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Overthinking skilled motor performance: or why those who teach can't do
Kristin E Flegal1, Michael C Anderson
1Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109, USA. kflegal@umich.edu
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
|October 18, 2008
Summary
Overthinking, specifically verbalizing golf-putting actions, impairs skilled athletes' motor skill memory. This verbal overshadowing effect did not impact lower-skilled golfers, suggesting memory interference.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Motor Learning
- Neuroscience
Background:
- Athletes report overthinking hinders motor skill performance.
- Verbal overshadowing describes how articulating perceptual experiences can impair memory recall.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if verbalizing motor actions causes performance deficits in athletes.
- To explore the link between overthinking, verbal overshadowing, and motor skill memory.
Main Methods:
- Participants learned a novel golf-putting task.
- Golfers of varying skill levels either described their putting actions or performed a control verbal task.
- Performance was re-assessed after the verbal task.
Main Results:
- Describing putting actions significantly impaired higher-skilled golfers' performance.
- Lower-skilled golfers showed no performance decrement after verbalization.
- The effect extended beyond simple dual-task interference.
Conclusions:
- Verbalizing motor skills can negatively impact long-term memory for those skills.
- This suggests a competition between procedural and declarative memory systems.
- Findings support the idea that overthinking can disrupt motor skill execution through memory mechanisms.
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