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Dispositional reinvestment and skill failure in cognitive and motor tasks
journal contribution
posted on 2016-07-19, 13:15 authored by Noel P. Kinrade, Robin JacksonRobin Jackson, Kelly J. AshfordObjective: The objective of the study was to examine the moderating effect of dispositional reinvestment
upon ‘choking’ in motor and cognitive tasks.
Method: Sixty-three university students (40 males, 23 females) completed low-complexity (peg-board)
and high-complexity (golf putting) tests of motor skill, card sorting and working memory (modular
arithmetic) under low-pressure and high-pressure conditions.
Results: Pressure had a deleterious effect on performance in the peg-board motor task, led to faster but
more error-prone performance in the high-complexity card-sorting task, and led to more errors in the highcomplexity
modular arithmetic task. High reinvestment scale scores were significantly correlated with
performance decrements from low to high-pressure conditions in both the peg-board and golf-putting
tasks, and in both modular arithmetic tasks. Conversely, in the card-sorting tasks, higher reinvestment
scores were associated with a speeding of performance from the low to high-pressure conditions.
Discussion: Our findings suggest that the association between reinvestment and choking extends beyond
the motor skill domain to cognitive tasks, particularly those that place significant demands on working
memory, and that this relationship is moderated by task complexity. The nature of the relationships
between skill failure and sub-scales of the Reinvestment Scale, together with the extent to which these tap
into explicit monitoring/conscious processing and distraction-based accounts of choking, is discussed.
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- Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences