effect of variability of attentional focus distance by self-talk on the learning of table tennis forehand

the purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of variability of attentional focus distance by self-talk on the learning of table tennis forehand in. after pretest, the participants performed 180 forehand strokes during 6 sessions with repeating the words “slightly rotation” in the internal focus group “slightly open” in the near external focus group, “over the net ” in the far external focus group, and each of the words “slightly rotation, slightly open, and over the net ” respectively in each 2 sessions in the increasing distance of attentional focus group. control group performed without self-talk during acquisition phase. retention test was performed 48 hours after acquisition test in the same situation without self-talk, and after break, transfer test was done by changing the direction of target (parallel forehand) without self-talk. the accuracy and the pattern of forehand strokes were measured by a 5 point-scale (liao and masters, 2001) and researcher-made scale, respectively) .according to the results of 2-factor mixed anova, acquisition, retention, and transfer of forehand accuracy in internal focus of attention group were significantly lower than other groups (p