Self-Regulation Via Visual Fixation: Effects of Strategic Shifting of Attentional Scope on Running Intensity

Does the shifting of visual attention serve as a self-regulatory strategy by people persist through effortful tasks to complete goals? Across six studies (n = 1,590) focusing on running goals, runners increasingly narrowed and decreasingly widened attention over time as they neared a goal (Studies 1, 2, and 4). Suggesting its effectiveness, narrowing rather than widening attention increased effort investment; runners experimentally assigned to narrow rather than widen attentional scope (Studies 3A and 3B) at the beginning rather than the end (Study 3C) ran faster paces (Studies 3A, 3B, and 3C) and invested more effort as indexed by heart rate (Study 3B). Better runners, including elite competitive runners (Study 1) and faster runners as indexed by self-reported pace (Study 2) and competition performance times (Study 4) tended to rely on attentional narrowing. We discuss the implications of attentional scope shifting as a general regulatory control strategy.