The purpose of the study was to investigate how attentional focus affect hand motion steadiness under different pressure levels and to explore the accuracy of skin conductance level (SCL) in measuring one's pressure level. Undergraduate college students (40 males, 40 females) were recruited to perform a hand motion steadiness task for two blocks (i.e., baseline and test) of 10 trials. The order of the blocks was counterbalanced within four subgroups classified by two between-participant factors: pressure, attentional focus. The pressure level was manipulated by whether participants were notified about a time constraints (which were not actually applied) in their performance and the attentional focus factor whether participants were instructed to do a task-focused self-talk ("Go Steady") or suppressive self-talk ("Don't Shake"). Participants' SCL and ratings of pressure level were obtained for both blocks. Results revealed that the ironic process did lead participants rehearsing repressive self-talk ("Don't Shake") to choke regardless of the pressure level. Besides, SCL seems to be more of an indicator for one's activation-arousal level than pressure level. Finally, females have a more steady hand under various conditions than males. These findings had both applied and theoretical implications and contributed to the research of choking under pressure. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of
Science. / Spring Semester, 2013. / November 14, 2012. / Choking under Pressure, Hand motion steadiness, Ironic Process / Includes bibliographical references. / Robert C. Eklund, Professor Directing Thesis; Gershon Tenenbaum, Committee Member; Russell Almond, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_183797 |
| Contributors | Liu, Sicong (authoraut), Eklund, Robert C. (professor directing thesis), Tenenbaum, Gershon (committee member), Almond, Russell (committee member), Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems (degree granting department), Florida State University (degree granting institution) |
| Publisher | Florida State University, Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text |
| Format | 1 online resource, computer, application/pdf |
| Rights | This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). The copyright in theses and dissertations completed at Florida State University is held by the students who author them. |
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