Self-Talk Theory, Research, and Applications: Some Personal Reflections Robert Weinberg Miami University I am honored to have the opportunity to comment on the eight articles that make up the first Special Issue of an international journal focusing on self-talk in sport. The introductory article does an excellent job of tracing some of the important historical devel- opments (theoretically, empirically, and practically) in the self-talk literature so I will not provide any historical perspective on the extant self-talk research. Rather, first I will comment on each article, noting what I perceive to be an important contribution to the self-talk literature (and sometimes the sport psychology litera- ture in general). Then, based on my academic and practical knowledge in the area of self-talk, I will offer some suggestions for future research from conceptual, empirical, and methodological perspectives. In addition, I also offer some practical suggestions that coaches, athletes, and personal trainers/exercise leaders could use when working with athletes and exercisers. Before getting into these research and practical suggestions, a brief review of some of the unique and interesting parts of some of the articles within the Special Issue will be discussed. Unique Aspects of the Self-Talk Studies The study by Abdoli, Hardy, Riyahi, and Farsi (2018), entitled “A Closer Look at How Self-Talk Influences Skilled Basketball Performance,” adds to the self-talk literature by focusing on highly skilled (professional) athletes as much of the previous research on self-talk has used more convenient samples, such as university students. Results revealed that skilled basketball players were able to especially use instructional self-talk (as opposed to motivational self-talk) to enhance their performance. This is contrary to what some researchers (Hardy, Begley, & Blanchfield, 2015; Zourbanos, Hatzigeorgiadis, Bardas, & Theodorakis, 2013) have suggested who have doubted that the benefit of instructional self-talk over motivational self-talk will hold for skilled performers, as con- sciously attending to the requirements of task execution can get in the way (i.e., overload the system) of automatic attentional proces- sing. In essence, it has been argued that highly skilled athletes do not need to think too much to perform as they can usually perform on “automatic pilot.” However, in the present investigation, it should be noted that instructional self-talk was short (e.g., follow- through, bend) so as not to disrupt the automaticity that is typical of highly skilled athletes. In addition, these instructional cues came from expert basketball coaches as well as empirically supported kinematic principles of basketball free throws, thus enhancing the effectiveness of these brief instructional cues. Van Dyke, VanRaalte, Mullin, and Brewer (2018) also studied elite athletes (gymnasts in this case) to provide needed research on this very skilled population. One of the important contributions of this study was to investigate the relationship of different types of self-talk (e.g., instructional, motivational, positive, negative) to consistency of performance over a competitive season. Results found positive self-talk to be the best predictor of success and thus, from a practical point of view, an autonomy-supportive coaching style was recommended because it is conducive to positive self- talk. Specifically, coaches can foster autonomy-supportive envir- onments by acknowledging negative feelings that sometimes occur when athletes have to perform difficult tasks, minimizing external forms of control (e.g., contingent rewards and punishment), pro- viding informational feedback, and including athletes in decision- making (Ryan & Deci, 2006). Finally, the authors chose to assess self-talk via self-talk questionnaires (i.e., self-talk questionnaire for sports; automatic self-talk questionnaire for sports) which are trait- like measures of self-talk. However, future research might consider more qualitative, interview-based self-talk assessments after the competitions, to get gymnasts’ thinking (self-talk) in a time- sensitive manner although care would be needed to limit competi- tion outcome bias. In a series of six studies, entitled “I Will Use Declarative Self- Talk . . . Or Will I? Replication, Extension, and Meta-analyses,” Van Raalte et al. (2018) compared self-posed interrogative ques- tions (e.g., “Will I?) to declarative (“I will) and control self- talk finding no significant differences between interrogative and declarative self-talk, although they both were better in terms of motivation and performance than control conditions. However, the really important part of these studies was the focus on replication. This is not particular to self-talk studies, but it does highlight replication as one of the essential aspects of the scientific method. Especially for graduate students just starting out, but also for more seasoned and experienced researchers, it is important that we do not forget the important role that replication makes to the scientific literature. Of course the focus is typically on new and innovative research that adds to the extant literature in a particular area. But we need to be confident when we teach our students or consult with athletes that our information is reliable and consistent. I like to refer to the goal-setting literature in the industrial/organizational area where there are over 500 studies testing different aspects of the goal-setting performance relationship (Locke & Latham, 2002). When I started to conduct research on goal-setting and sport per- formance in around 1983 there was only five empirical studies (at least that was all I could find at the time) but over 30 years later we are approaching 100 studies. Although research has increased on self-talk in recent years, as noted in the introduction, we still need a lot of replication to feel more confident on the effects of Weinberg is with Dept. of Kinesiology and Health, Phillips Hall, Miami University, Oxford, OH. Address author correspondence to Robert Weinberg at weinber@ miamioh.edu. 74 The Sport Psychologist, 2018, 32, 74-78 https://doi.org/10.1123/tsp.2017-0142 © 2018 Human Kinetics, Inc. EDITORIAL