Pay attention please.

I’ve always been interested in fitness activities. As far as I can remember, it started with joining the Dance Club with no experience at all in the third grade because the Computer Club—my first choice—was full. It was so awkward at first, observing myself in the mirror. I mean I do get the moves eventually, but I wasn’t that raw talented dancer who struts the stuff oh-so effortlessly. And that’s okay! Because I also remember enjoying the thing itself, music blasting as you drown in awkwardness and come to laugh at it with your fellow club members.

Besides self-motivation, it was also our teacher who kept me going. Not that I aspired to be anything close, but watching her at her element was reinforcing. I found myself paying attention to her reflection in the mirror more than mine, and it must've contributed to my awakened impetus to move more, explore more, and try out other sweat-inducing forms of exercise.

In a study by Calitri et al. (2009), associations between previous physical activity and both implicit and explicit attitudes were investigated, including visual attention and activity motivation. They found that higher levels of physical activity were associated with positive implicit attitudes as well as an attentional bias towards exercise cues. In other words, the more extreme the person’s implicit attitude towards exercise (positive or negative) is, the greater his or her attentional bias to exercise cues will be.

 How’s this for a cue?

Also, the study indicated that such exercise cues were not equally relevant for every individual. In a live basketball game, for example, a swimmer in the audience probably wouldn’t notice how one player managed to score despite being double-teamed by his opponents. He may have seen the play, but a basketball hobbyist sitting beside him would’ve perceived it as an amazing, I’ll practice-more-‘cause-I-wanna-do-that-too sequence of historical events in the realm of hoops.

In my case, being familiar with the style and starting to give meaning to that dance class led me to pay more attention to what my teacher was choreographing—especially the moves that fascinated me—which further led to increased enthusiasm. In my case at present however, I wouldn’t pay as much attention to cues sent by people like my teacher anymore because as mentioned earlier, I did jump from one fitness activity to another. And as a college student who doesn’t get to exercise often, I involved myself in the convenience and elegance of jogging. Hence, visual attention is directed to a different set of cues.

This study can definitely be applied to the encouragement of a healthy/active lifestyle. The motivation is there for many of us, but the real challenge is maintaining its existence in our systems; so that we keep on going and not let all our efforts go to waste, whether it’s a goal weight we’re trying to drop down to or decreasing the chances of certain diseases to develop. Well we can start by simply being more sensitive to perceptual cues; learning to identify which stimuli can help us, for example in having seconds thoughts about eating another slice of cake, or extending our run to one more round in the Acad Oval. In the two modes of transportation below, which would you choose to take? Of course It would depend on the interaction of your current situation and goals, your internal and external intentions. But in the end, one factor always, always squeezes itself in the equation.

Attention is part of the decision.

Source: Calitri, R., Lowe, R., Eves, F., & Bennett, P. (2009). Associations between visual attention, implicit and explicit attitude and behaviour for physical activity. Psychology and Health, 24(9), 1105–1123.