FOCUS

The term ‘‘focus’’ is popularly used to describe a state of AROUSAL, in which the subject is paying ATTENTION. In psychology, there is no consensus about its precise meaning. Aidan Moran, for example, equates focus with CONCENTRATION, ‘‘the ABILITY to focus effectively on the task at hand [. . .] while ignoring distractions.’’ Jasmin Hutchinson and Gershon Tenenbaum use attention focus to describe the manner in which attention is allocated. For example, during prolonged, intense exercise, attention is focused on body sensations but, during a COMPETITION, attention is toward external stimuli, such as rivals or a projectile. Combining the two senses, we can establish that being focused means screening out all irrelevant stimuli in the environment and selecting only auditory and visual information that is pertinent to the immediate task. The word focus was originally Latin for fireplace, or hearth. Processes involved. Being focused in the lead-up to an event is actu-

ally a different process to being focused during the event itself. For instance, a high jumper may claim to be focused for up to four years, insisting that he or she is focused on winning an Olympic gold medal and that all endeavor over that period is a form of preparation for a single, ultimate competition. The athlete means that intervening competitions, like the International Association of Athletics Federations World Championships or the Pan American Games, will be subordinate challenges and that training schedules will be designed to ensure he or she peaks for the Olympics. In this sense, ‘‘focused’’ describes a pattern of activities organized around a grand plan. The athlete may be preoccupied with the Olympics to the point where they pay less attention to what they regard as less important affairs, but they are unlikely to wreck their car or burn down the house because attention focus was so narrow. Yet, in the actual Olympic competition, focused attention will be strictly on a single task and a process of sensory GATING will have begun; extraneous stimuli, both external (in the environment) and internal (thoughts), will be shut out. During training, internal association occurs, which means that a

participant monitors internal states, focusing on sensations, whether PAIN, fatigue, or arousal. Noncompetitive trainers at a gym might daydream while on the treadmill, and this process is known as internal dissociation (task-irrelevant thoughts occupying the attention focus), while those who prefer to jog outdoors might focus on scenery in a process of external dissociation.