Assessing cognitive interference in sport: Development of the thought occurrence questionnaire for sport

Social Support and Performance in a Golf-Putting Experiment

“…Questionnaire for Sport (TOQS: Hatzigeorgiadis & Biddle, 2000). The validity of the TOQS for measuring interfering thoughts in sport has been supported by previous studies (Lane, Harwood, & Nevill, 2005;Hatzigeorgiadis & Biddle, 2000).…”

“…Occurrence Questionnaire for Sport (Hatzigeorgiadis & Biddle, 2000) and a manipulation check, whilst their individual total scores were recorded. Participants were then provided with additional feedback explaining the nature and purpose of the task and were offered the opportunity to ask any (further) questions.…”

“…With this in mind, a secondary purpose was to examine one potential mechanism linking social support to performance: cognitive interference. When concentration suffers as a result of self-generated task-irrelevant thoughts, performance deteriorates (Hatzigeorgiadis & Biddle, 2000;Sarason, Pierce, & Sarason, 1996). Low levels of social support are associated with more cognitive interference (Sarason, Levine, Basham, & Sarason, 1983;Sarason & Sarason, 1986), potentially because those with low levels of support may feel under greater stress and thus worry more (e.g., over their ability to accomplish assigned tasks) or attempt to distract themselves with off-task thoughts.…”

Thoughts and attention of athletes under pressure: skill-focus or performance worries?

“…This resulted in a list of 431 statements, thus, about six on average per report, ranging between 2 and 21. On the basis of several possibilities for attentional focus as reported in the literature (e.g., Gucciardi et al, 2010;Hatzigeorgiadis & Biddle, 2000;Jackson et al, 2006;Kirschenbaum, 1987;Mesagno et al, 2008Mesagno et al, , 2009, each statement was categorized in one of the five following categories: movement execution (statements that concerned skill-focus); worries (statements that concerned distracting thoughts and worries); external task-relevant (e.g., statements concerning the ball or the opponent); external task-irrelevant (e.g., statements concerning the audience or cameras); and positive monitoring. ''Positive monitoring'' is a positive form of internal attention referring to positive self-talk statements as well as statements about the attentional focus that athletes adopt to enhance concentration and performance (e.g., I focus on my strengths, I make sure to look confident, I make sure that I work harder, I concentrate on my breathing).…”

“…These thoughts and worries draw attention away from primary task execution leading to hampered performance. Anecdotal evidence (e.g., Gerrard, 2007) and studies examining athletes' thoughts during competition (e.g., Hatzigeorgiadis, 2002;Hatzigeorgiadis & Biddle, 2000Lane, Harwood, & Nevill, 2005;, seem to suggest that, rather than skill-focused attention, all kinds of distracting thoughts and worries naturally occur when athletes perform under pressure. However, only thoughts unrelated to task execution (e.g., performance worries and task-irrelevant thoughts) were included in the questionnaires employed, while task-related thoughts (e.g., skill-focused attention) were not examined.…”