full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Sian Leah Beilock: Why we choke under pressure -- and how to avoid it

Unscramble the Blue Letters

My rsrceeah team and I have studied this phenomenon of overattention, and we call it paralysis by analysis. In one study, we asked celogle soccer players to dbblrie a soeccr ball and to pay attention to an aspect of their performance that they would not otherwise attend to. We asked them to pay attention to what side of the foot was ccianttong the ball. We showed that performance was slower and more error-prone when we drew their attention to the step-by-step details of what they were doing. When the pressure is on, we're often concerned with prnioefmrg at our best, and as a result we try and control what we're doing to force the best performance. The end result is that we actually screw up.

Open Cloze

My ________ team and I have studied this phenomenon of overattention, and we call it paralysis by analysis. In one study, we asked _______ soccer players to _______ a ______ ball and to pay attention to an aspect of their performance that they would not otherwise attend to. We asked them to pay attention to what side of the foot was __________ the ball. We showed that performance was slower and more error-prone when we drew their attention to the step-by-step details of what they were doing. When the pressure is on, we're often concerned with __________ at our best, and as a result we try and control what we're doing to force the best performance. The end result is that we actually screw up.

Solution

  1. college
  2. dribble
  3. soccer
  4. research
  5. performing
  6. contacting

Original Text

My research team and I have studied this phenomenon of overattention, and we call it paralysis by analysis. In one study, we asked college soccer players to dribble a soccer ball and to pay attention to an aspect of their performance that they would not otherwise attend to. We asked them to pay attention to what side of the foot was contacting the ball. We showed that performance was slower and more error-prone when we drew their attention to the step-by-step details of what they were doing. When the pressure is on, we're often concerned with performing at our best, and as a result we try and control what we're doing to force the best performance. The end result is that we actually screw up.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
playing field 4
pay attention 3
research team 3
put limits 3
school year 3
high school 2
national coach 2
control aspects 2
neural pain 2
pain response 2
math anxiety 2
kids learn 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
neural pain response 2

Important Words

  1. analysis
  2. asked
  3. aspect
  4. attend
  5. attention
  6. ball
  7. call
  8. college
  9. concerned
  10. contacting
  11. control
  12. details
  13. drew
  14. dribble
  15. foot
  16. force
  17. overattention
  18. paralysis
  19. pay
  20. performance
  21. performing
  22. phenomenon
  23. players
  24. pressure
  25. research
  26. result
  27. screw
  28. showed
  29. side
  30. slower
  31. soccer
  32. studied
  33. study
  34. team