (early vs. late occlusion) and anxiety conditions (high vs. low anxiety). High cognitive state anxiety decreased processing efficiency (response time/response accuracy) for both groups whereas performance effectiveness (response accuracy) did not differ. In addition, it negatively affected processing efficiency in early anticipation compared with late anticipation tasks, suggesting that high cognitive state anxiety may have a greater impact on top-down attentional control. Our findings provide support for ACT and show that anxiety impairs anticipation efficiency and performance, possibly due to an ineffectively attentional shift from external kinematic cues to internal long-term working memory. Findings also have implications for the adaptation of attentional strategies and anxiolytic training.
预判是快速球类运动中一项至关重要的感知认知技能，高焦虑对运动表现的影响已引起运动心理学家更多关注。相关研究主要聚焦于焦虑对运动中信息处理过程中加工效率和注意力控制（自上而下与自下而上）的影响。注意控制理论（ACT）已得到多项研究支持。然而，这些研究因任务设计的生态效度较低（如忽视预判的动态过程）以及表现分析不充分（如分别分析反应准确性和时间）而受到批评。我们采用时间遮挡范式，在动态预判过程中对ACT进行了测试。要求18名技术熟练和18名技术不熟练的乒乓球运动员在动态任务限制（早期与晚期遮挡）和焦虑条件（高焦虑与低焦虑）下预判对手的发球。高认知状态焦虑降低了两组的加工效率（反应时间/反应准确性），而表现效果（反应准确性）并无差异。此外，与晚期预判任务相比，它对早期预判的加工效率有负面影响，这表明高认知状态焦虑可能对自上而下的注意力控制有更大影响。我们的研究结果为ACT提供了支持，并表明焦虑会损害预判效率和表现，可能是由于注意力从外部运动线索向内部长期工作记忆的转移无效所致。研究结果对注意力策略的调整和抗焦虑训练也有启示意义。
