—-1 —0 —+1 1 Introduction According to the former Los Angeles Dodgers’ pitcher Orel Hershiser, the key to play- ing at his best “is to forget about results and concentrate on execution” (Hershiser and Jenkins 1990, 21). One might interpret Hershiser’s claim in various ways, but if what he means is that focusing on bodily positions and movements is conducive to optimal performance, then many coaches, athletes, and physical therapists would agree (Porter et al. 2010; Durham et al. 2009). A large body of experimental evidence, however, is commonly cited in support of a view called “the attentional focus effect,” which is the hypothesis that focusing on the body (typically designated as an “internal” focus of attention) leads to suboptimal results relative to focusing on the consequences of bodily actions (commonly regarded as an “external” focus of attention) (see Wulf 2013 for a review). This effect is thought to apply to all skills at all levels of ability. As Reza Abdollahipour and colleagues (2015) put it, “It is now clear that the attentional focus effect is independent of the type of task … [and is] generaliz[able] across level of exper- tise, age, dis/ability, etc.” (5–6). Or, in Gabriele Wulf’s (2013) words, “[Fifteen years of research] demonstrate the broad generalizability of the attentional focus effect across tasks, populations, and performance measures” (95). However, in this chapter, after spending some time unfolding the nature and scope of the attentional focus effect, we look into the difficulty of eliminating confounds in experiments testing the effect and examine four situations in which an internal attentional focus appears, at least some- times, to be preferable to an external one. These situations, we suggest, are worthy of further empirical investigation before we can accept that the attentional focus effect applies to all types of skills, all skill levels, and all measures of performance quality. The sheer number of studies that claim to support the attentional focus effect is impressive (see details of such evidence in Wulf 2013). And we do not doubt that 7 Questioning the Breadth of the Attentional Focus Effect Barbara Gail Montero, John Toner, and Aidan P. Moran 72896_10764_ch01_1P.indd 199 05/25/18 11:52 am