Department of Health Promotion, School of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
Sylvan Adams Sports Institute, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
PeerJ. 2024 Jul 11;12:e17718. doi: 10.7717/peerj.17718. eCollection 2024.
The role of attentional focus is a well-explored topic in exercise sciences. Studies generally indicate that external focus (EF) enhances motor performance and learning compared with internal focus (IF). However, most studies only included one or two experimental days which limits participants' exposure to the focus conditions. This raises the question of whether the superiority of EF varies over time.
Accordingly, in this pre-registered within-subject study, we examined the effects of focus instructions on golf-putting performance over four days, with 48-72 h between them. On each day, participants performed 15 putts under three instructional conditions: (1) EF, (2) IF, and (3) control, in a randomized and counterbalanced order.
We observed trivial differences in performance between conditions but considerable improvements from day 1 to day 4. When using an exploratory analysis, we found that participants performed better under EF and control conditions compared with the IF condition on day 1, but not on subsequent days.
Since IF instructions are more commonly used in practice, we speculate that the two other focus conditions were experienced as more novel, potentially accounting for their superiority on Day 1. Nevertheless, our results question the significance of employing EF to enhance performance.
注意力焦点在运动科学领域是一个研究得比较透彻的话题。研究普遍表明，与内部焦点（IF）相比，外部焦点（EF）能提高运动表现和学习效果。然而，大多数研究只包括一个或两个实验日，这限制了参与者接触焦点条件的时间。这就提出了一个问题，即 EF 的优势是否会随时间而变化。
因此，在这项预先注册的个体内研究中，我们在四天内检查了注意力焦点指令对高尔夫推杆表现的影响，两次实验之间间隔 48-72 小时。在每一天，参与者在三种指导条件下进行 15 次推杆：（1）EF、（2）IF 和（3）控制，以随机和平衡的顺序进行。
我们观察到条件之间的表现差异微不足道，但从第 1 天到第 4 天有明显的提高。当使用探索性分析时，我们发现参与者在第 1 天的 EF 和控制条件下的表现优于 IF 条件，但在随后的几天中并非如此。
由于 IF 指令在实践中更常用，我们推测另外两种焦点条件在第一天被体验为更新颖，这可能解释了它们的优势。然而，我们的结果对采用 EF 来提高表现的重要性提出了质疑。
