Psychology of Sport and Exercise 31 (2017) 35e39

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Psychology of Sport and Exercise

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/psychsport

Children's conscious control propensity moderates the role of

attentional focus in motor skill acquisition
Andy C.Y. Tse a, *, Wouter F. van Ginneken b
a
Department of Health and Physical Education, The Education University of Hong Kong, Rm D4-2/F-03, Block D4, 10 Lo Ping Road, Tai Po, N.T., Hong Kong,
China
b
School of Public Health, The University of Hong Kong, Room 305, 3/F, The Hong Kong Jockey Club Building for Interdisciplinary Research, 5 Sassoon Road,
Pokfulam, Hong Kong, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: We investigated whether conscious control propensity moderates the role of attentional focus in motor
Received 15 August 2016 skill acquisition of children. The propensity for conscious control of elementary school children was
Received in revised form determined using an adapted version of the Movement Specific Reinvestment Scale (MSRS) (Masters,
28 March 2017
Eves, & Maxwell, 2005). They then practiced a darts task using an internal (focus on limb movements),
Accepted 30 March 2017
Available online 31 March 2017
external (focus on the target) or non-specific focus of attention and performed a transfer test (i.e. 20%
increase in distance). After one week, they engaged in a delayed retention test. Results were analyzed
using ANOVA with repeated measures. During the initial practice phase, no significant effects were
Keywords:
Conscious control propensity
found. However, during the transfer test and delayed retention interactions between conscious control
Attentional focus propensity and group emerged, such that children with a high conscious control propensity performed
Children better in the internal focus group and ones with a low propensity did better in the external focus group.
Motor learning These findings suggest children's motor skill acquisition is most effective when instructions align with
their personality predispositions.
© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Coaches, teachers and physical health practitioners often rely on
verbal instructions to guide motor skill acquisition (Perreault, 2013;
Schmidt, 1988; Williams & Hodges, 2005; Wulf, Ho € ß, & Prinz,
1998). With regard to verbal instructions, the influential con-
strained action hypothesis proposes that it is more beneficial to
focus on the outcome of a movement than on the movement itself1
(Wulf, 2013), because an external (i.e. outcome directed) focus of
attention enhances movement automaticity (Wulf, Shea, & Park,
2001). Therefore, verbal instructions geared towards external foci
may be more beneficial than instructions that prompt internal foci.
Although for adults the benefits of external foci are well docu-
mented (for a review, see Wulf, 2013), studies have found mixed
results regarding children. Even though external focus instructions
were found to promote children's balance (Thorn, 2006), soccer

throw-in (Wulf, Chiviacowsky, Schiller, & Avila, 2010), beanbag

throwing (Chiviacowsky, Wulf, & Avila, 2013) and tennis forehand
strokes (Hadler, Chiviacowsky, Wulf, & Schild, 2014), it did not do so
for basketball free-throws (Perreault, 2013) and internal (not
external) foci benefitted learning of a darts task (Emanuel, Jarus, &
Bart, 2008). These findings indicate that the role of attentional
focus in motor performance may be more complex for children
than for adults.
The literature contains two disparate explanations for the ben-
efits of internal and those of external foci in children. Compared to
adults, children possess limited cognitive resources (Gallagher &
Thomas, 1980, 1986; Pollock & Lee, 1997; Tipper, Bourque,
Anderson, & Brehaut, 1989), but also lower levels of movement
automaticity (Ruitenberg, Abrahamse, & Verwey, 2013). Together,
these two facts can explain any difference between the foci. When
studies show benefits of external foci, authors tend to argue that

* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: andytcy@eduhk.hk (A.C.Y. Tse), wouter.van.ginneken@hotmail.com (W.F. van Ginneken).
1
The proposed underlying mechanism for this effect is that “conscious attempts to control movements interfere with automatic motor control processes, whereas focusing
on the movement effects allows the motor system to self-organize more naturally, unconstrained by conscious control’’ (Wulf et al., 2001, p. 342).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2017.03.015
1469-0292/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
36 A.C.Y. Tse, W.F. van Ginneken / Psychology of Sport and Exercise 31 (2017) 35e39
external foci promote automaticity (Chiviacowsky et al., 2013;
Hadler et al., 2014; Thorn, 2006; Wulf et al., 2010) or circumvent
reliance on scarce cognitive resources (Capio, Poolton, Sit, Eguia, &
Masters, 2012; Capio, Poolton, Sit, Holmstrom, & Masters, 2011).2
Conversely, benefits of internal foci are interpreted as indicating
that internal foci are reasonable alternatives in the absence of
sufficient movement automaticity (Bernstein, 1996; Emanuel et al.,
2008; Ruitenberg et al., 2013). The next challenge is to predict when
which focus trumps the other. This is the novel contribution of the
current study.
Personality predispositions may provide a window into the
question which children may benefit from internal foci and which
from external ones. For example, conscious control propensity e
which can be measured using the Movement Specific Reinvestment
Scale (Masters, Maxwell, & Eves, 2005) e captures people's ten-
dency to use explicit, verbalizable knowledge to control their
movements and hence adopt internal foci of attention (Masters &
Maxwell, 2008). As this propensity has been found to moderate
the effects of attentional focus in adults (Maxwell, Masters, & Eves,
2000; Van Ginneken, Poolton, Masters, Capio, Kal, & van der Kamp,
2017), it is worthwhile to investigate whether it also does in
children.
We investigated whether children with high conscious control
propensities would learn a darts throwing task better under in-
ternal focus conditions and whether children with low propensities
would benefit from external foci. Children may develop high
conscious control propensities for two reasons. One, as suggested
by Emanuel et al. (2008) they may possess low levels of movement
automaticity, which prompts them to rely on the alternative
strategy e i.e. internal foci. Two, they may possess larger cognitive
resources allowing internal foci to be more effective. Conversely,
high levels of automaticity and low cognitive resources may
prompt the development of low conscious control propensities in
children. For these reasons, children with a high propensity for
conscious control were expected to learn the task better when
adopting an internal compared to an external focus. Those with a
low propensity were expected to fare better under conditions of
external focus.
2. Methods
2.1. Ethics
Ethical approval was granted by the ethics committee of the first
author of this paper.
2.2. Participants
One-hundred-and-two elementary school children (66 boys and
36 girls, aged M ¼ 10.0, SD ¼ 4.1 years) were recruited, 60 of which
(36 boys and 24 girls, aged M ¼ 10.4, SD ¼ 1.8 years) received darts
practice based the following inclusion criteria: (1) had not been
diagnosed with any developmental disorders (e.g. developmental
coordination disorder); (2) had normal or corrected to normal
vision; (3) had no experience in throwing dart and (4) had no motor
deficits reported by parents.
2
Although technically Capio et al. (2011) and Capio et al. (2012) studied the
effects of explicit and implicit learning, these have been found to be high similar, if
not equivalent, to internal and external foci (Poolton, Maxwell, Masters, & Raab,
2006).
2.3. Materials
Ten standard darts (12 g Dart Dual) and a standard size and
height dart board (Unicorn Eclipse Pro) were used. In line with
Emanuel et al. (2008), the height and distance of the board was
adjusted for children's height as prescribed by (Eoff, 1985)). Sta-
tistical analyses were carried out using IBM SPSS Statistics Version
18.
The MSRS for Chinese children (MSRS-CC (Ling, Maxwell,
Masters, McManus, & Polman, 2015),) was used to record
conscious control propensity. The MSRS-CC measures children's
propensity to be self-conscious about one's style of movement (e.g.
‘I am concerned about my style of movement’) and their subse-
quent propensity for conscious control (e.g. ‘I reflect about my
movement a lot’). Each item is rated on a six-point Likert scale from
1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strong agree). At the scale comprises 10
questions, scores can range between 10 and 60 points.
2.4. Procedure
After 102 children and their parents provided written informed
consent, the children completed the MSRS-CC. In line with (Uiga,
Capio, Wong, Wilson, & Masters, 2015)), only the 30 children
with the lowest MSRS-CC scores (M ¼ 14.2, SD ¼ 1.0) and 30 with
highest MSRS-CC scores (M ¼ 48.8, SD ¼ 0.4) were requested to
engage in darts skill acquisition.
The experiment consisted of three sessions: 1) acquisition, 2)
transfer and 3) retention.
Prior to acquisition, each child received instructions regarding
handgrip and standing position (e.g. “stand behind the position
line”, “hold the dart with your thumb and index fingers”). They then
received either internal, external or non-specific focus instructions.
The instructions were similar to Emanuel et al., (2008), but trans-
lated to Chinese (see Appendix for detailed instructions). Children
in the external focus group were instructed to focus on the dart's
flight path, while those in internal focus group were instructed to
focus on the movement of their throwing arm. Children in the
control group did not receive any attentional focus instruction. The
number of children with high and low conscious control propensity
was counterbalanced between these groups. The children were
allowed six warm-up throws, after which they performed 5 blocks
of 10 trials separated by 3-min of rest. The focus instructions were
repeated prior to each block and adherence was verbally checked at
the end of each block by asking what the participants focused on
while performing the task.
2.4.1. Transfer
Right after the acquisition phase, children engaged in a transfer
test in which the distance was increased by 20%.
2.4.2. Retention
The delayed retention session was conducted one week after the
acquisition and the transfer test. The children performed 10 dart
throws from the same distance as during acquisition. However,
they received no instructions shortly before or during this retention
test.
2.5. Measures and statistics
Similar to Emanuel et al., (2008) study, throwing performance
was measured as mean radial error (MRE) (see Table 1). MRE in-
dicates the average deviation (in centimeters) of the darts from the
center of the dartboard. The measurement was taken after each
trial block.
A 2 (Reinvestment Group) x 3 (Instruction Group) x 5 (Block: 1
 A.C.Y. Tse, W.F. van Ginneken / Psychology of Sport and Exercise 31 (2017) 35e39 37

