LinguaLive Lv.2 20200714
Your favorite athlete closes in for a victorious（勝ち誇る）win. The crowd holds its breath, and, at the crucial moment, she misses the shot. That competitor just experienced the phenomenon known as choking（あがり）, where despite months, even years of practice, a person fails right when it matters most.
Choking is common in sports where performance often occurs under intense pressure and depends on key moments. And yet, performance anxiety also haunts（付きまとう）public speakers, contestants（競技者）in spelling bees, and even world-famous musicians. Most people intuitively（直感的に）blame it on their nerves（緊張）.
But why does being nervous undermine（損なう）expert performance?
There are two sets of theories, which both say that primarily, choking under pressure boils down to focus（集中力）. First, there are the distraction（注意散漫）theories. These suggest that performance suffers when the mind is preoccupied（気を取られる）with worries, doubts, or fears, instead of focusing its attention on performing the task at hand. When relevant and irrelevant thoughts compete for the same attention, something has to give. The brain can only process so much information at once.
Tasks that challenge working memory, the mental “scratch pad” we use to temporarily store phone numbers and grocery lists, are especially vulnerable（傷つきやすい）to pressure. In a 2004 study, a group of university students were asked to perform math problems, some easy, others more complex and memory-intensive. Half the students completed both problem types with nothing at stake（危険な状態ではない）, while the others completed them when calm and under pressure. While everyone did well on the easy problems, those who were stressed performed worse on the more difficult, memory-intensive tasks.
Explicit（明示的な）monitoring theories make up the second group of explanations for choking under pressure. They’re concerned with how pressure can cause people to overanalyze（分析しすぎる）the task at hand. Here, the logic goes that once a skill becomes automatic, thinking about its precise mechanics interferes with your ability to do it. Tasks we do unconsciously seem to be most vulnerable to this kind of choking. A study on competitive golfers compared their performance when instructed to simply focus on putting as accurately as possible, versus when they were primed（前もって教え込む）to be acutely aware of the mechanics of their putting stroke. Golfers usually perform this action subconsciously（潜在意識的に）, so those who suddenly tuned in to the precise details of their own moves also became worse at making accurate shots.
Choking may not be inevitable for everyone though. Research suggests that some are more susceptible than others, especially those who are self-conscious, anxious, and afraid of being judged negatively by others.
So, how can we avoid choking when it really counts? First, it helps to practice under stressful conditions. In a study on expert dart players, researchers found that those who hadn’t practiced under stress performed worse when anxious, compared to those who had become accustomed to pressure.
Secondly, many performers extol（賞揚する）the virtues（美徳） of a pre-performance routine, whether it’s taking a few deep breaths, repeating a cue word, or doing a rhythmic sequence of movements. Studies on golfing, bowling, and water polo find that short rituals can lead to more consistent and accurate performance under pressure.
And thirdly, researchers have shown that having an external focus on the ultimate goal works better than an internal focus, where someone is tuned into the mechanics of what they’re doing.
A study of experienced golfers revealed that those who hit chip shots while focused on the flight of the ball performed significantly better than those who focused on the motion of their arms. So, perhaps we can modify that age-old saying: practice, under pressure, with focus, and with that glorious（栄誉ある）end goal in sight, makes perfect.
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