The Investigation of the Effect of Attentional Focus Instructions on Learning Motor Skill: The Difference in Children's Learning Process

Background The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of focus instructions on motor skills learning in children. Materials and Methods: In this quasi-experimental study, it is chosen 42 girl students randomly who aged 9 to 11 years old in 18 district of Tehran and divided in three groups: internal focus attention, external focus attention, and control. After introduction the primary instructions and watching instructional movie related to basketball free throw, the participates thrown five times in test way then in acquisition phase, made 100 attempts in two sessions during two sequencing days. Each session included two blocks of 10-attempts and recovery time in 2 minute among blocks. The retention test included two blocks of 10-attempt that token 48 hours after last acquisition session. It is used covariance analysis test [3 (group)* 10 (throw)] in acquisition phase and LSD post hoc test to analyze the data. Results: The result showed that the internal focus attention group performed better than the control group in acquisition phase (P = 0.012), there isn’t significant difference between external focus attention group's mean (P = 0.084). Also there isn’t significant difference between internal focus attention group's mean and external one (P = 0.401). In other words, internal focus led to an improvement in basketball throwing performance in children at the acquisition stage. Conclusion The results of free throw performance scores did not show any significant difference between the groups during retention, but showed the advantage of using internal attention in the acquisition stage.