What is it about?
Most sport psychology research measures inner experience well after performance, relying on self-report measures. This study sampled the inner experience including self-talk during golf performance using Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES), a method that collects high fidelity samples with high reliability, one that has been validated with fMRI data.
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Why is it important?
The majority of the research in sport psychology is founded on studies relying on retrospective self-report and questionnaires despite the numerous drawbacks to these methods. A substantial body of research concludes that retrospective observations are unreliable, particularly when they rely on participants' ability to notice and recall inner events. DES participants use a random beeper that cues them to note characteristics of inner experience at the moment of the beep, and researchers interview participants objectively within 24 hours in video-recorded sessions. This study showed the feasibility of directly sampling inner experience using DES during sport performance.
Perspectives
This study showed the feasibility of using DES to explore athletes' inner experiences. Self-talk was frequent but not nearly as pervasive as some researchers assume during golf performance. We also found that most self-talk was inner speaking as opposed to speaking aloud, and most self-talk was automatic as opposed to effortful.
Yani Dickens
University of Nevada, Reno
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: On Investigating Self-Talk: A Descriptive Experience Sampling Study of Inner Experience during Golf Performance, The Sport Psychologist, January 2017, Human Kinetics,
DOI: 10.1123/tsp.2016-0073.
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