Perceiving and moving in sports and other high-pressure contexts

Item does not contain fulltextFrom an ecological psychological perspective, the current chapter discusses the influence of anxiety on the perception, selection, and realization of affordances in sports and other high-pressure contexts, particularly police work. Drawing on recent developments in the anxiety-performance literature (i.e., the attentional control theory) the authors' experimental work on the impact of anxiety on perceptual-motor performance is described. Furthermore, several experiments showing positive effects of training with anxiety on performance under pressure are discussed. We argue that through reality-based training with anxiety, processes that underlie performance might be recalibrated to the new task constraints, thereby preventing a degradation of eventual performance in stressful situations