JXH4003 – Part-A Research Design Assignment
A Systematic critique of ‘The Effect of Self-talk and Mental Imagery on Motor Performance in Adolescents’ by Seyed Abbas Afsanepurak, Abbas Bahram (2012).
This is a systematic critique of Afsanepurak & Bahram’s (2012) paper ‘The Effect of Self-talk and Mental Imagery on Motor Performance in Adolescents’. This critique is from a research design point of view. This study inspected the effects of different combinations of negative and positive self-talk and imagery in adolescent boys’ performance in darts. The 2010 CONSORT guidelines are used to systematically review the research design of this paper. The title of the research paper, ‘The Effect of Self-Talk and Mental Imagery on motor performance
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The research question presented here talks about the collective effects of mental imagery and self-talk on motor performance in adolescents. It brings practical value and great interest to groups involved in sports, particularly in competitive and elite levels as the athletes seek to improve their performance by using such techniques. The age group used in this study is the adolescent group, which makes up most of the intermediate level, hence providing much wider inferences on athletes competing at this level rather than just the elite level (Cuba, 1997). The originality and theoretical worth of this paper, however lack as various past researchers like Dagrou, Gauvin, & Halliwell (1992); Taylor & Shaw (2002); Janssen & Sheikh (1994) have studied the effects of these cognitive techniques previously. Therefore, while the research question intends to investigate the interacting effects, its conclusion would not add a good deal of significance to the present conceptual frameworks and what sports psychologists/scientists may already know. Further are the studies that tested similar darts task by Cumming, Nordin , Horton, & Reynolds (2006) and Nordin & Cumming (2005). Although their contradictory results might justify some