The effect of different distances focus of attention in comparision with internal and self-preffer in attention on the acquisition, retention, and transfer in Badminton High Service.

The purpose of this study was investigating the effect ofdifferent instructions of focus of attention on learning Badminton high Service.

For this reason, 55 female students of Shahid Beheshti University aging from 18 to 25 participated in this study. They were divided into five similar groups based on their pre-test results.The first group got no instruction(self focus). The second group instructed to focus on hands (internal focus). The next three groups were instructed to focus on racket, trajectory of ball and rope respectively (external focus in different distances).The aim was to dotests on acquisition, retention, transfer and transfer under pressure in Badminton High Service (Scott-Fox test). Participants performed 300 acquisition trails for two weeks. Then after 48 hours, 15 retention trails were carried out, after a while 15 transfer trails also performed in different situations.The obtained data was analysed by one-way ANOVA, ANOVA with repeated measurements and Bonferronitest.

The result indicated significant improvement in performance for all groups in acquisition phase. However, there were no significant difference among groups in acquisition and retention phase. The results of transfer phase demonstrated significant difference among focus of attention on rope group in compare with focus on racket for the benefit of racket and there were no significant differences among other groups. Also, self-focus group and focus of attention on rope group indicatedto drop from pre-test and retention to transfer test. These results showed that focus instructions are beneficial to movement learning.For focusattention, it’s better to concentrate on factors which are directly related to movement and paying attention to external unrelated factors(e.g. rope in this investigation) may have weaker results.

The findings suggest that instructions of focus attention are beneficial for motor skill learning and specially those that are directly connected with movement. Also, increased distance external focus attention (rope in this study) hadnt got more benefits for motor skill learning in Badminton high service.Therefore, wulf, prinz(2001) based on optimal distance of focus of attention is confirmed.