The Effect of Reflective and Strategic Self-Talk on the Performance and Learning of Dart-Throwing Skills of Primary School Students

Introduction: A review of the research literature showed that no research has been done on the effectiveness of interventions based on reflective self-talk in children.
Objective: The present study aims to investigate how primary school students' performance and acquisition of dart-throwing abilities were impacted by reflective and strategic self-talk.
Methods: With their parent's permission, 48 students, ages 10.27±1.06 on average, willingly participated in the retention and were divided into three groups of sixteen at random: reflective, strategic, and control self-talk. They participated in the acquisition, retention, and transfer stages. During the acquisition phase, the reflective group received self-talk instructions, challenges in dart-throwing, and matching exercises between their self-talk and challenges during the throw. The strategic self-talk group utilized training words before throwing darts, and they were requested to employ self-talk based on the situations they encountered.
Results: The findings demonstrated that the strategic self-talk group outperformed the reflective one in the last efforts at the acquisition stage and retention test. Nonetheless, the reflective self-talk group outperformed the strategic one on the transfer test by a wide margin. Strategic self-talk appears to have improved functional performance throughout the acquisition and memorizing phases by influencing attention.
Conclusion: However, reflective self-talk proved beneficial during the transfer test because of the obstacles and difficulties associated with applying the throwing skill.