USOC Mental Training Skill #5: Concentration Exercise 1

Dimensions of Attentional Style

Sport Psychology consultant Rober Nideffer recognized that concentration effectively depends on both the demands to a specific sport and the athlete’s attentional skills or styles. Below is his model showing the four different ways athletes have been found to focus their attention. Understanding the four different types of attention and learning about your own strengths and areas to improve are the first steps toward developing skills in concentration.

Note that there are two dimensions of attention, width (on a continuum from broad to narrow) and direction (from internal to external).

1. Width (broad-narrow) Refers to how many things you are paying attention to at once. When your attention is broad you are attending to many things. When you have a narrow attentional focus, you are paying attention much more specifically to one or very few things. A football quarterback, scanning the field for receivers, has to have broad attention, while a golfer getting ready to putt is likely to have a more narrow focus of attention.

2. Direction (internal-external) is defined by where your attention is focused internally, towards your own thoughts and feeling, or externally towards the events in you environment. A diver, imaging her upcoming dive, has an internal focus, while a baseball player at bat has an external focus as he watches the pitch coming in.

These two dimensions are somewhat different. The width dimension exists on a continuum, while the direction dimension is either-or. You can’t be half–internal, half–external in your attention’s directions.

To make use of the information in this model, first you must determine which of
these four attentional styles is a strength and which styles you need additional
assistance developing. Every athlete has his or her own strengths and weaknesses;
some athletes are very good at one dimension and weak on the others, while other
athletes may be somewhat skilled in all dimensions.

Now it’s time to assess your sport. Which of Nideffer’s attentional skills is a top
priority in terms of you sport’s demands and your focusing strengths? You will find
on the next page a diagram that can help you systematically review your own
competition situation and determine which attentional dimension you need.