The Effect of Different Focus of Attention as Verbal Cues on Performance and Retention of Standing Long Jump

Abstract

The instructional guidelines play an important role in transmitting target information, and educators usually use them to teach and improve motor function of individuals at all skill levels. Directing the focus of attention is one of the important factors affecting the effectiveness of instructional guidelines. However, this study aimed to investigate the effect of different focus of attention as verbal cues on performance and retention of standing long jump among teenager female beginners. For this purpose, 45 beginner students (M age= 13.12±1.82 years) in Qazvin were voluntarily selected and after pre-test, they were randomly assigned to one of three groups: external verbal cues, internal verbal cues, and control. All groups performed standing long jump for three sessions; each session consisted of 5 attempts of 2. After last session of acquisition, the posttest was conducted. After one week of untrained, the retention test was conducted. The results of descriptive statistics showed that the standing long jump performance of all groups improved from training period to retention test. The results of one-way analysis of variance showed that there was no significant difference between three groups in pretest and acquisition stage. However, this difference was significant in post-test and retention stage.