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Conscious processing and rowing: Field study - Coggle Diagram
Conscious processing and rowing: Field study
Aim
A little bit about the background research
Choking is not an abnormal response displayed by athletes when performing under perceived immense pressure.
As personality traits remain stable across contexts researchers have suggested that an athlete's traits may determine whether or not they will choke or not when performing. One of these suggested traits in
'reinvestment'
.
The trait,
reinvestment
, is a proposed mechanism in which researchers believe that when an individual is under pressure skills that were once
'automatic'
to them become
'deautomatized'
, in which the individual recalls the technical step-by-step of the skill from the long term memory and
'reinvests'
that knowledge to the short term memory. Ultimately, causing taking the athlete
'back to basics'
.
However,
not everyone will perform poorly under pressure
, thus it has been proposed that this variation in performance may be because each individual will exhibit differing reinvesting qualities. After some
validity issues
surrounding the initial Reinvestment Scale, the
Movement-Specific Reinvestment Scale (MSRS)
was created to measure the act of manipulating conscious 'beginner level knowledge' to control one's motor mechanics.
The MSRS scale measures two areas of conscious processing. The
CMP sub-scale
measures the extent to which can individual tried to consciously control their movements. Whilst
MSC sub-scale
measures an individual's concern with their own movement style and making a good impression on others.
The majority of literature surrounding movement-specific conscious processing suffers with
methodological limitations
.
1)
MSRS research has been laboratory-based,
2)
they have used self-report measures of choking incidents,
3)
they have failed to use real performance data, and
4)
the experience level of the athletes was too novice.
The 3 main aims of this study
1.
They aimed to examine the association between rowing race performance and both conscious motor processing and movement self-consciousness.
2.
They aimed to examine if the experience level will moderate the relationship between reinvestment and performance.
3.
They aimed to investigate whether the MSRS was associated with rowers who choked (crabbed - when the blade is caught under the water) during the race.
Methods
Participants
147
rowers took part (96 females and 51 males aged between 16 and 57 years). They had a total mean rowing
experience of 4.93 years.
Rowers had to have
at least 1 year's experience
of training and competing, to guarantee a sufficient accumulation of
declarative knowledge
(rules about rowing).
Measures
The MSRS was used to measure conscious processing. This was a 6-point Likert scale that participants completed prior to racing conditions.
Performance was measured using two separate measurements,
actual and perceived performance
. Actual performance reflected the performance of the group of each rowing boat. Perceived performance reflected the performance of the individual rower. Actual performance was determined by the boat's finishing position, this was then used to compute the actual performance. Perceived performance was measured using a rowing-specific perceived performance scale.
Crabbing
was measured via direct observation of the researcher.
Procedure
The study gathered data from clubs who were competing the UK Head and Regatta races. Here the participants completed the two questionnaires, the MSRS and perceived performance scale.
Results/main findings
CMP, MSC and Performance
It was revealed that MSC (conscious of movement style and impressing others) was negatively associated with actual performance. All together this shows that
MSC plays a more important role than CMP
in disrupting performance. In addition MSC was negatively associated with perceived tactical performance.Therefore,
high movement self-consciousnes
s may have caused rowers to make
poorer decisions
, which would have
impaired their tactical performance
.
CMP, MSC and Performance
It was found that
greater experience was associated with lower MSC and CMP scores
, suggesting that
more experienced rowers were less likely to reinvest.
However, experience did not moderate the reinvestment-performance relationship.
CMP, MSC and Crabbing
There was
conflicting results
regarding crabbing cases and CMP and MSC scores. Both rowers of the two crabbing cases had higher CMP scores compared to the sample norm. Extreme CMP scores may be the key characteristic of an individual who will be most vulnerable to catastrophically disrupted performance under pressure.
Application to sporting world
This study proved that the MSRS sub-scales are valid tests that can be used to identify athletes who may be prone to choking in competition.
It was identified that
movement self-consciousness is an unwanted trait
to exhibit during a competitive environment. Therefore, it is suggested that
coaches may want to implement interventional strategies
, such as mindfulness to prevent rowers from consciously processing during races.