When Interrogative Self-talk Improves Task Performance: The Role of Answers to Self-posed Questions

Nearly all the self-talk cues studied so far have been self-statements. However, the findings of Senay, Albarracin, and Noguchi suggest that interrogative self-talk produces better task performance than declarative one. Two of the experiments reported here were meant to replicate that study, but the expected differences were not confirmed. Experiment 3 showed that if a self-posed question about future behavior was answered positively, task performance was better than in groups exposed either to the self-statement I will do it' or to a negative answer following the question. However, these differences occurred only in those who self-reported the awareness of the impact of self-talk on their thought processes. This effect and the possible reasons why between-group differences were not found in Experiments 1 and 2 are discussed. An alternative explanation for the results of Experiment 3 is also proposed beside that stressing the impact of internal answer. Copyright (c) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.