The effects of instructional and motivational self-talk on self-efficacy and learning of dart throwing

The athletes use self-talk as one of the mental skills for different purposes. According to the importance of self-talk on performance, the purpose of the present study was to investigate the impact of instructional and motivational self-talk on self-efficacy and dart throwing skill learning. The Method of this study was semi-experimental. Participants were 45 male students of Shahid Beheshti University who participated in pretest of dart throwing and self-efficacy after one session of dart throwing training, and then they were randomly divided into three groups: instructional self-talk, motivational self-talk and control. They practiced physical training with their own group for six days. Afterwards, participants participated in acquisition and retention test of dart throwing and post-test of self-efficacy. T -test and frequent analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to analyze the data. The result of frequent analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that instructional self-talk group was better than motivational self-talk and control group in acquisition of dart throwing skill. There was no difference between motivational and instructional groups in the self-efficacy of participants, but both groups were better than the control group. Result of this study showed that instructional self-talk leads to better acquisition and using selftalk increases individuals self-efficacy and there were not any differences between the instructional and motivational self-talk in self-efficacy of the dart throwing skill.