Summary
The present study was designed to test facilitating and debilitating effects of motivational processes on motor behavior. It was predicted that motivational processes have a more pronounced effect on motor performance when control is frequently transferred to attentional mechanisms (i. e., early in the acquisition phase). The results were consistent with this expectation. A strong motive to achieve success and pretreatment designed to enhance achievement motivation were associated with an increase in the quality of performance. A strong tendency to engage in state-oriented cognitive activities, by contrast, (e.g., thinking about the potential threat to one's selfesteem resulting from failure) was associated with poorer performance, It is concluded that experiments on motor behavior in which subjects are instructed to perform a single motor task may actually involve dual-task (or even multiple-task) performance if some part of the subjects' attentional capacity is used for task-irrelevant cognitive activities.
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Kuhl, J., Koch, B. Motivational determinants of motor performance: The hidden second task. Psychol. Res 46, 143–153 (1984). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00308599
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00308599