MOTIVATIONAL INFLUENCE ON THE ATTENTIONAL PROCESSES OF COMPETITIVE GOLFERS KARL J. STEPTOE A thesis submitted in the partial fulfilment of the requirement of the University of Greenwich for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2015 DECLARATION “I certify that this work has not been accepted in substance for any degree, and is not being submitted for any degree other than that of Doctor of Philosophy being studied at the University of Greenwich. I also declare that this work is the result of my own investigations except where otherwise identified by references and that I have not plagiarised the work of others”. Signed: Student Karl J. Steptoe Date First Supervisor Professor Pam Maras Date i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the University of Greenwich for giving me the opportunity to pursue this research and particularly my supervisors Professor Pam Maras and Dr Rob Willson for their unwavering guidance and confidence in me throughout. A number of people gave their valuable time to support and advance my learning, so thank you to Dr Mark Goss-Sampson and Tony Steffert for your patience and expertise in enabling me to get to grips with electroencephalography. To my colleagues in the Faculty of Education and Health thank you for your kind words and interest, to Dr Claire Monks thank you for your advice as Programme Leader and to all of the PhD students for providing a continued sense of perspective and normality. Thank you also to the Professional Golfers Association and Dr Kyle Phillpotts for your support in participant recruitment and interest in my research and to all the golfers that allowed me to get so close to their competitive performances. Understanding my own motivation has been fundamental to my experience over the last ten years and has taken me from the golf course to the psychology lab and from professional golfer to psychologist and researcher. I could not have achieved this without the support and encouragement of a number of important people. To Ric Lugo, Professor Stefan Sutterlin and Professor Paul Ward I cannot thank you enough. Your passion and enthusiasm for your work is contagious and your kindness and generosity have enabled me to keep the end goal in sight. To my mum, thank you for instilling in me the freedom to always pursue my interests and for epitomising the characteristics of perseverance and mental strength that I hope I have inherited. To Paul and Shirley this just could not have been possible without you both so thank you so much for your amazing support of me and our family. Whilst the aims were always clear I could not have done it without a reason. To my wife Kerry and daughter Holly… …we did it! ii ABSTRACT The main aim of this thesis was to gain a greater understanding of how a golfer’s attentional focus may be related to their achievement motivation and competence striving during competitive performance. It was anticipated that if such relationships were established in competitive contexts, findings would enhance understanding of the underlying mechanisms that contribute to attention explanations of diverse performance outcomes under perceived pressure. There has been debate regarding the most accurate and useful definitions of performance outcomes such as ‘clutch’ performances and ‘choking’ under pressure, with a requirement acknowledged for research to get closer to these disparate performance experiences. Caution has, however, been encouraged with dichotomous attentional explanations of skill breakdown (i.e. self-focus and distraction theories) that are considered to oversimplify the issue. An individuals’ goal and performance expectations have been posited as contributing to attentional focus choices. Achievement goal theories propose that an individual will define competence in response to motive disposition and environmental cues. Whilst the achievement goal construct is considered orthogonal at the dispositional level there is contention as to whether multiple goals can be adopted during performance. Performing under pressure in sport presents opportunities and threats to goal striving, therefore, the goal that a sportsperson engages in during skill execution may elicit attentional processes that explain adaptive and maladaptive performance outcomes. Three studies were designed to determine if there was a relationship between achievement motivation and attentional processes during performance under pressure and if so, how definitions of competence influence attention and performance outcomes. A mixed-methods approach enabled data collection from purposive samples of golfers, who had experience of performance decrement under pressure. In Study 1, golfers provided verbal reports during a competitive performance and took part in a post round semi-structured interview. In Study 2 golfers reported their propensity to reinvest conscious, explicit, rule based knowledge and their achievement motives prior to competing and in Study 3, the motivational climate was manipulated to assess the influence of achievement goal adoption on cortical efficiency and golf putting performance. iii All three studies report findings that provide support for the relationship between achievement motivation and self-focused attention. The findings suggest that golfers consider multiple goals prior to skill execution which create parameters within which attention has the potential to shift. Golfers’ evaluation of competence in line with these goal intentions reveals both underlying valued achievement motives and influences perceptions of performance. The measurement of achievement goal involvement was found to have a different relationship with performance depending on whether performance was defined in terms of a discrete golf skill (i.e. putting) or absolute performance measure (gross score) and also whether goals were self-reported or evoked through manipulation of the motivational climate. Results revealed that elite golfers performed better in a putting task under pressure and with greater psychomotor efficiency when adopting other-based achievement goals that reference interpersonal standards of competence striving. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed. iv CONTENTS DECLARATION ............................................................................................................. i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................... ii ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................... iii CONTENTS ..................................................................................................................... v LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................ xii LIST OF FIGURES ..................................................................................................... xiii 1. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Chapter overview .......................................................................................... 1 1.2 Performance under pressure ........................................................................ 4 1.2.1 Defining the ‘clutch’ performance. ....................................................... 4 1.2.2 Defining ‘choking’ under pressure in the media ................................... 6 1.2.3 Defining ‘choking’ in research. ............................................................. 9 1.2.4 Panic, the ‘yips’ and performance slumps. .......................................... 20 1.3 Chapter summary ........................................................................................ 22 1.4 Structure of thesis ........................................................................................ 24 2. COGNITIVE MECHANISMS UNDERPINNING PERFORMANCE UNDER PRESSURE ............................................................................................................... 27 2.1 Chapter overview ........................................................................................ 27 2.2 Drive and arousal ........................................................................................ 28 2.2.1 Inverted U Model. ............................................................................... 29 2.2.2 Dominant Response Theory. ............................................................... 30 2.2.3 The Easterbrook Hypothesis. ............................................................... 31 2.2.4 Multidimensional Anxiety Theory and the Cusp Catastrophe Model. 31 2.3 Distraction and cognitive interference theories ........................................ 33 2.3.1 Processing Efficiency Theory. ............................................................. 35 2.3.2 Attentional Control Theory. ................................................................ 36 2.4 Self-focus theories of attention ................................................................... 37 2.4.1 Conscious Processing and the Theory of Reinvestment. ..................... 39 v 2.4.2 Dispositional reinvestment. ................................................................. 44 2.4.3 Cortical efficiency and reinvestment. .................................................. 48 2.4.4 Summary. ............................................................................................. 51 2.5 Dispositional and schematic moderators of performance under