A meta-analysis on immediate effects of attentional focus on motor tasks performance

ABSTRACT

Directing the attentional focus towards intended movement effects could enhance individual performance. This meta-analysis examines the immediate effects of an instructed external (proximal/distal) and internal attentional focus on an experimental group and a control group on their performance. A systematic review was done following the PRISMA guidelines. A total of 3833 reports were scanned. Of these, 83 were included in the systematic review, and 61 studies were included into the meta-analysis. The meta-analysis was additionally split into the original categories, which included the instructions as mentioned in the paper, and the adapted classifications, for which the instructions were reclassified based on the definition by [Wulf, G. (2013). Attentional focus and motor learning: A review of 15 years. International Review of sport and Exercise psychology, 6(1), 77–104. doii:10.1080/1750984X.2012.723728 and McNevin, N. H., Shea, C. H., & Wulf, G. (2003). Increasing the distance of an external focus of attention enhances learning. Psychological Research, 67(1), 22–29. doii:10.1007/s00426-002-0093-6]. In line with the constrained-action hypothesis, an external attentional focus instruction enhanced the immediate performance compared to an internal attentional focus instruction (SMD_adapted = 0.24) and the control group (SMD_adapted SMD = 0.31). Also, consistent with the constrained-action hypothesis, distal external attentional focus instructions showed performance-enhancing effects compared to proximal external attentional focus instructions (SMD_adapted = 0.23). However, most comparisons showed moderate to substantial heterogeneity and wide prediction intervals. Therefore, the results cannot be generalized for all tasks and skill levels.

KEYWORDS:

• Attentional focus
• immediate performance
• external focus
• internal focus
• instruction

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Robert Rein, Benjamin Noël and Stefanie Klatt for their contributions to the manuscript.

Availability of data and material

The authors confirm that the datasets supporting the findings of this study are available within the article and its supplementary materials.

Authors’ contributions

AN wrote the first draft of the manuscript, screened all articles from the original search and analyzed the data. SK, RR, BN revised all drafts and wrote parts of the manuscript. All authors conceptualized the project, interpreted the data and approved the final manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The results were equal for five out of eight comparisons. Different results occurred for the comparison of proximal external attentional focus and control group. The performance-enhancing effect of an proximal external attentional focus instruction raises from no effect (original classification of instructions) to a medium effect (adapted classification of instructions). Further, the performance enhancing effect of a distal external attentional focus compared to an internal attentional focus decreased from a medium (original classification of instructions) to a small effect (adapted classification of instructions). Similar pattern was observed for the performance-enhancing effect of an distal external attentional focus instruction compared to the control group.