The effects of anxiety and situation-specific context on perceptual-motor skill: A multi-level investigation

We examined the effects of anxiety and situation-specific contextual information on attentional, interpretational, and behavioural processes underpinning perceptual-motor performance as proposed by Nieuwenhuys and Oudejans (2012) using an in-situ task. Twelve skilled cricket batsmen played against a skilled spin bowler under conditions manipulated to induce low- and high-levels of anxiety and the presence of low- and high-levels of situation-specific context. High anxiety decreased the number of good bat-ball contacts, while high levels of situation-specific context increased the number of times the ball was missed. When under high anxiety, participants employed significantly more fixations of shorter duration to more locations, but the effects of anxiety were restricted to the attentional level only. Situation-specific context affected performance and behavioural measures but not anxiety, cognitive load or perceptual-cognitive processes, suggesting that performance is influenced through different mechanisms from anxiety that are independent of working memory load.