Endorsement and Constructive Criticism of an Innovative Online Reflexive Self-Talk Intervention.

This study prospectively followed the experiences of skilled athletes who were involved in an innovative reflexive self-talk online intervention targeting goal-directed self-talk. Four experienced female athletes between the ages of 20 and 40 years were invited to an initial interview, a 4-week intervention, and two post-intervention interviews. Two applied sport psychologists used an online Socratic questioning approach to encourage their athletes to describe challenging scenarios, think about their use of self-talk and its effectiveness, and explore alternative self-statements that could be used in future situations. Data were multi-sourced stemming from the psychologists, athletes, and third parties (e.g., coach). Three athletes completed the intervention, whereas one athlete withdrew prematurely, mainly because the Socratic questioning approach and the online mode of delivery did not meet her preferences. From the three athlete who had completed the intervention, there was endorsement and constructive criticism of the intervention and its online delivery mode. The intervention, largely due to the accompanying raised awareness of self-talk use and refined content, seemingly benefited a range of variables including emotions, motivation, and confidence, both inside and outside of the athletes' sports life domain. Accordingly, this new type of online intervention warrants further consideration in the literature.

Goal-directed self-talk used to self-regulate in male basketball competitions.

This study examined how goal-directed self-talk may help basketball players to self-regulate in stereotypical competitive situations: seconds before a challenging game, while clearly winning or clearly losing, and at the close of a tight game. Participants were recruited in groups of three to four, until preliminary inspection of the data indicated that data saturation was reached. In the end, 34 basketball players voluntarily took part in individual interviews, writing up to three self-instructions they had used in each of the four competitive situations to self-regulate. Content analyses revealed that self-talk in competitive basketball situations serves cognitive functions (e.g., regulating cognition and behaviour), motivational functions (e.g., promoting mastery goals) and emotion and activation-regulating functions (e.g., creating activated states). More specifically, the results also indicated that athletes' self-talk may serve functions specific to the psychological demands experienced in each situation. It is argued that knowing how athletes counsel themselves, could prove important for applied sport psychologists to design psychological skill training.