2022 Volume 51 Issue 1 Pages 17-24
In sports, anxiety often leads to the poor motor performance of athletes and players. Verbal instructions by coaches help athletes succeed in performing motor routines in relaxed situations, while they may adversely affect their behaviours in anxious situations. For athletes with increased anxiety, avoidant instructions may cause performance breakdown, particularly towards counter-intentional directions. To date, counter-intentional errors caused by avoidant instructions have been studied within the framework of either Wegner’s ironic process theory (1994) or Eysenck’s attentional control theory (2007). However, very few studies have measured and assessed relevant cognitive functions to examine why or how avoidant instructions elicit counter-intentional errors. Here, we propose the hypothesis that attentional bias to threat-related stimuli interacts with avoidant instructions in anxious situations, consequently eliciting counter-intentional errors. A possible experimental paradigm for testing this hypothesis is also discussed.
