Fatemeh Rezaee; Ahmad Farrokhi; fazlollah Bagherzadeh
Abstract
The aim of this study was to determine the effect of motivational self-talk as one
of the psychological strategies. Motivational self-talk is a type of self-talk that
appears to improve performance and control arousal level through increased drive
and effort and positive motivation in performance. ...
Read More
The aim of this study was to determine the effect of motivational self-talk as one
of the psychological strategies. Motivational self-talk is a type of self-talk that
appears to improve performance and control arousal level through increased drive
and effort and positive motivation in performance. This study tried to investigate
the effect of motivational self-talk on performance of simple and complex skills.
Using a quasi-experimental method, 42 physical education students (20-25 years
old who had passed basketball 1 and 2 units) were selected to participate in this
study. Then, they were randomly divided into two equal groups (experimental and
control) and completed a 15-minute warm-up and task practice. Firstly, the
subjects performed a pre-test (without self-talk) including basketball passing test
(AAHPERD, 1996) as simple skill and basketball passing test (AAHPERD, 1984)
as complex skill. Then, the participants performed a post-test using self-talk with
the above tests. Statistical analysis was performed using independent t test and
paired sample t test by SPSS 11.5 at ??0.05. The results showed no significant
difference between experimental and control groups in pre-test in the performance
of simple (P=0.703) and complex (P=0.512) skills so both group were at the same
level of performance. Motivational self-talk improved the simple skill in the
experimental group (P=0.001). A significant difference (in favour of experimental
group) was observed in the improvement of the simple skill in the post-test of both
groups (P=0.004). Also, motivational self-talk improved the performance of
complex skill in the experimental group (P=0.001). A significant difference (in
favour of experimental group) was observed in the improvement of the complex
skill in the post-test of both groups (P=0.048). The mean difference in the simple
task (? x =0.94) and in the complex task (? x =0.48) between the two groups showed that
the mean difference of simple skill was higher than the complex skill. Generally,
the results showed that motivational self-talk improve the performance of both
skills while it influenced simple skill more than complex skill.
