Abstract

MEDINA-PAPST, Josiane; BORDINI, Fabio Luis  and  MARQUES, Inara. Focus of attention instructions for the automaticity of action on the learning of a manipulative skill. Motri. [online]. 2015, vol.11, n.4, pp.36-46. ISSN 1646-107X.  https://doi.org/10.6063/motricidade.3812.

The purpose was to test the constrained-action hypothesis on the effect of the focus of attention in the automation of the action. Thirty subjects participated (± 24.9 years old), divided into three groups: internal focus of attention (FI, n = 10), external focus of attention (FE, n = 10) and a control group (GC, n = 10). The task was to launch a plastic disc making it slide on the table in order to touch the target or to be as close as possible to it, and parallel to this the participants performed a reaction time task. The participants performed a pretest, followed by an acquisition phase (9 blocks of 10 trials), with a two minutes rest between blocks, a post-test, and after 48 hours, a retention and transfer test. The repeated measures ANOVA (3x4) indicated significant difference only between moments (p <.05). It can be concluded that these data do not support the beneficial effect of the external focus of attention for action automation. In practice, the use of instructions to direct the focus of attention should be carefully used according to the learning stage of the subject and the objective to be attained.

Keywords : motor learning; automaticity; instructions; focus of attention; manipulative skill.

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