EXTRACT A
We have all heard the term choking under pressure before. In the sports arena, we talk about the bricks in basketball when the game-winning free throw is missed. In academic domains, we refer to cracking in important test-taking situations. But what exactly do these terms mean and why do less-than-optimal performances occur—especially when incentives for optimal performance are maximal?
The desire to perform as well as possible in situations with a high degree of personally felt importance is thought to create performance pressure. However, despite the fact that performance pressure often results from aspirations to function at one’s best, pressure-packed situations are where suboptimal skill execution may be most visible. The term choking under pressure has been used to describe this phenomenon. Choking is defined as performing more poorly than expected, given one’s skill level, and is thought to occur in many different tasks.
EXTRACT B
Even now, 10 years later, I still remember the moment with excruciating clarity: During the fourth and final round of a high school regional speech competition, after a full day of flawless performances, I went up to the front of the auditorium for my last speech and froze.
In a way, my entire senior had been leading up to that point. For six months, I had painstakingly prepared and rehearsed that piece — a prose reading — in the hopes that I would qualify for the state finals. I had placed in the top three in my event at every competition that season; if I did the same at regionals, I had my ticket to the next round.
Needless to say, I blew it. Although I had fully committed the piece to memory at that point, I couldn’t, for the life of me, recall a single word. Like an amateur, I kept stuttering, stumbling, and looking down at my book. It was a brutal end to an otherwise stellar season.
As humiliating as the experience was, I took some small amount of comfort (and still do) in knowing that some version of this happens to everyone. Choking under pressure is a widely studied phenomenon, one that afflicts speakers, athletes, performers, test-takers — really, anyone who’s in a high-pressure situation.
EXTRACT C
It has been observed that performing for high stakes can, paradoxically, lead to uncharacteristically poor performance.
Pay attention to how you’re thinking about the situation at hand: Do you have something to gain, or something to lose?
In a recent study in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, researchers asked participants to plan a computer game for money; as one might expect, the bigger the prize, the more likely they were to choke. But when the researchers asked the players to rethink the incentive — to approach the game as playing to keep something they had, rather than playing to win something they didn’t — rates of choking went down dramatically.
No matter what the context, people who believe they have the ability to influence what happens to them (called “control beliefs”) tend to perform better at a given task. In one study in which soccer players were asked to perform penalty kicks, participants with high control beliefs about their ability to score managed to aim their shots more optimally than those with low control beliefs.
It might seem simplistic to say that changing your outlook will change your performance, but it’s a well-known psychological technique called cognitive reframing, and it’s been shown to be effective in reducing emotions like anxiety or frustration that lead to choking, says psychologist Marc Jones, a professor at Manchester Metropolitan University in the U.K.
EXTRACT D
Scientists who study memory have described different processes, or types, of memory. One type is called long-term memory, which lasts basically forever and can store an unlimited amount of information. Long-term memory stores the information we are not currently using, kind of like a library full of books that hold the stories of our lives. Another type of memory, working memory, does not last very long and cannot hold much information. Working memory is the one we use for completing tasks and getting information into and out of long-term memory.
Stressful situations can affect even the smartest students, by lowering the amount of space in their working memory. Remember that working memory already cannot hold much information. When students are placed in high-pressure situations (like on a test day), worrying about the pressure they are under takes up space in working memory and leaves less space available to use to complete the task. For example, when taking a test, anxious thoughts use up some of the limited space in working memory and lower the amount of working memory space available for solving a math problem or pulling a fact out of long-term memory. A student's perspective can determine success or failure. Students can change their outlooks by writing about their anxieties before a test and "off-loading" their fears, or by simply thinking about a time in the past when they have succeeded.
Read the four extracts below on the topic of 'choking under pressure’.
Choose the option (A, B, C or D) which you think best answers the question.
Which extract...