The purpose of the current study was to examine how voice inflection, a paraverbal communication element, combined with an external focus of attention (EFA) or interntal focus of attention (IFA) impacts jumping performance and kinematics. Participants included 21 male and female fourth and fifth-grade physical education students from Future Public School in Garden City, Idaho. The inclusion criterion was being in the fourth or fifth grade. Exclusion criteria were any injury, illness, or other circumstance that would have prevented the child from participating to the best of their ability. The injury was defined as any physical ailment that would negatively affect jump performance. Participants performed a standing long jump pretest under neutral conditions. Seven days later, participants were randomly assigned to four groups using the pretest data, stratified into quartiles, as the blocking variable. These groups were: one that received an IFA without voice inflection (IN), an IFA with voice inflection (INI), an EFA without voice inflection (EX), and an EFA with voice inflection (EXI) on the standing long jump task. The two internal focus groups’ instruction was to jump toward a cone set at the distance of each subject’s pretest jump distance. There was a significant change pretest to posttest distance between groups. The IN and INI groups did not differ significantly prestest to posttest, nor did the EX and EXI groups. The EX and EXI groups both outperformed the INI group. There was a strong correlation between jump distances and body angles at takeoff. There was no significant effect on alpha between groups. Using a voice inflection on the adverb of the task instruction did not enhance jump distance or kinematics. On average, an external focus of attention improved jump distance, while an internal focus of attention resulted in participants performing worse. These results confirm the benefits of using an external focus of attention with children and novice skill participants.