Table 1
Means of (Standard Deviations) of Analysis of Variance for MRE interaction of Reinvestment Group x Instruction Group during the acquisition and test sessions.

Reinvestment group Attentional focus instruction Acquisition Tests

1 2 3 4 5 Transfer Retention

High Internal 14.89 (2.80) 13.36 (1.71) 13.09 (2.98) 10.52 (3.56) 10.07 (2.10) 9.42 (2.99) 10.90 (1.34)
External 13.61 (2.32) 13.61 (2.12) 12.46 (3.32) 11.28 (2.45) 10.64 (2.86) 13.76 (1.83) 12.72 (1.73)
Control 14.11 (2.08) 12.86 (3.53) 13.29 (2.56) 11.62 (1.97) 10.62 (2.73) 12.54 (2.41) 12.30 (1.06)
Low Internal 13.29 (3.21) 13.53 (2.13) 12.43 (2.41) 11.79 (2.17) 9.81 (2.09) 11.28 (1.46) 13.23 (1.52)
External 13.78 (2.20) 13.38 (2.32) 12.37 (2.45) 11.61 (3.87) 10.25 (2.44) 9.82 (1.02) 10.68 (1.49)
Control 13.63 (2.76) 12.97 (2.88) 12.63 (2.74) 11.40 (3.21) 10.24 (2.13) 12.74 (1.30) 12.13 (1.86)
Pm
MRE ¼ m1 i¼1 REi
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
RE ¼ x þ y2
2

Where MRE ¼ mean radial error, RE ¼ radial error (distance between the throw and the center), m ¼ number of trials, and i ¼ a particular trial.

