Visually focusing on the hole versus the ball in golf has shown some positive effects on putting performance (Heath et al., 2008), yet the reason for these benefits have not been tested. Considering the benefits of adopting an external focus, the purpose here was to examine whether attentional focus mechanisms contribute to the positive effects reported by Heath et al. (2008). Thirty experienced golfers were assigned to either a visual-ball focus or visual-hole focus group. Following warm-up putts, 48 experimental putts, divided equally into 16 putts across three conditions: control, task-relevant, and task-irrelevant, were performed. In the control condition, participants putted under single-task conditions, maintaining their assigned visual focus. In the other two conditions, participants putted under dual-task conditions and were instructed to focus on their wrist angles upon hearing a tone (task-relevant), or to identify an irrelevant sound (task-irrelevant). A questionnaire, designed to represent equal proportions of the ‘distance’ effect (Wulf, 2013; i.e., internal, proximal external, or distal external focus), served as a manipulation check to determine the attentional focus adopted under each condition. Analysis of the manipulation check for the control condition data only showed a significant interaction of Group and Attentional Focus F(2,56) = 4.5, p = .01. Post-hoc showed that participants had a significantly higher proximal external focus in the visual-ball focus group compared to the visual-hole focus group, whereas the visual-hole focus group was significantly higher than the visual-ball focus group for distal external focus. Additionally, an analysis with all three putting conditions indicated that participants had significantly higher internal focus for task-relevant trials, as compared to task-irrelevant or control trials. There were no significant differences found for any of the putting performance measures., however, the main effect of Condition did approach significance for MRE F(2,56) = 2.8, p = .068. This replicates the general finding that putting performance is poorest when golfers self-report using a higher internal focus. In conclusion, these results suggest that visually focusing on the hole results in a more distal external attentional focus in a golf environment than that of a ball-focus, but this does not translate to performance benefits.

S’il est aujourd’hui communément admis que la perception de la parole s’effectue d’une manière plus optimale en mode audiovisuel qu’en mode auditif seul (Benoît, Mohamadi et Kandel, 1994, Schwartz, Berthommier et Savariaux, 2004), la nature des informations visuelles dont il est le plus souvent question est la mimo-gestuelle articulatoire fournie par le locuteur en face à face. Cependant, dans une situation d’enseignement d’une langue étrangère, un autre type d’aide visuelle intervient généralement : la forme écrite des éléments oraux. Pourtant en didactique des langues étrangères, la question du passage à l’écrit est loin d’être consensuelle et certains didacticiens se prononcent en faveur d’un entraînement intensif de la prononciation au tout début de l’apprentissage, avant que l’apprenant ne soit confronté au code écrit (Lauret, 2007). Notre hypothèse est que la dimension facilitante de la forme écrite pour certains publics ne doit pas être négligée, même en début d’apprentissage. Notre recherche se fonde sur des expérimentations menées auprès d’apprenants hindiphones. Tenant compte des spécificités de ce public, nous pensons que l’écrit peut, dans certains cas, faciliter sa réception orale des sons du français en début d’apprentissage, condition nécessaire et préalable à leur production (Renard, 1979). Les tests que nous avons conçus obligent les apprenants à recentrer leur attention sur la graphie de sons (les voyelles nasales [ɑ̃] et [ɔ̃]) dès le début de leur apprentissage au moyen de diverses focalisations visuelles écrites (Fort, Spinelli, Savariaux et Kandel, 2010). Les propositions didactiques que nous formulons à la suite reposent sur la suite logique perception – (transcription graphique) — production même si cette présente étude se centre sur l’évaluation de la perception des sons. / It is commonly admitted today that speech perception is more performing in an audiovisual context than in a visual one (Benoît, Mohamadi and Kandel, 1994, Schwartz, Berthommier and Savariaux, 2004). Visual information in this situation often consists of the speaker’s articulatory and facial gestures provided by the face-to-face interaction. However, when learning a foreign language, another type of visual help is generally available to identify oral forms: their written forms. And yet, in the field of didactics of foreign languages, the issue of the oral-written transition is far from being consensual and some didacticians favour training the pronunciation skills of the learner at the beginning of the learning process, before he is confronted to the written code (Lauret, 2007). Our hypothesis is that the facilitating effect of written forms should not be neglected, even at the beginning of a foreign language learning process. Our research is based on the case of Hindi speakers. Taking into consideration the specificities of this population, we think that written information can, in some cases, facilitate the oral reception of French sounds in the beginning of the learning process, which would be a preliminary condition to their production (Renard, 1979). We have conceived a series of test, forcing the Hindi speaking learners to refocus their attention on the nasal vowels [ɑ̃] and [ɔ̃]’s written form from the beginning of the learning process, using different forms of visual written focuses (Fort, Spinelli, Savariaux and Kandel, 2010). Our didactic proposal relies on the following process: perception – (written form transcription) – production, even though the present study is centred on the evaluation of speech perception.

No description available.