Over the last 20 years research investigating self-talk in the context of sport has expanded rapidly enhancing our understanding of the construct. In the present article, we provide a brief historical review of the sports-oriented self-talk literature. In so doing we identify landmark investigations and review conceptual, research, and measurement themes present within the literature. We review this empirically based literature, distinguishing between three time periods: (1) the early foundations of self-talk research, up to the end of the 1990s; (2) the developmental years of systematic self-talk research during the 2000s; and (3) the modern day maturation of self-talk research, post-2011.
Hardy is with the Institute for the Psychology of Elite Performance, Bangor University, Wales, United Kingdom. Comoutos and Hatzigeorgiadis are with the School of Physical Education and Sport Science, University of Thessaly, Trikala, Greece.