Self-talk in a basketball-shooting task.

This study examined the effectiveness of two different types of self-talk on the performance of a basketball-shooting task. 60 physical education and sports sciences students were organized into one control and two treatment groups which used self-talk. During the experiment, the control group performed with the general instructions, whereas the self-talk groups used the cue-words "relax" and "fast," respectively, Analysis showed that only the participants of the self-talk group who used the word "relax" improved their performance significantly as compared to the other two groups. It appears that self-talk can positively affect performance if its content is appropriate for the task performed.