Revista Europea de Biología Experimental Acceso abierto

Abstracto

Relationship between belief in self-talk and motor performance

Amir Dana,  Mohammad VaezMousavi, Pouneh Mokhtari

The present study aims to investigate the effect of instructional and motivational self-talks on motor performance in basketball passing and dribbling tasks. The study also purports to investigate the relationship between belief in selftalk and motor performance in basketball passing and dribbling tasks. A number of 57 participants ranging in age from 20 to 26 were randomly assigned into an instructional self-talk group (N=19), a motivational self-talk group (N=19) or a control group (N=19). During the training program, instructional subjects used the phrase “short move” in dribbling task and “finger-goal” in passing task. Motivational subjects used the phrase “I can” in either task. The control subjects made no self-talk but participated in both the pre- and post-test. The results of one-way ANOVA showed that both instructional and motivational subjects outperformed the control subjects in either task (P≤0.05). There was no significant difference in passing task performance between motivational and instructional subjects. However, instructional subjects outperformed motivational subjects in dribbling performance. The results of statistical analysis showed no significant correlation between belief in self-talk and basketball passing and dribbling performance.