Introduction
Performance failure is where an athlete experiences the thoughts and feelings that they are not going to succeed at an event and therefore may experience a decline in performance. Two theories as to why an athlete may experience a decline are choking and burnout. Burnout is the feelings of withdrawal from an activity once enjoyed (Smith, 1986) and can be due to multiple factors.
Choking can be used to explain an athlete sudden poor performance and can be defined as “The occurrence of inferior performance despite striving and incentives for superior performance” (Baumeister and Showers, 1986). The meaning of this specific definition is that those who aim to succeed and produce a performance that is faultless may fail at doing so due to sudden choking. The act of choking can occur at any time and may occur half way through an event. Psychologists have investigated the reasons as to why an athlete may experience choking and Beilock and Grey (2007) suggested it may be due to disrupted attention. This executive summary focuses on choking by looking at current literature that assesses the importance of the theory and explanations as to what the causes and consequences of choking are on athletes.
Main Body
A study carried out by Hill et al (2010) investigated the reasons for, the actions and the consequences of choking to male rugby, football, hockey, volleyball and cricket athletes who were all at a competitive level. When the study was conducted Hill found that there were four main reasons to why they may choke. Responsibility that the individual was first, and this is believed to affect individuals due to the pressure they perceive from other team mates, coaches and family and peers. The second was evaluation apprehension which was researched by Cottrell (1972) and is the desire to meet the assumptions the team has of them. The third of the four reasons outlined was the fatigue an athlete may feel when going into an event due to the demands they are placing on their bodies to succeed. The fourth and final reason outlined is the perceived importance of the event by the individual, if they feel that success it key they become more anxious about the end result.
After assessing the possible reasons for choking psychologists researched further to produce theories as to why athletes then choke as opposed to being able to carry on with their performances. The three main theories to date are; the catastrophe theory, the distraction theory and the explicit monitoring theory.
Catastrophe Theory
The catastrophe theory proposes that individuals increased arousal will improve their performance until a point which is considered their optimum arousal, after this there can be a sudden decline in performance. Athletes will then either be able to recover and improve their perfromance or they will deteriorate and fail (Hardy and Fazey, 1987) The point at which decline occurs is where choking occurs due to an increase of cognitive anxiety. In Hill et al (2010) study increased cognitive anxiety was an action that would lead to a decline in perfromance due to choking. In Hardy and Parfitt (1991) further research into the catastrophe model they found that although the model allows for an understanding in perfromance it does not explain why decline occurs and how cognitive anxiety interferes with an individual who possesses a personality in which they strive success. This could therefore allow for further research into cognitive anxiety and how it affects personality types as well as how it enables performers to choke even when they apply cognitive techniques to help lower anxiety.
The limitations of current literature are that the theory needs to developed using athletes individual explanations of choking as opposed to linking it to only cognitive anxiety. There is a possibility that a catastrophe may occur due to other theories such as miss interpretation of the situation or as personality types among individuals.
Explicit Monitoring Theory
This theory proposes that attention decreases due to an individual specifically focusing on execution of skills, this causes them to lose focus on the skill they are carrying out and therefore failing what they are immediately carrying out. Causing a decline in perfromance, in which athletes may experience choking as the pressure increases on them to succeed. In a study carried out by Beilock (2001) she concluded that explicit monitoring theory is a direct and proven theory of choking in practiced states and is due to an individual athlete over analysing the skill in which they are carrying out. In order to reduce the risk of choking in these situations’ anxiety should be reduced by the athlete’s coaches as it is due to their external feedback that athletes over criticize. When performing in competition scenarios choking may however not occur unless the athlete is being told corrections by the coach. This theory can be linked to emotions in which an athlete feels and how they feel when carrying out skills.
Masters and Maxwell (2008), looked at how an athlete’s personal investment in their skills will trigger their behaviour in environments and if they come to a point of extreme arousal if they can invest in belief they may be able to continue at optimum level rather than choking and failing in their perfromance.
Distraction Theory
The distraction theory is where an individual will lose focus on the task due to thinking about thoughts that are not related to the specific task. This can be due to attentional narrowing which is due to the depletion of cues that an athlete will focus on (Mueller, 1976). In a study on test anxiety and attention Wine (1971) found that those who are anxious will experience shifts in attention as they cannot remained focused of the task due to the perceived difficulty and outcome. Although not conducted in an environment where athletes are present this can be explained in sporting situations as those who wish to avoid failure and start an event with anxiety may then experience the attention distraction. Distraction can occur due to two environmental factors, visual and auditory. Research into auditory distractions suggests that environmental noises that an athlete is not used to hearing can limit their focus as they start to think what the noise is. When participating in sports such as golf, snooker and tennis there is a common etiquette that silence occurs when in play this is to avoid distraction.
In a study carried out by Thomas et al, (2010) on baseball players on visual attention and retraining, he found that those who trained their visual field were more likely to succeed due to being able to focus on the specific cues. The negative of this specific piece of research is that it was carried out in a controlled environment and not in a naturalistic setting however it can be taken into the field of play once the athletes have started to retrain their field and are limiting how distracted they become in a situation. This area of research can be developed to look at how those playing isolated sports such as Golf can retrain their visual field to block out spectators and other players around them. Being distracted by visual cues has been compared to choking as when an athlete misses cues due to a distraction they start to panic and anxiety increases, potentially decreasing their ability to perform causing them to choke (Janelle et al, 1992).
Consequences of Choking
Choking is an occurrence that may happen once in an athlete’s career, but it can affect them psychologically due to their individual experience. The consequences as written by Hill are that the athlete may feel less confident about their performance, they may be very critical and have a snowballed decrease in performance. This can result in them avoiding the sport as they may expect to fail. If this occurs a coach can use positive self-talk to increase how the athlete feels about themselves. This involves the athlete telling themselves that they can focus and are able to conduct their sport skilfully and execute their performance well in order to succeed.
Conclusion
In conclusion choking is due to an individual’s psychological state and although there is no direct explanation as to why it happens at random occurrences there are theories that can be applied to many situations to allow for athletes to identify why they may have choked and can therefore look at techniques to help solve the problem. For example, if an athlete experienced failure due to choking when they had lost focus they can assess if this was down to visual or auditory distractions and then work on focusing their mind and performance to limit the chance of this specific occurrence repeating. The literature that is currently available on the catastrophe theory is currently limited in the specific area of choking and can therefore be developed in performance as opposed to arousal in which the theory first arose from.