This thesis is about "choking" in self-paced skills. Choking refers to ''the
occurrence of inferior performance despite striving and incentives for superior
performance" (Baumeister and Steinhilber, 1986, p. 361). Self-paced skills are skills in
which performance is initiated by the athlete. This research set out to investigate the
cause of choking in self-paced skills within the theoretical framework of behaviour
analysis. The main focus of the research relates to the distinction between behaviour
under the control of verbal antecedents (rule-governed behaviour) and behaviour that is
shaped by its consequences (contingency-shaped behaviour).
It was originally hypothesised that the insensitivity of rule-governed behaviour
to changes in the contingencies of reinforcement could he beneficial in situations where
these changes led to greater performance pressure. Specifically, it was predicted that
performance under the control of verbal antecedents would be less susceptible to
choking. In the first experiment, no support was found for the hypothesis and,
furthermore, rule-governed performance appeared to be inferior to contingency-shaped
performance in the early stages of acquisition.
In light of these results, and after a detailed examination of the behaviour
analysis distinction between these two forms of behaviour, evidence was presented
which suggested that verbal control of the topography, or form, of behaviour would be
likely to disrupt performance in self-paced skills. In subsequent experiments, it was
found that using simple verbal cues was an effective means of preventing choking under
pressure. It was hypothesised that the function of these cues was in preventing
reinvestment of too many technical instructions in the moments before performance
initiation. The assumptions upon which the reinvestment theory of choking is based
were also examined with results providing general support for the theory but also
suggesting that it needs to be refined to account for verbal antecedents that do not
disrupt performance
