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Attentional Focus Instructions Do Not Affect Choice Reaction Time

The majority of the studies on attentional focus have shown that participants who were instructed to focus externally performed better than those who were taught to focus internally. However, in most of these studies the participants performed complex motor tasks. Due to the scarcity of data on the...

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Autores principales: Ziv, Gal, Lidor, Ronnie
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8141585/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34040570
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.675641
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author Ziv, Gal
Lidor, Ronnie
author_facet Ziv, Gal
Lidor, Ronnie
author_sort Ziv, Gal
collection PubMed
description The majority of the studies on attentional focus have shown that participants who were instructed to focus externally performed better than those who were taught to focus internally. However, in most of these studies the participants performed complex motor tasks. Due to the scarcity of data on the effects of attentional focus specifically on simple motor tasks, our purpose in the current study was to examine these effects on two simple reaction time (RT) tasks. The study was conducted on a cloud-based experimental software. Participants were allocated to three experimental groups: an external focus group (n = 44), an internal focus group (n = 46), and a control group (no attentional instructions; n = 47). The participants performed two tasks: a choice-RT task and a Simon task. Participants in all three groups practiced eight blocks of 20 trials from each task in a counterbalanced order – a total of 180 trials for each task. The sole difference between the three groups was the administered attentional focus instructions. The findings suggest that attentional focus instructions do not affect the performance of a choice-RT task or a Simon-task in a computerized online study. It is possible that the simple RT-based tasks in the current study were not sensitive to the attentional focus manipulation, since in such simple tasks there are not many actions that internal focus can disrupt. Although we asked the participants to what extent they followed the instructions, we cannot say whether their responses represent their actual attentional focus when performing the tasks.
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spelling pubmed-81415852021-05-25 Attentional Focus Instructions Do Not Affect Choice Reaction Time Ziv, Gal Lidor, Ronnie Front Psychol Psychology The majority of the studies on attentional focus have shown that participants who were instructed to focus externally performed better than those who were taught to focus internally. However, in most of these studies the participants performed complex motor tasks. Due to the scarcity of data on the effects of attentional focus specifically on simple motor tasks, our purpose in the current study was to examine these effects on two simple reaction time (RT) tasks. The study was conducted on a cloud-based experimental software. Participants were allocated to three experimental groups: an external focus group (n = 44), an internal focus group (n = 46), and a control group (no attentional instructions; n = 47). The participants performed two tasks: a choice-RT task and a Simon task. Participants in all three groups practiced eight blocks of 20 trials from each task in a counterbalanced order – a total of 180 trials for each task. The sole difference between the three groups was the administered attentional focus instructions. The findings suggest that attentional focus instructions do not affect the performance of a choice-RT task or a Simon-task in a computerized online study. It is possible that the simple RT-based tasks in the current study were not sensitive to the attentional focus manipulation, since in such simple tasks there are not many actions that internal focus can disrupt. Although we asked the participants to what extent they followed the instructions, we cannot say whether their responses represent their actual attentional focus when performing the tasks. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-05-10 /pmc/articles/PMC8141585/ /pubmed/34040570 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.675641 Text en Copyright © 2021 Ziv and Lidor. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Ziv, Gal
Lidor, Ronnie
Attentional Focus Instructions Do Not Affect Choice Reaction Time
title Attentional Focus Instructions Do Not Affect Choice Reaction Time
title_full Attentional Focus Instructions Do Not Affect Choice Reaction Time
title_fullStr Attentional Focus Instructions Do Not Affect Choice Reaction Time
title_full_unstemmed Attentional Focus Instructions Do Not Affect Choice Reaction Time
title_short Attentional Focus Instructions Do Not Affect Choice Reaction Time
title_sort attentional focus instructions do not affect choice reaction time
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8141585/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34040570
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.675641
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