| dc.description.abstract | As intimated within the above quote, elite athletes commonly view their self-talk as important and influential on subsequent competitive performance. Beyond athletes’ endorsements self-talk has captured the interest and has been the focus of study within a broad range of disciplines including philosophy (Plato, trans. 1993), neuroscience (Longe et al., 2010), developmental (Fernyhough & Fradley, 2005), educational (Burnett, 1996), social (Hart & Albarracin, 2009) as well as a sport psychology (Hardy, 2006). One of the reasons behind self-talk’s appeal to researchers is perhaps its pervasive use by humans. For instance, it has been reported that nearly all (96 per cent) adults engage in self-talk (Winsler, Feder, Way, & Manfra, 2006) and its use has been captured in over a quarter of sampled moments (Heavey & Hurlburt, 2008). Similarly, within the context of sport and exercise, Gammage, Hardy, and Hall (2001) reported that 95 per cent of exercisers endorsed their own use of self-talk related to physical activity. Furthermore, self-talk has become an established component of mental skills package interventions employed by sport psychologists working with athletes (Thelwell & Maynard, 2003). (That said, due to the ambiguity associated with a lack of exclusive focus on self-talk, the use of self-talk in combination with other strategies is not the focus of the present review.) Within the range of disciplines where self-talk has been examined it has been done under the guise of a number of terms including private speech, self-statements, internal dialogue, self-thoughts, self-directed language, and so on. While there is a clear overlap between these terms, there are also some important but subtle differences (e.g., compared to the conceptualization of self-statements, self-oriented thoughts can include mental images; which itself has a rich sports-related research literature – see Monroe-Chandler & Hall’s imagery chapter in this book for a brief review). The importance of being explicit about what we are discussing is not simply an academic exercise; it also has applied relevance as it enables all parties involved (e.g., client and practitioner) to be on the same page, facilitating understanding and clear communication (Van Raalte, 2010). Inevitably a number of self-talk definitions have been presented within the literature. To orientate the reader, we refer to self-talk as statements, phrases or cue words that are addressed to the self which might be said automatically or very strategically, either out loud or silently, phrased positively or negatively, having an instructional or motivational purpose, an element of interpretation, and incorporating some of the same grammatical features associated with everyday speech. © 2016 R. Schinke, K. McGannon and B. Smith. | en |
