Evidence has ostensibly been accumulating over the past 2 decades suggesting that an external focus on the intended movement effect (e.g., on the golf club during a swing) is superior to an internal focus on body movements (e.g., on your arms during a swing) for skill acquisition. Seven previous meta-studies have all reported evidence of external focus superiority. The most comprehensive of these concluded that an external focus enhances motor skill retention, transfer, and performance and leads to reduced eletromyographic activity during performance and that more distal external foci are superior to proximal external foci for performance. Here, we reanalyzed these data using robust Bayesian meta-analyses that included several plausible models of publication bias. We found moderate to strong evidence of publication bias for all analyses. After correcting for publication bias, estimated mean effects were negligible: g = 0.01 (performance), g = 0.15 (retention), g = 0.09 (transfer), g = 0.06 (electromyography), and g = -0.01 (distance effect). Bayes factors indicated data favored the null for each analysis, ranging from BF01 = 1.3 (retention) to 5.75 (performance). We found clear evidence of heterogeneity in each analysis, suggesting the impact of attentional focus depends on yet unknown contextual factors. Our results contradict the existing consensus that an external focus is always more effective than an internal focus. Instead, focus of attention appears to have a variety of effects that we cannot account for, and, on average, those effects are small to nil. These results parallel previous metascience suggesting publication bias has obfuscated the motor learning literature. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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报告偏倚，而不是外部焦点：对注意力文献的外部焦点的稳健贝叶斯荟萃分析和系统评价。


在过去 2 年中，表面上积累的证据表明，在技能习得方面，对预期运动效果的外部关注（例如，在挥杆时对高尔夫球杆的关注）优于对身体运动的内部关注（例如，在挥杆时对手臂的关注）。之前的 7 项荟萃研究都报告了外聚焦优势的证据。其中最全面的结论是，外部聚焦增强了运动技能的保留、转移和表现，并导致表现期间的电肌图活动减少，并且更远端的外部病灶在表现方面优于近端外部病灶。在这里，我们使用稳健的贝叶斯荟萃分析重新分析了这些数据，其中包括几个合理的出版偏倚模型。我们发现所有分析均存在中等至强的发表偏倚证据。校正发表偏倚后，估计的平均效应可以忽略不计：g = 0.01（性能）、g = 0.15（保留）、g = 0.09（转移）、g = 0.06（肌电图）和 g = -0.01（距离效应）。贝叶斯因子表明数据有利于每个分析的 null，范围从 BF01 = 1.3（保留期）到 5.75（性能）。我们在每项分析中都发现了异质性的明确证据，表明注意力聚焦的影响取决于尚未知的背景因素。我们的结果与现有的共识相矛盾，即外部关注总是比内部关注更有效。相反，注意力集中似乎具有我们无法解释的各种影响，而且平均而言，这些影响很小甚至为零。这些结果与以前的元科学相吻合，表明发表偏倚混淆了运动学习文献。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 （c） 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。