to 5) repeated measures ANOVA tested for differences during
acquisition. Baseline equality (i.e. MRE in Block 1) and MRE in
transfer and delayed retention was tested via 2 (Reinvestment
Group: High vs Low) x 3 (Instruction Group: External vs Internal vs
Control) ANOVAs. Chi-square test was used to test for adherence to
the verbal instructions. Post hoc tests with Bonferroni adjustments
were performed to follow up on significant effects. Greenhouse-
geisser was used for the correction of heteroscedasticity. Effect
size was expressed as partial eta squared.
SD ¼ 2.41) (p < 0.05, 95% CI ¼ [-5.22, 1.01]), whereas no difference
was found between external focus and control group (p ¼ 0.45, 95%
CI ¼ [-3.32, 0.89]) (Fig. 1). For the children with a low conscious
control propensity, the external focus group (M ¼ 9.82, SD ¼ 1.02)
performed with higher accuracy than the internal focus group
(M ¼ 11.28, SD ¼ 1.46) (p < 0.05, 95% CI ¼ [-2.91, 0.01]) and control
group (M ¼ 12.74, SD ¼ 1.30) (p < 0.05, 95% CI ¼ [-4.37, 1.46]),
whereas the internal focus group also performed with higher ac-
curacy than control group (p < 0.05, 95% CI ¼ [-2.93, 0.01]) (Fig. 1).

