Practice question · Multiple choice
A footballer taking a well-practised penalty and a surgeon attempting an unfamiliar procedure both feel their heart racing. Yerkes-Dodson predicts this helps one and harms the other. What makes the difference?
Hints
- Practice and complexity are correlated here. Which one does the law actually name?
- Ask what arousal does to the range of things you can attend to at once.
Show the answer
A. How much the task depends on holding several things in mind at once.
Why
The variable is task complexity and the mechanism is attentional narrowing: arousal concentrates attention on what is salient, which is ideal for one well-defined action and destructive when several things must be held at once. Practice matters because it reduces effective complexity, so it operates through the same variable rather than alongside it.
Practise Human Needs and Arousal Theories
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