Европейский журнал экспериментальной биологии Открытый доступ

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The effect of overt and covert self-talk on the performance of forceproduction task

Seyyed Mohialdin Bahari, Masoumeh Shojaei, Pouneh Mokhtari

The purpose of the present research was to study the effect of overt and covert self-talk on the performance of a Force-production Task. Thus, 47 participants (22.4±1.89 years old) voluntarily participated in the research and performed a Force-production Task under three conditions: overt self-talk, covert self-talk, and control. In overt self-talk, the participants uttered the sentence “I can do it” out loud before performing the task. In covert self-talk, this sentence was uttered mentally before performing the task. Finally, under control conditions no sentence was uttered before the task was performed. The Force-production Task consisted of 5 sets of trials and each set included 3 trials. Repeated measure ANOVA with F (1.78, 80.41) =8.496 showed that both overt and covert self-talk led to improved performance in the Force-production Task (P< 0.05), and there was no significant difference between the effectiveness of these two types of self-talk (P = 0.472). It appears that overt and covert self-talk have a similar effect on performance. Therefore, coaches are recommended to let their athletes be free to choose either overt or covert self-talk.