Self‐talk is a psychological skill that benefits motor performance by controlling and organizing performers’ thoughts. While the behavioral effects of self‐talk are clear, research on the mechanisms underpinning the effects of different modes of self‐talk is sparse. To address this issue, we propose and test a psychophysiological model of the effects of self‐talk on motor performance. Forty golf novices practiced a golf putting task while using either instructional or motivational self‐talk preceding each putt. We measured performance (radial error), technique (club kinematics and muscle activity), cardiac activity (heart‐rate and event‐related heart‐rate change), as well as electroencephalographic alpha power and connectivity in a randomized (group: instructional self‐talk, motivational self‐talk) experimental design. Instructional self‐talk promoted superior technique and was associated with greater parietal alpha power and weaker connectivity between frontal and parietal electrodes and all other scalp sites, possibly indicative of increased top‐down control of action. These findings provide initial evidence for an information‐processing mechanism underlying the benefits of instructional self‐talk. They also cast doubt on the validity of left‐frontotemporal connectivity as a measure of verbal‐analytic processing during motor tasks. Motivational self‐talk led to increased heart‐rate and reduced event‐related heart rate variability, suggesting an effort‐based mechanism to explain the benefits of motivational self‐talk. Our study represents the most complete multi‐measure investigation of self‐talk to date. We hope that our psychophysiological model of self‐talk will encourage researchers to move beyond the exclusive reliance on behavioral and self‐report measures to discover the mechanisms underlying the benefits of self‐talk for performance.

中文翻译：

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心灵和身体：教学和动机自我对话的心理生理特征。

自我交谈是一种心理技能，可通过控制和组织表演者的思想来使运动表现受益。尽管自言自语的行为影响是显而易见的，但对支持不同自言自语模式影响的机制的研究却很少。为了解决这个问题，我们提出并测试了自我对话对运动表现的影响的心理生理模型。四十名高尔夫新手练习了一次高尔夫推杆任务，同时在每个推杆之前使用了指导性或动机性自我交谈。我们随机测量了性能（径向误差），技术（俱乐部运动学和肌肉活动），心脏活动（心率和与事件相关的心率变化）以及脑电图的α功率和连通性（组：指导性自我指导）。对话，动机性自我对话）实验设计。指导性自我交谈促进了高级技术的发展，并与顶顶α功率更大，额顶电极和顶极电极以及所有其他头皮部位之间的连通性较弱有关，这可能表明自上而下的动作控制增加。这些发现为信息处理机制提供了初步的证据，这些机制是教学自我对话的优势所在。他们还对左额颞颞连接是否可作为运动任务中口头分析处理的一种措施提出质疑。动机性自我谈话导致心率增加，而与事件相关的心率变异性降低，这表明基于工作量的机制可以解释动机性自我谈话的好处。我们的研究代表了迄今为止最完整的多方自我对话调查。