Anxiety, arousal and visual attention: a mechanistic account of performance variability

Despite extensive research devoted to determining the nature of the relationship between stress and performance, there has been little systematic examination of the mechanisms underlying this relationship. Recently, researchers have begun to empirically address the attentional mechanisms underlying theoretical accounts of how stress, anxiety and arousal influence performance. Given the critical role of visual attention to sport expertise, this paper focuses primarily on literature dealing with how visual cues are differentially identified and processed when performers are anxious. Emerging evidence indicates that gaze behaviour tendencies are reliably altered when performers are anxious, leading to inefficient and often ineffective search strategies. Alterations of these visual search indices are addressed in the context of both self-paced and externally paced sports events. Recommendations concerning the utility of perceptual training programmes and how these training programmes might be used as anxiety regulation interventions are discussed. The theoretical implications and directions for future research are also addressed.