Physical education teachers’, physical therapists’ or coaches’ instructions and feedback are crucial factors that influence motor learning and performance. From a teaching standpoint, practitioners should understand the implications of autonomy support and attentional cues on motor skill learning. The implementation of valuable methods of guiding learners can speed up a learning process with fewer errors and more accuracy. One of the many instructional approaches that has sparked the interest of researchers is the effect of students’ external focus of attention on the skill performance compared to instructions that guide students’ focus of attention internally toward the movement of specific parts of the body.
Many studies have shown that guiding learners with external focus of attention (i.e., on the movement effect) improves motor performance or learning in comparison with internal focus instructions (i.e., on body movements). There is a great body of evidence underpinning advantages of external focus of attention over internal focus, e.g., in performance or skill learning 1,2,3. The effectiveness of external focus of attention has been found in studies on balance performance4, basketball shots5,6, dart throwing7,8, golf9, tennis10, throwing beanbags at a target11, volleyball and soccer12 as well as fundamental motor skills13.
The idea that paying too much attention to movement patterns can disrupt efficient performance was noted a long time ago. It is known as the Bliss-Boder Hypothesis. It states that a performance decrement is predicted when a performer thinks about body movement patterns or action plans during or immediately before the execution of a skill14,15. Among various ways of evaluating the superiority of external attentional focus, Prinz proposed the Common Coding Theory16. When performance is represented by the consequence of motion, which is achieved by external attentional focus, it is more successful. In other words, perception and action can only properly communicate if they are focused on external features. More recently, to explain the effect of focus of attention, a few theoretical explanations have been proposed. The Constrained Action Hypothesis has been used to explain benefits of adopting external focus of attention17. This hypothesis postulates that individuals who direct their attention to their movements (internal focus) while performing a motor skill control their actions in a relatively conscious manner. This tends to constrain the motor system and disrupt automatic control processes. Concentrating on the planned effect of one’s movements has been shown to promote automaticity in movement control17. Thus, by using external focus, a higher level is reached in less time2.
Furthermore, Wulf and Lewthwaite18 broadened the Constrained Action Hypothesis by including the Self-invoking Trigger Hypothesis. They stated that an internal focus of attention triggers learners to get engaged in self-evaluation, which may result in declines in motor performance18. When physical education teachers or coaches instruct their learners to direct their focus internally, self-invoking triggers may hinder motor skill performance or learning.
Also, the benefit of external focus of attention over internal focus of attention may be due to differences in working memory demands. According to the Conscious Processing Hypothesis, working memory demands are lower under external focus conditions than under internal focus situations19,20. When focused externally, the performer is only concerned with one source of information, such as the action consequence. When focused internally, on the other hand, the performer is aware of some internal processes as well as outcome information. Internal attention situations provide a greater demand on working memory, which may lead to performance failures as compared to external focus conditions.
However, there is general consensus that internal focus is less effective in both the learning and performance of motor skills than external focus of attention. The perspective developed by Beilock and Carr21 emphasised supremacy of focusing on task-relevant and task-irrelevant attentional cues depending on participants’ skill levels. The Explicit Monitoring Theory21 states that novices and experts react differently to different types of attention instructions. The task-relevant strategy refers to the performer consciously focusing his attention on the aspects related to the task performed (e.g., on the ball during basketball free throw performance), while in the task-relevant condition, focus of attention is directed to environmental aspects unrelated to the performed task (e.g., spectators’ voice during free throw performance)22,23. There is evidence that novice performance was superior in the skill-focus condition. Because novice performance is not yet automatic, it cannot be disrupted by conscious control and is facilitated by allowing performers to attend step-by-step processes of the skill. Attentional strategies may differ in novices when compared to expert performers. When experts adopt self-focus, deautomatization occurs through ‘reinvesting actions and percepts with attention’, and novices tend to consciously control the motor skill. Similar to Beilock, some authors have claimed that internal focus should be beneficial to beginners24,25.
Another factor that influences motor skill performance and learning is practice conditions that support learners’ need for autonomy. Studies have reported that granting the learner autonomy (e.g. self-control) over some aspect of practice also improves motor learning2,26,27,28,29. According to the Self-determination Theory (SDT)30, autonomy or having choices is identified as a fundamental psychological need. One of the mini theories of SDT is the Cognitive Evaluation Theory (CET) which predicts that autonomy supportive approach enhances intrinsic motivation when it is positively associated with motor learning. Even small or incidental choices such as allowing a person to choose the colour of an object to be used or choices that are unrelated to the task26 can benefit the process of learning. In previous studies, participants were allowed to control when to receive feedback31,32, when and how often to observe a model demonstration33,34,35. They were also allowed to control the amount of practice36.
While each type of focus of attention and autonomy support individually has been shown to enhance learning and motor performance, the combination of two factors, i.e., enhanced expectancies and autonomy support37, enhanced expectancies and external focus38 or autonomy support and external focus37,39,40 have additive benefits. In addition, the combination of three factors demonstrated that performance was even greater41,42. However, another study showed no additive effects of external focus and autonomy support on the performance of shot accuracy in the penalty kick43. Also, in the study of Sertic et al.44, OPTIMAL group (the group that incorporated three factors, i.e. autonomy support, enhanced expectancies and external focus) did not outperform the control group in a throwing task.
To date, only a few studies have investigated the effects of manipulating autonomy support by letting participants choose different types of focus of attention. The results of Hosseiny et al.45 showed that when the type of focus was chosen by elite shooters, their performance was similar to that demonstrated by participants with experimenter-imposed focus.
It is still unclear whether allowing participants to choose where to direct the focus of attention would be enough to ensure autonomy support and have additive effects on motor learning. Hence, the purpose of the present study was to examine effects of attentional focus instructions and combined effects of autonomy (choice) and external focus of attention on the learning of a standing korfball shot. We hypothesised that the combination of external focus of attention and autonomy support would result in greater accuracy than using these factors separately.