Attentional focus strategies and motor performance in young adolescents investigating role of task difficulty

Attentional focus plays a crucial role in motor performance; however, its impact on young adolescent females across varying task difficulties remains unclear. This study aims to answer the following question: how do attentional focus strategies affect motor performance in young adolescents, and does task difficulty modify this effect? A sample of 112 healthy girls aged 10-12 years (M = 10.98, SD = 0.82) was randomly assigned to one of four conditions: external focus (focus on the part of the ball contacted during the kick), holistic focus (focus on feeling solid contact during the kick), internal focus (focus on the part of the foot making contact during the kick), or control (no focus instruction). Participants completed 40 soccer kicking trials under two levels of task difficulty: kicking a stationary ball and kicking a moving ball. Findings revealed that under low task difficulty, performance was significantly better with an external focus compared to an internal focus (p = .001), and no instruction (p = .004). Similarly, a holistic focus led to significantly better performance than an internal focus (p = .0001) and no instruction (p = .0001). However, under higher task difficulty, only the holistic focus group sustained superior performance, outperforming all other groups (p ≤ .05). These results highlight the moderating role of task difficulty in attentional focus research and suggest the potential advantages of holistic focus in complex motor tasks.