Abstract
Self-talk is a psychological skill that benefits motor performance by controlling and organizing performers' thoughts. While the behavioral effects of self-talk are clear, research on the mechanisms underpinning the effects of different modes of self-talk is sparse. To address this issue, we propose and test a psychophysiological model of the effects of self-talk on motor performance. Forty golf novices practiced a golf putting task while using either instructional or motivational self-talk preceding each putt. We measured performance (radial error), technique (club kinematics and muscle activity), cardiac activity (heart-rate and event-related heart-rate change), as well as electroencephalographic alpha power and connectivity in a randomized (group: instructional self-talk, motivational self-talk) experimental design. Instructional self-talk promoted superior technique and was associated with greater parietal alpha power and weaker connectivity between frontal and parietal electrodes and all other scalp sites, possibly indicative of increased top-down control of action. These findings provide initial evidence for an information-processing mechanism underlying the benefits of instructional self-talk. They also cast doubt on the validity of left-frontotemporal connectivity as a measure of verbal-analytic processing during motor tasks. Motivational self-talk led to increased heart-rate and reduced event-related heart rate variability, suggesting an effort-based mechanism to explain the benefits of motivational self-talk. Our study represents the most complete multi-measure investigation of self-talk to date. We hope that our psychophysiological model of self-talk will encourage researchers to move beyond the exclusive reliance on behavioral and self-report measures to discover the mechanisms underlying the benefits of self-talk for performance.
Highlights
Our stream of thoughts can be accompanied by covert verbalizations known as self-talk
We hope that our psychophysiological model of self-talk will encourage researchers to move beyond the exclusive reliance on behavioral and self-report measures to discover the mechanisms underlying the benefits of self-talk for performance
We present and test the first psychophysiological model of self-talk and motor skill execution
Summary
Our stream of thoughts can be accompanied by covert verbalizations known as self-talk. During the final moments of preparation for action, individuals deemed more likely to plan and control movements consciously (e.g., beginners; individuals scoring high in trait movement-related self-consciousness) showed comparatively lower left-temporal (e.g., T7) alpha power and stronger alpha connectivity between left-temporal (e.g., T7) and the frontal (e.g., Fz) channels than their less likely counterparts (Hatfield et al, 2013; Gallicchio, Cooke, & Ring, 2017, 2016; Zhu et al, 2011) Taken together, these results associated conscious motor processing with a relative increase in activity (release from inhibition) over the left-temporal region, and an increased communication between left-temporal and frontal regions of the cortex. They were instructed to rehearse an instructional or motivational self-talk cue (see Supplementary Material) immediately before executing the swing
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