Abstract
We investigated the impact of anxiety on movement behaviour during the execution of a complex perceptual-motor task. Masters' (Citation1992) conscious processing hypothesis suggests that under pressure an inward focus of attention occurs, resulting in more conscious control of the movement execution of well-learned skills. The conscious processes interfere with automatic task execution hereby inducing performance decrements. Recent empirical support for the hypothesis has focused on the effects of pressure on end performance. It has not been tested so far whether the changes in performance are also accompanied by changes in movement execution that would be expected following Masters' hypothesis. In the current study we tested the effects of anxiety on climbing movements on a climbing wall. Two identical traverses at different heights on a climbing wall provided different anxiety conditions. In line with the conscious processing hypothesis we found that anxiety had a significant effect on participants' movement behaviour evidenced by increases in climbing time and the number of explorative movements (Experiments 1 and 2) and by longer grasping of the holds and slower movements (Experiment 2). These results provide additional support for the conscious processing hypothesis and insight into the relation between anxiety, performance, and movement behaviour.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Sandra Echternach-van Wanrooij, Bernard McGuigan, and Eric Schoemaker for their assistance in conducting the experiments, Hans de Koning for equipment construction and hardware technical assistance, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.
Notes
In this regard, the “processing efficiency theory” (CitationEysenck & Calvo, 1992), popular in recent sport scientific literature (e.g., CitationHardy & Jackson, 1996; CitationJanelle, 2002; CitationMullen & Hardy, 2000; CitationSmith, Bellamy, Collins, & Newell, 2001; CitationWoodman & Hardy, 2001), seems less suitable as its main emphasis is on the relation between anxiety and performance outcome, rather than movement behaviour.
The STAI A-Trait scale is a self-report questionnaire that measures anxiety proneness—that is, the tendency to respond to situations perceived as thrilling with an elevation in state anxiety intensity. Scores range from a low of 20 to a high of 60. Normative data for the STAI A-Trait scale depict a mean score of 36.1 (SD = 8.4) for male college students and of 37.7 (SD = 8.4) for female college students (Citationvan der Ploeg, Defares, & Spielberger, 1979).
Movement time cannot be calculated if two feet or two hands touched the same hold at the same time. If this was the case switches remained activated when one of the hands or feet moved away, making it impossible to discriminate different movements. A total of 4 participants were not included in the movement time analyses as they touched a hold twice at the same time so often that not enough data were available to calculate average movement times.
We also executed analyses with 28 whole traverses that were climbed high and low using similar movement patterns. As the configuration of the handholds did not enable participants to climb the traverse without using one of the handholds with two hands at the same time (making it often impossible to distinguish different hand movements), we had to restrict these analyses to the movements of the feet. Results were similar to the results of the analyses that did not take into account movement pattern. That is, in the high condition participants stood longer on the holds, and they moved significantly slower from hold to hold than in the low condition. As a result climbing time was significantly longer in the high condition than in the low condition.