This study examined the effectiveness of two different types of self-talk o
n the performance of a basketball-shooting: task. 60 physical education and
spurts sciences students were organized into one control and two treatment
groups which used self-talk. During the experiment, the control group perf
ormed with the general instructions, whereas the self-talk groups used the
cue-words "relax" and "fast," respectively. Analysis showed that only the p
articipants of the self-talk group who used the word "relax" improved their
performance significantly as compared to the other two groups. It appears
that self-talk can positively affect performance if its content is appropri
ate for the task performed.