Empirical Investigation On Choking Under Pressure Of Sanda Athletes

In current sports competitions, it is normal to see that athletes abruptly misplay during the critical time of the competition so that lose the competition inconceivably. Psychologists infer it as the "Choking" phenomenon, which defined as the deterioration in the execution of habitual processes of performance under the pressure. Recently, more and more studies have been concerned with the reason of "Choking" in sports psychology.Based on the literature material, as well as according to the research insufficient, including lack of empirical research with strict control , especially to a special Sport-Profession, two experiments were conducted in the paper. The pictures of fist and kick position in Free boxing were used in Visual Search paradigm , which is one of classical experimental task of Selective attention study, for examining the characteristic of Choking with Free boxing athletes. Moreover, a further study was performed to assess whether locus of control could be a predictive variable to Choking.The results are shown as follows:(1) compared with non-pressure situation, the reaction time get long, as well as that thecorrect rate goes digressive under pressure situation, when Sanda players dealvisual search with Sanda pictures, and all reach significant level in statistics, as thephenomenon of Choking under pressure occurs.(2)the main effects of age and training years are not significant. However, theinteraction of pressure pattern and age is significant, concretely speaking, alongwith the increase in age, reaction time for visual search is on descending trend. While under the pressure situation, it appears lightly decreased and rapidly increased.(3) the locus of control can be treated as one of the important predictive variables, moreover, internal locus of control is prone to make Choking happen ,compared with internal-external locus of control.(4) The interaction effect of age and the patterns of locus of control is significant. Under pressure and non-pressure situation, the difference of reaction time between Sanda players with the internal - external locus of control is significant.