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Anxiety In Sports

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The current embodiment approach to cognition proposes a direct link between thinking and skilled action, which is critical to sports performance. Executive functions are vital for beginners to learn novel skill sets with the presence of habitual responses as well as for experts, such as Olympic athletes, to facilitate goal-directed actions without distraction. And in terms of cognitive computation, athletes aim to develop skilled movements by accomplishing their goals at the lowest possible cost (Wilson, 2008). From a cognitive psychology perspective, anxiety is viewed as an emotion characterized by the negative affect that impairs performance (Eysenck, 1996). Several theorists have argued that the negative performance effects of anxiety …show more content…
To illustrate, the Moran (2012) article considers how Matthew Emmons, the American 50 meter three-position rifle shooter, missed an opportunity to win a gold medal at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing by inadvertently pulling the trigger at the wrong time on his last shot, likely a cause of anxiety. Afterwards, he revealed that he had felt a little bit more nervous (Matuszewski, 2008) and shared that he didn’t feel his trigger finger shaking but apparently it was” (Isaacson, 2008). Emmons' unfortunate experience in Beijing raises an important question that has been largely neglected in cognitive psychology; how do emotions, such as anxiety, affect attentional processes during high-pressure …show more content…
It is often assumed that anxiety during competition, that is, a negative emotional state characterized by feelings of nervousness, worry, apprehension and bodily arousal, has either beneficial or detrimental effects upon sport performance, but recent studies have found that it depends both on the individual athlete and the sport they are participating in. In the sport of gymnastics, Weinberg and Gould (1995) claimed that anxiety leads to an increase in muscle tension and a decrease in coordination. In a more clinical setting, Maki and Whitelaw (1993) and Maki and McIlroy (1996) found that anxiety has a negative influence on balance parameters, as measured by posturography (Cottyn, De Clercq, Pannier, Crombez, & Lenoir,

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