Ironic processes of concentration and suppression under pressure: A study on rifle shooting in Norwegian elite biathletes.
Scand J Med Sci Sports
; 34(5): e14647, 2024 May.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38736188
ABSTRACT
In rifle shooting, suppressing unwanted thoughts can backfire in one's performance, causing athletes to behave contrary to their desired intention and further deteriorate their performance. PURPOSE:
This study examined how priming attentional and negative cues affected participants' shooting performances toward ironic error targets under cognitive load conditions in Stroop task across two experiments.METHODS:
Semi-elite biathletes (Experiment 1, n = 10; Experiment 2, n = 9) participated in the study. The study used a within-subject quasi-experimental design, particularly a one-way repeated measures multivariate analysis of variance and a 2 × 2 fully repeated measures analysis of variance, to determine the participants' hit rates and shooting response times (RTs). In both experiments, the participants completed the reverse-Stroop-based target shooting performance under low- and high-cognitive load conditions while receiving frequent priming attentional and negative cues.RESULTS:
The findings from Experiment 1 suggest that regulating repetitive priming attentional thoughts is efficacious in mitigating the likelihood of ironic performance errors and interference effects. The results of Experiment 2 show that repetitive priming negative cues resulted in negligible ironic error hit rates and slower RTs in target hits under high-cognitive load conditions. The Bayesian analyses provided evidence supporting the null hypotheses.CONCLUSION:
Trying to control repetitive priming attentional and negative thoughts reduces ironic performance errors to a similar degree under cognitive load conditions among biathletes, regardless of interference effects. Further research is needed to determine the effectiveness of suppressing task-relevant negative instructions in reducing the likelihood of ironic performance errors under pressure.Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Reaction Time
/
Attention
/
Firearms
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Athletic Performance
Limits:
Adult
/
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
Country/Region as subject:
Europa
Language:
En
Journal:
Scand J Med Sci Sports
/
Scand. j. med. sci. sports
/
Scandinavian journal of medicine and science in sports
Journal subject:
MEDICINA ESPORTIVA
Year:
2024
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Country of publication: