What are athletes saying to themselves? Self-talk and motivation in youth tennis
Date
2016
Authors
Thibodeaux, Christopher Jordan
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
The current study explores what young tennis players actually say to themselves and what they report they say, the associations between observed and reported speech, and the relation of self-talk to tennis performance, personal sport motivation, the coach climate, and coach promotion of self-talk. Twenty-eight tennis players (ages 9 to 17 years) were recruited from a competitive camp. They were video and audio recorded in practice while wearing a wireless microphone, and private speech was reliably coded into positive, negative, instructional, and motivational categories. Participants were also live-coded during match play using the Self-Talk and Gestures Rating Scale (STAGRS). Subjects also reported their self-talk on the Self-Talk Use Questionnaire (STUQ), the Automatic Self-Talk Questionnaire for Sport (ASTQS), and gave post-match examples of the private speech they used. Players also reported their personal motivation for sport using the Achievement Goal Scale for Youth Sports (AGSYS), indicated their self-efficacy for tennis, and gave their perceptions of the coach motivational climate using the Motivational Climate Scale for Youth Sports (MCSYS), and their coach’s promotion of self-talk.
Description
Keywords
Developmental psychology, Psychology, Motivation, Private speech, Self-talk, Youth sports, Youth tennis