Based on the premise that what people think influences their actions, self-talk strategies have been developed to direct and facilitate human performance. In this article, we present a meta-analytic review of the effects of self-talk interventions on task performance in sport and possible factors that may moderate the effectiveness of self-talk. A total of 32 studies yielding 62 effect sizes were included in the final meta-analytic pool. The analysis revealed a positive moderate effect size (ES = .48). The moderator analyses showed that self-talk interventions were more effective for tasks involving relatively fine, compared with relatively gross, motor demands, and for novel, compared with well-learned, tasks. Instructional self-talk was more effective for fine tasks than was motivational self-talk; moreover, instructional self-talk was more effective for fine tasks rather than gross tasks. Finally, interventions including self-talk training were more effective than those not including self-talk training. The results of this study establish the effectiveness of self-talk in sport, encourage the use of self-talk as a strategy to facilitate learning and enhance performance, and provide new research directions.

Adolescents’ daily life has dramatically changed during the COVID-19 era due to the social restrictions that have been imposed, including closures of schools, leisure centers and sport facilities. The purpose of this study was to examine levels of well-being and mood and their relations with physical (in)activity and eating behaviors in adolescents during a lockdown period in Greece. A total of 950 adolescents (Mean Age = 14.41 years ± 1.63) participated in a web-based survey while education was conducted online and organized sport activities were interrupted. Participants showed poor well-being, insufficient physical activity levels and moderate scores of healthy eating behavior. Hierarchical regression analysis showed that, after controlling for the effect of gender and body mass index, increased physical activity and healthier eating behavior predicted better well-being (b = 0.24, p < 0.01 and b = 0.19, p < 0.01, respectively), whereas sedentariness predicted worse well-being (b = −0.16, p < 0.01). Furthermore, it was revealed that days of physical activity per week was a stronger predictor of well-being than minutes of physical activity per week, and that both in-house and out-of-house physical activity were beneficial. Considering that well-being in our study was below the threshold recommended by the World Health Organization as indicative of possible depressive symptoms, measures to increase physical activity, decrease sedentariness and improve eating behavior should become a priority for communities and policy makers.

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Background Therapeutic virtual reality (VR) has emerged as an effective treatment modality for cognitive and physical training in people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). However, to replace existing nonpharmaceutical treatment training protocols, VR platforms need significant improvement if they are to appeal to older people with symptoms of cognitive decline and meet their specific needs. Objective This study aims to design and test the acceptability, usability, and tolerability of an immersive VR platform that allows older people with MCI symptoms to simultaneously practice physical and cognitive skills on a dual task. Methods On the basis of interviews with 20 older people with MCI symptoms (15 females; mean age 76.25, SD 5.03 years) and inputs from their health care providers (formative study VR1), an interdisciplinary group of experts developed a VR system called VRADA (VR Exercise App for Dementia and Alzheimer’s Patients). Using an identical training protocol, the VRADA system was first tested with a group of 30 university students (16 females; mean age 20.86, SD 1.17 years) and then with 27 older people (19 females; mean age 73.22, SD 9.26 years) who had been diagnosed with MCI (feasibility studies VR2a and VR2b). Those in the latter group attended two Hellenic Association Day Care Centers for Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders. Participants in both groups were asked to perform a dual task training protocol that combined physical and cognitive exercises in two different training conditions. In condition A, participants performed a cycling task in a lab environment while being asked by the researcher to perform oral math calculations (single-digit additions and subtractions). In condition B, participants performed a cycling task in the virtual environment while performing calculations that appeared within the VR app. Participants in both groups were assessed in the same way; this included questionnaires and semistructured interviews immediately after the experiment to capture perceptions of acceptability, usability, and tolerability, and to determine which of the two training conditions each participant preferred. Results Participants in both groups showed a significant preference for the VR condition (students: mean 0.66, SD 0.41, t29=8.74, P<.001; patients with MCI: mean 0.72, SD 0.51, t26=7.36, P<.001), as well as high acceptance scores for intended future use, attitude toward VR training, and enjoyment. System usability scale scores (82.66 for the students and 77.96 for the older group) were well above the acceptability threshold (75/100). The perceived adverse effects were minimal, indicating a satisfactory tolerability. Conclusions The findings suggest that VRADA is an acceptable, usable, and tolerable system for physical and cognitive training of older people with MCI and university students. Randomized controlled trial studies are needed to assess the efficacy of VRADA as a tool to promote physical and cognitive health in patients with MCI.

This study explored the effectiveness of self-talk strategies on task performance under conditions of external distraction in laboratory and field experiments. In the laboratory experiment, 28 sport science students (Mage 21.48±1.58 years) were tested on a computer game requiring attention and fine execution following a baseline assessment and a short self-talk training. In the field experiment, 28 female basketball players (Mage 20.96±4.51 years) were tested on free-throwing, following a baseline assessment and a six-week intervention. In both settings the final assessment took place under conditions of external distraction (noncontinuous, sudden, loud noise). Analyses of covariance showed that participants of the self-talk group performed better than participants of the control group. Findings suggest that self-talk can counter the effects of distraction on performance, and indicate that the attentional effects of self-talk is a viable mechanism to explain the facilitating effects of self-talk on performance.