Psychological momentum in target shooting: Cortical, cognitive-affective, and behavioral responses

The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which perceptions of psychological momentum (PM) are associated with affect and whether affective responses accounted for a significant proportion of target shooting performance variance. This purpose was examined within the framework of the multidimensional model of momentum. Precipitating PM events were manipulated by providing false performance feedback to isolate psychological effects on performance. EEG data were obtained during real-time performance, and frontal asymmetry was analyzed to assess the viability of the approach-withdrawal motivational system as an underlying mechanism to explain the PM-performance relationship. Although cognitive perceptions of PM were reliably altered by the feedback in the hypothesized direction, affective responses, frontal asymmetry, and shooting performance did not significantly differ among feedback conditions. Overall, these findings suggest that cognitive PM perceptions may evolve in response to precipitating events independently from affective, electrophysiological, and performance effects in novice participants.