Examination of Self Talk Ability of Elite Fencers

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to measure and evaluate self-talk ability. 100 athletes chosen randomly from 23 countries, who attended the Heracles Junior World Cup competition (29) held in Budapest, Hungary between the dates of 15-16/02/2014, junior and cadet fencing championship held in Plovdiv, Bulgaria (38) between the dates of 3-12/04/2014 which was included in the 2014 activity calendar of FIE (International Fencing Federation) and athletes among elite fencers (33) representing our country abroad attended in our research. In this performed study based on the scanning (survey) method; the Self-Talk Questionnaire (S-TQ) which was improved by Zervas, Stavrau and Psychountaki (2007), whose validity and reliability in Turkish were performed by Engür (2011), was used. In order to evaluate the data and find the estimated values, the SPSS 16.0 statistical package program was used. The data were summarised giving averages and standard deviations. Since the data showed a normal distribution, for the dual group comparisons, independent group t-test was used for the determination of the difference between independent parameters, the error level was regarded to be 0,05 in this study. Within the results of the survey, no statistically meaningful differences were observed. When the sub-dimensions of both motivational functions were evaluated in terms of age and experience time concerning self-talk abilities in the athletes attended in the survey. When self-talk ability was evaluated due to the gender parameter; while not seeing a statistically meaningful difference in the cognitive, functional sub-dimension among the athletes, a statistically meaningful difference was observed on the motivational, functional sub-dimension in favor of sportswoman. Furthermore, there was not a significant difference when comparing the self-talk ability of Turkish athletes and other countries' athletes who attended in the research in all sub-dimensions. Finally, it can be told that sportswomen attended in the research use self talk ability as a motivational tool in order to improve their performance and success more than sportsman.