My husband likes me to be with him, to look over his shoulder, while he works.  I am exactly the opposite.  With a few exceptions—such as when I want someone to "hold my hand" through an unfamiliar or difficult procedure—I hate it when someone watches me work.  I fall apart.  I trip over my feet, my fingers, my words.  Simple tasks that I can do without thinking suddenly become nearly impossible.  I become incompetent even in my areas of expertise.

Why?  I never had a clue, until I read "The New Neuroscience of Choking" from the New Yorker of a couple of years ago.  (Yes, it has been on my To Blog list for that long.)

[C]hoking is actually triggered by a specific mental mistake: thinking too much. The sequence of events typically goes like this: When people get anxious about performing, they naturally become particularly self-conscious; they begin scrutinizing actions that are best performed on autopilot. The expert golfer, for instance, begins contemplating the details of his swing, making sure that the elbows are tucked and his weight is properly shifted. This kind of deliberation can be lethal for a performer.

[An analysis of golfers] has shown that novice putters hit better shots when they consciously reflect on their actions. By concentrating on their golf game, they can avoid beginner’s mistakes.

A little experience, however, changes everything. After golfers have learned how to putt—once they have memorized the necessary movements—analyzing the stroke is a dangerous waste of time. And this is why, when experienced golfers are forced to think about their swing mechanics, they shank the ball. “We bring expert golfers into our lab, and we tell them to pay attention to a particular part of their swing, and they just screw up,” [University of Chicago professor Sian] Beilock says. “When you are at a high level, your skills become somewhat automated. You don’t need to pay attention to every step in what you’re doing.”

Brain research suggests that a major culprit in this problem is loss aversion, "the well-documented psychological phenomenon that losses make us feel bad more than gains make us feel good."

[T]his is why the striatum, that bit of brain focussed on rewards, was going quiet. Instead of being excited by their future riches, the subjects were fretting over their possible failure. What’s more, the scientists demonstrated that the most loss-averse individuals showed the biggest drop-off in performance when the stakes were raised. In other words, the fear of failure was making them more likely to fail. They kept on losing because they hated losses.

There is something poignant about this deconstruction of choking. It suggests that the reason some performers fall apart on the back nine or at the free-throw line is because they care too much. They really want to win, and so they get unravelled by the pressure of the moment. The simple pleasures of the game have vanished; the fear of losing is what remains.

Indeed.

Posted by sursumcorda on Saturday, August 16, 2014 at 7:21 pm | Edit
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This is why our U of R friend Melinda dropped out of the nursing program - she was fine on the wards until someone was watching her, but then she choked.



Posted by Kathy Lewis on Sunday, August 17, 2014 at 3:09 pm
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