Middle Eastern Journal of Disability Studies

Abstract
Background & Objectives: The impact of focus on the performance and learning of motor skills has received much attention in recent years. Researchers and educators believe that the type of focus can have an almost immediate effect on performance. This means that during the performance, the accuracy and quality of the performer's movement are associated with his focus. In the center of internal attention, the person focuses on the movements of his body. In external attention, the person focuses on the effect that movement has on the environment. Several studies have focused on the internal and external factors through executive instructions and others through feedback to study the impact of internal and external focus on the implementation and learning of skills. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the effect of external and internal attention on learning simple volleyball serve in deaf students.
Methods: This research was a quasi–experimental study with a pretest–posttest design with two experimental groups. The study population was deaf female students of Farzaneh High School in Kerman City, Iran. According to Morgan's table, 27 eligible students to study and volunteer entered the study. They were randomly divided into one control and two experimental groups based on the type of focus (internal and external attention). They were beginners in the task and unfamiliar with the simple volleyball serves, aged 15 to 20 years. After performing the pretest, which included 20 volleyball serves without attention instructions, the two groups practiced for three consecutive sessions, each lasting 60 minutes. The first group received external attention instruction exercises, and the second group internal attention instruction and, after 48 hours, participated in the retention test, which included 20 simple serves. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (analysis of covariance and post hoc LSD test) at a significance level of α=0.05 using SPSS software.
Results: The findings showed that by controlling the effect of the pretest on the performance variable of the students, there was a significant difference between the three groups in terms of the performance of the students (p=0.029). There was a significant difference between the posttest performance of students in the control group and the external attention and internal attention groups (p=0.031 and p=0.022, respectively). However, no significant difference was observed between the external and internal attention groups (p=0.860).
Conclusion: Based on the study findings, internal and external attention act similarly, and both are effective in improving the learning of deaf students. So, it is suggested that educators focus learners' attention not on body movement but on the result to improve both the form and the outcome.