Poor Quality of Instruction Leads to Poor Motor Performance Regardless of Internal or External Focus of Attention

摘要

International Journal of Exercise Science 9(2): 214-222, 2016. The view that external focus of attention provides beneficial performance outcomes when compared to an internal focus of attention has been consistently supported in the movement performance literature. While type of focus has been well investigated, the current study examined the influence of quality of instruction as a variation of the type of focus. Specifically, the purpose of the study investigated how performance-enhancing instructions would differ from performance-neutral instructions on an agility performance. An agility L-run was used to measure performance in the four counterbalanced conditions: Internal-Performance Neutral (INT-PN), Internal-Performance Enhancing (INT-PE), External-Performance Neutral (EXT-PN) and External-Performance Enhancing (EXT-PE). These conditions were designed to provide insight into the influence of quality of instruction on performance. The mean times for both EXT-PN (6.76 s) and INT-PN (6.86 s) conditions were significantly slower than the EXT-PE (6.59 s) and INT-PE (6.65 s) conditions, respectively. Additionally, no differences were observed between the EXT-PE and INT-PE conditions. These results demonstrate the negative impact that poor quality of instruction can have on performance.