3. Results 3.5. Retention

3.1. Instruction adherence
Most of the children (95%) adhered to the focus instructions.
Two participants, who had high propensities for conscious control,
had inadvertently shifted from their instructed external focus to an
internal focus of attention. For the participants who did not receive
any attentional focus instruction (n ¼ 20), one child with a high
propensity for conscious control reported having focused internally
and one child with low propensity had focus externally.
3.2. Baseline
Performance at baseline (i.e. MRE in Block 1) was equal for all
focus instruction groups and both groups of children with either
low or high conscious control propensity (ps > 0.1).
3.3. Acquisition
During the acquisition session, there was a significant effect of
block (F (3.53, 190.46) ¼ 70.24, p < 0.001, h2p ¼ 0.57) (Fig. 1). No
significant differences between reinvestment groups (F (1,
54) ¼ 1.15, p ¼ 0.29, h2p ¼ 0.02) or between instruction groups (F (2,
54) ¼ 0.04, p > 0.96, h2p < 0.01) were found. Moreover, no significant
interaction between the groups was revealed (F (2, 54) ¼ 0.20,
p ¼ 0.82, h2p < 0.01).
3.4. Transfer
During the transfer test, no significant effect of conscious control
propensity (F (1, 54) ¼ 2.36, p ¼ 0.13, hp2 ¼ 0.42) was found.
However, a significant effect of focus instruction (F (2, 54) ¼ 10.66,
p < 0.001, h2p ¼ 0.28) and a significant interaction between
conscious control propensity and instruction group (F (2,
54) ¼ 32.97, p < 0.001, h2p ¼ 0.55) were found. Post hoc comparisons
indicated that for children with high conscious control propensity,
the internal focus group performed with higher accuracy (M ¼ 9.42,
SD ¼ 2.99) than the external focus group (M ¼ 13.76, SD ¼ 1.83)
(p < 0.001, 95% CI ¼ [-6.43, 2.22]) and control group (M ¼ 12.54,
During the retention test, no significant effect of conscious
control propensity (F (1, 54) ¼ 0.13, p ¼ 0.91, h2p ¼ 0.59) and no
significant effect of focus instruction were found (F (2, 54) ¼ 7.10,
p > 0.50, h2p ¼ 0.26). However, a significant interaction was found
between conscious control propensity and instruction group (F (2,
54) ¼ 12.03, p < 0.001, h2p ¼ 0.31). Post hoc tests showed that for
children with a high propensity for conscious control, the internal
focus group performed with higher accuracy (M ¼ 10.90, SD ¼ 1.34)
than the external focus group (M ¼ 12.72, SD ¼ 1.73) (p < 0.05, 95%
CI ¼ [-3.42, 0.21]) and control group (M ¼ 12.30, SD ¼ 1.06)
(p < 0.05, 95% CI ¼ [-3.01, 0.21]), whereas no difference was found
between the external focus group and control group (p > 0.05, 95%
CI ¼ [-1.19, 2.02]) (Fig. 1). For children with a low propensity for
conscious control, the external focus group performed with higher
accuracy (M ¼ 10.68, SD ¼ 1.49) than the internal focus group
(M ¼ 13.23, SD ¼ 1.52) (p < 0.05, 95% CI ¼ [-4.17, 0.93]) and control
group (M ¼ 12.13, SD ¼ 1.86) (p < 0.05, 95% CI ¼ [-3.07, 0.17]),
whereas no difference was found between internal focus instruc-
tion group and control group (p > 0.05, 95% CI ¼ [-0.52, 2.71])
(Fig. 1).
4. Discussion
In this study, we investigated whether the propensity for
conscious control of children moderates the effects of attentional
focus (internal versus external) on motor learning and perfor-
mance. Children, selected for having either high or low propensities
for conscious control, engaged in a practice phase, a transfer task
and delayed retention of a darts task. During practice, they were
given instruction to adopt either an internal or an external focus of
attention or a non-specific focus. Results revealed no effects during
practice, but significant interactions between propensity for
conscious control and instructions in the transfer and delayed
retention task. In line with our hypotheses, children with a high
propensity for conscious control performed best when they had
practiced the task using an internal focus of attention and those
with low propensities performed best when they had learned the
task using an external focus of attention. These results indicate that
38 A.C.Y. Tse, W.F. van Ginneken / Psychology of Sport and Exercise 31 (2017) 35e39
Fig. 1. The interaction effect among reinvestment propensity (high versus low), instruction (internal focus versus external focus versus control), and block (B1-B5) during the
acquisition, transfer and retention for the MRE measurement.
children's motor learning if most effective when focus instructions
match natural inclinations.
The most obvious explanations for these effects are that children
with high conscious control propensities possess either relatively
low levels of movement automaticity and/or high cognitive ca-
pacities e and conversely that ones with a low propensity possess
high automaticity and/or lower cognitive capacities. However, the
exact nature of the underlying mechanism(s) cannot be determined
based on the current study.
However, there may be other factors than automaticity and
cognition at work. In fields related to motor learning beneficial
effects of confluence between predispositions and learning condi-
tions have been reported. In educational psychology, it has been
proposed that individuals have their own strengths and learning
styles (Felder & Silverman, 1988; Hawk & Shah, 2007). For example,
verbal learners may prefer learning through hearing and speaking,
while visual learners may learn better through pictures and dia-
grams (Felder & Silverman, 1988). If teaching style does not match
with learner's natural style, learning may be degraded (Hawk &
Shah, 2007). These findings indicate that a more general effect of
fit between predisposition and circumstance might exist that is not
specifically mediated by automaticity or cognition.
Furthermore, Emanuel et al. (2008) pointed out that children are
prone to being distracted. This may explain why children did less
well when they were instructed to adapt a focus that contradicted
their predisposition. It may have been difficult for them to sustain a
non-natural focus of attention, as their predispositions distracted
them away from the instructed focus. Further, research is therefore
required to determine which mechanisms govern the positive ef-
fects of a confluence between personality predispositions and
attentional focus instructions.
Practical implications of this study are that practice environ-
ments should be adapted to the characteristics of children.
Although to a degree this point may go without saying, previous
literature suggested that environment and personal characteristics
could be viewed as separate. Based on the current study, it can be
argued that children fare best under learning conditions that fit
their personality predispositions. Physical education teachers or
sports coaches may therefore use information on these character-
istics to adapt learning conditions accordingly.
Limitations of the present study regard the novelty of the task,
adherence to the instructions and age of the sample. It is
questionable whether the children were complete novices before
engaging in the procedure. It is likely that they had experience with
throwing objects. Therefore, it is unknown whether the results of
this study apply to completely novel tasks. Furthermore, a small
number of children did not follow the attentional focus instructions
and focus in an opposite manner. However, like Emanuel et al.,
(2008) study, we did not exclude those participants as they had
been assigned to the different instruction groups randomly. Lastly,
the target group of the current study was children. Even though it is
likely that the results transfer to adults, further research is neces-
sary to examine this possibility.
5. Conclusions
This study shows that the effects of internal and external focus
of attention on motor learning and performance in children is not
straight forward, but depend on predispositions for conscious
control. Motor learning appears to be most effective when focus
instructions match the natural inclinations of the child. Future
research may examine which mechanisms (e.g. automaticity,
cognition and/or distraction) govern this effect.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data related to this article can be found at http://
dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2017.03.015.
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