When should you say “I can do it”?

Have you ever told to yourself “I can do it!” when performing a complex task to isolate from the external noise and focus your attention on the task? Self-talk is one of the most commonly employed mental skills in professional sports to keep the attention on the game and avoid being affected by crowd noise. This practice tries to improve our attentional control, the ability to choose what to pay attention to and what to ignore.

In this study, researchers from the universities of Shanghai and Beijing investigated how attentional control is influenced by noise distraction and self-talk. They measured differences in the performance of basketball players under noise and quiet conditions using the anti-saccade eye tracking paradigm, a well-established inhibitory attentional task. A Tobii Pro Spectrum running at 1200Hz was used to monitor eye movements and pupil diameter. Eye tracking data were used to classify correct and incorrect trials, and measure the anti-saccade latency, or how fast participants could make a saccade toward the correct side of the screen. Pupil data were used to measure the cognitive load in each condition.

There were three groups of participants:

The first group was told to use motivational self-talk, with sentences such as “I can do it”, before each trial. The second group was told to use instructional self-talk, with sentences such as “Look at the opposite” before each trial. In addition, a third control group was not told to use any self-talk strategy.

Results show that all groups had a higher error rate and a larger pupil diameter in the noise distraction condition, suggesting that noise distraction increases cognitive load and negatively influences attentional control. Motivational self-talk increased the error rate, and instructional self-talk decreased the error rate only in the quiet condition. Authors conclude that improper use of self-talk strategies in competition scenarios may diminish attentional control and ultimately impact athletic performance, regardless of noise distraction.

Cited publication

Yang, L., Wang, Y. (2023).  The effect of motivational and instructional self-talk on attentional control under noise distraction. PLOS ONE. 18(9): e0292321.