I will now examine how attentional focus can impact sports performance. Attentional cues are information you absorb during competition. There are two types of attentional cues: relevant cues and irrelevant cues. Relevant attention cues include making sure your teammates are in position and making sure the ball position is correct when shooting. Irrelevant attention cues include crowd noises and things like thrown bottles. Selective attention is the goal of all sports psychologists, as they seek to ignore all irrelevant cues and focus on relevant cues that can impact performance. This would improve performance because they would be able to focus on the right and important things rather than the irrelevant cues that are not important. For example, a boxer must ignore irrelevant cues such as the crowd and noise and focus on relevant cues such as his opponent and the punches being thrown at him. If they can't do this, their performance will decline because they will focus on the wrong things. Divided attention occurs when you have to focus on more than one relevant cue. This happens in rugby because they need to know where the ball is, make sure they are behind the pass so they can receive the pass, and make sure they are in the right positions. Sports performance requires both selective and divided attention to improve performance, as athletes do not want to focus on irrelevant cues but must focus on all relevant cues. Overall, attentional cues should be considered when examining an artist's performance. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Attentional focus can be seen in two dimensions. These are the width dimension and the direct dimension. The width dimension is further divided into broad attentional focus and narrow attentional focus. A broad attentional focus means you absorb and process a lot of information. For example, when batting in cricket, you have to watch the ball, look at the spaces on the field to know where to try to play the shot in order to score enough runs. Narrow attentional focus occurs when you have a small amount of information to integrate. A sporting example of this is in a 100m sprint, as you are only focusing on yourself, like staying in the right line and making sure you get a good start. Competitive pressure can impact the focus of attention, as the batsman may feel pressure to score runs and will not find the gaps due to pressure. This may also impact narrow attentional focus, as the 100m sprinter will overthink their own performance. Athletes playing team sports such as football and rugby will need to focus their attention to see all the players on the field so they can read the game. Athletes playing solo sports, such as sprinters and golfers, will need to have close attention so they can focus on their own performance and that of others. In the direct dimension, this is also divided into two: external attentional focus and internal attentional focus. There..