Work

Fragile streak goals elicit multimodal pressure responses and late-stage performance decline

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Psychological pressure is thought to relate to performance in an inverted-U pattern, yet evidence is mixed, possibly because manipulations rarely produce high pressure. We induced scalable pressure using a streak goal that resets after a failure in a force-control task. Participants pursued ten consecutive successes (streak goal) or 100 successes irrespective of sequence (total goal). Under the streak goal, heart rate, pupil size, and perceived pressure rose as participants approached their maximum streak; under the total goal, heart rate and pupil size showed little modulation. Performance followed an inverted-U under the streak goal—improving then declining at the maximum streak—whereas the total goal showed no late-stage drop. This dissociation suggests the late-stage decline reflects pressure, not the streak itself. Despite this clear performance decrement, analyses of movement vigor, feedforward/feedback kinematics, and individual differences in pressure responses revealed no consistent systematic signatures at the group level. Fragile streak goals thus provide a multimodal pressure manipulation and a platform for testing mechanisms underlying choking in human motor control.

Source: iScience

DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2026.118040

Authors: Kagari Yamada, Kazushi Tsutsui, Kazutoshi Kudo