Belief in Self Talk and Motor Performance in Basketball Shooting

ABSTRACT: The present study aims to investigate the effect of instructional and motivational self talk on basketball shooting performance as well as the relationship between belief in self talk and shooting performance. A number of 57 participants at the age range of 20-26 years old were randomly assigned into an instructional self talk group (N=19), a motivational self talk group (N=19) and a control group (N=19). During the training program, instructional subjects used the phrase "wrist, center" and motivational subjects used the phrase "I can" before shooting tasks. The control subjects participated in the pretest and post test without using self talk. The results of one-way ANOVA showed that both instructional and motivational subjects outperformed the control subjects in shooting performance (P?0.05). Besides, motivational subjects outperformed instructional subjects in shooting tasks. The results of Pearson correlation formula revealed no significant relationship between belief in self talk and shooting performance. The present findings correspond to earlier findings in the self talk literature though no correlation was witnessed between belief in self talk and performance.