Explain how focal and broad attention strategies influence performance under pressure.

• A. Broad attention helps processing multiple cues.
• B. Narrow focus helps control anxiety and precise execution.
• C. Broad attention is sometimes detrimental under pressure; athletes may narrow to critical cues.
• D. Under pressure, ignore cues altogether.

Answer: (C)

Under pressure, focusing on a few critical cues rather than scanning everything helps protect performance. When anxiety rises, trying to take in many cues can overload thinking and disrupt automatic, well-practiced movements. Narrowing attention to essential cues—such as a target, a specific movement phase, or a single rhythm cue—reduces distractions, lowers cognitive load, and supports smoother, more precise execution.

In practice this means the best performers often zero in on what truly matters for the skill at hand when tension spikes, rather than trying to monitor and evaluate a broad field of information. This explains why narrowing to critical cues is advantageous under pressure.