the effect of motivational self-talk on simple and complex motor skills in basketball

the aim of this study was to determine the effect of motivational self-talk as one of the psychological strategies. motivational self-talk is a type of self-talk that appears to improve performance and control arousal level through increased drive and effort and positive motivation in performance. this study tried to investigate the effect of motivational self-talk on performance of simple and complex skills. using a quasi-experimental method, 42 physical education students (20-25 years old who had passed basketball 1 and 2 units) were selected to participate in this study. then, they were randomly divided into two equal groups (experimental and control) and completed a 15-minute warm-up and task practice. firstly, the subjects performed a pre-test (without self-talk) including basketball passing test (aahperd, 1996) as simple skill and basketball passing test (aahperd, 1984) as complex skill. then, the participants performed a post-test using self-talk with the above tests. statistical analysis was performed using independent t test and paired sample t test by spss 11.5 at ??0.05. the results showed no significant difference between experimental and control groups in pre-test in the performance of simple (p=0.703) and complex (p=0.512) skills so both group were at the same level of performance. motivational self-talk improved the simple skill in the experimental group (p=0.001). a significant difference (in favour of experimental group) was observed in the improvement of the simple skill in the post-test of both groups (p=0.004). also, motivational self-talk improved the performance of complex skill in the experimental group (p=0.001). a significant difference (in favour of experimental group) was observed in the improvement of the complex skill in the post-test of both groups (p=0.048). the mean difference in the simple task (? x =0.94) and in the complex task (? x =0.48) between the two groups showed that the mean difference of simple skill was higher than the complex skill. generally, the results showed that motivational self-talk improve the performance of both skills while it influenced simple skill more than complex skill.