Spectator’s Effect on Action-specific Perception and Performance in Distal and Proximal External Focus Condition

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of spectators’ presence on action-specific Perception and performance in the distal and proximal external focus condition. The current research was a semi-experimental study with a practical purpose. Among the female undergraduate students of the physical education faculty of Urmia University who had no professional and competitive sports experience in darts, forty people were selected randomly and divided into two groups based on the type of instruction: the distal external focusgroup and the proximal external focus group. In this research, the task of throwing darts was used and the participants made 20 attempts based on the type of instruction of their group, including proximal external focus (focus on the flight of the dart) and distal external focus (focus on the target), in two different conditions (with the presence of spectators and absence of spectators). The perceived target size test was performed at the end of the efforts, and before performing the dart-throwing task, participants filled out the Immediate Anxiety Measurement Scale (IAMS) to measure their anxiety in both conditions. To analyze the data, independent and paired samples t-tests were used to examine the differences between the two groups. The results indicated that the performance and perceived target size of both groups decreased in the presence of spectators compared to the absence of spectators, but this decrease was less in the distal external focus group. The findings recommend that athletes should benefit from effective and appropriate strategies to control anxiety, and also to reduce the destructive effect of anxiety caused by the presence of spectators on action-specific perception and performance, instructions of distal external focus should be used