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I have now received all the reviewers’ comment with satisfaction of your reply and revisions from previous comments. You and your coauthors have my congratulations. Thank you for choosing PeerJ as a venue for publishing your research work and I look forward to receiving more of your work in the future.
Tsung-Min Hung, PhD., FNAK, FISSP
PeerJ editor
Research chair professor,
Department of Physical Education,
National Taiwan Normal University
# PeerJ Staff Note - this decision was reviewed and approved by Stephen Macknik, a PeerJ Section Editor covering this Section #
no comment
no comment
no comment
My concerns were addressed adequately.
No further comments.
No further comments.
No further comments.
The authors have refined the statistical results and interpreted them precisely, which will make this study increase its contribution to the effects of mindfulness and self-talk on motor performance.
I have now received two reviewers’ comment and both reviewers were generally satisfied with your reply and revisions from previous comments. However, a few minor issues remained to be addressed before I can accept your manuscript. Please take care of these issues and provide a point by point reply in addition to the revised manuscript.
Tsung-Min Hung, PhD., FNAK, FISSP
PeerJ editor
Research chair professor,
Department of Physical Education,
National Taiwan Normal University
No comment.
No comment.
No comment.
The quality of the manuscript had improved tremendously from the first version. Congratulation on the great effort!
Some minor points:
Line 47. page number is missing for the reference.
Line 63. It will be a good idea to briefly declare the aim of this study at the end of the firsts para.
Line 126. add 'tendency for" before ".. having an open"
Line 185. Since you listed jump before line tracing, this order should follow later (e.g. line 236, 255)
1) Clear, unambiguous, professional English language used throughout.
Overall the writing of this study is free of any grammatical or structural written errors. For the part of the abstract, the authors are suggested to revise the sentence “simple main effects indicated that participants performed better in both standing long jump and line tracking under instructional self-talk.” In this case, the results were based on the main effects of Self-Talk Type, instead of simple main effects. Please revise this sentence as “participants performed better in both standing long jump and line tracking under instructional self-talk than unrelated self-talk.”
2) Intro & background to show context.
The authors have rewritten the introduction which is clearer than the former version.
3) Literature well referenced & relevant.
Literature has been well-referenced and relevant. The format follows the standard of APA style.
4) Structure conforms to PeerJ standard, discipline norm, or improved for clarity.
The structure of the manuscript conforms to the standard of the PeerJ and the norm of relevant disciplines.
5) Figures are relevant, high quality, well-labelled & described.
Table 3 and Table 4 are suggested to be removed from the manuscript because the information has been presented in the text.
1) Original primary research within Scope of the journal.
This study is well-focused and properly builds on previous work. The purpose of this study falls within the scope of the journal, which is to examine the effects of mindfulness disposition and instructional self-talk on motor performance.
2) Research question well defined, relevant & meaningful. It is stated how research fills an identified knowledge gap.
The revision has clearly pointed out the existing knowledge gaps and how this study could fill these gaps.
3) Rigorous investigation performed to a high technical & ethical standard.
This study is well designed and also follows the ethical standard to claim the approval of the institutional research board while recruiting college students as the participants.
4) Methods described with sufficient detail & information to replicate.
The materials and methods described in the manuscript are sufficient for other researchers to replicate.
1) Negative/inconclusive results accepted.
The results of this study are recommended to revise because the interpretations of the statistical results were not completely accurate.
2) Data is robust, statistically sound, & controlled.
Line 304-315. For the section of “Interaction effects of mindfulness and self-talk in standing long jump,” the following statement is recommended. The 2 by 2 mixed design ANOVA showed no significant self-talk × mindfulness group interaction in standing long jump, F(1,47) = 0.001, p = .97. However, the analysis revealed a main effect of self-talk on standing long jump, F(1,47) = 6.22, p = .02, η2= .12, indicating that participants performed better under instructional self-talk than unrelated self-talk. Further, there was no main effect of mindfulness group for standing long jump, F(1,47) = 0.01, p = .92.
For the section of “Interaction effects of mindfulness and self-talk in line tracking,” please revise the paragraph as well. Furthermore, the degrees of freedom were incorrect (Line 310-322). For example (Line 318), under unrelated self-talk, high mindfulness performed better than low mindfulness in line tracking, F(1) = 7.05, p = .01, η2= 0.07, you should utilize an independent t-test to compare this simple main effect and report the t value and Cohen’s d. For the comparison of performance under instructional self-talk and unrelated self-talk for low mindfulness participants, you should utilize a paired t-test to compare this simple main effect and report the t value and Cohen’s d.
Line 332. Furthermore, “two main effects” indicated that participants performed better in standing long jump and line tracking under instructional self-talk, instead of “two simple main effects.”
Line 339-342. “The unique finding is that low mindfulness participants performed better both in standing long jump and line tracking under instructional self-talk. However, for high mindfulness participants, their performance did not differ in line tracking under instructional self-talk vs unrelated self-talk,” these expressions did not match the results of statistical analyses which only showed main effects of self-talk on standing long jump and line tracking.
3) Conclusion well stated, linked to original research question & limited to supporting results.
Although some revisions in the part of Discussion are needed, the conclusion is appropriately stated based on the results of this study and the findings of previous work. Also, the authors have raised their arguments, limitations, and recommendations according to the findings of this study.
Generally, the justification of research questions has been improved in the revision. The authors are suggested to refine the statistical results to precisely describe the findings of this study, which will make this study increase the contribution to the effects of mindfulness and self-talk on motor performance.
I now have received two reviewers' comments. Although both reviewers were positive about your revision based on previous comment, several issues require addition effort to address and thus I invite to revise your manuscript. Please revise or refute according to the reviewer’s comments and provide a point by point reply in addition to the revised manuscript.
Tsung-Min Hung, PhD., FNAK, FISSP
PeerJ editor
Research chair professor,
Department of Physical Education,
National Taiwan Normal University
The revised version is definitely much improved than the previous. The introduction section reads better now and covers pertinent points in a more logical fashion.
In terms of language use and readability, there are still some areas that need tidying up, particularly in the method section. It pays to revisit this section and let a colleague who is not familiar with the study judge whether the descriptions are immediately clear. For example, in "To apply unrelated self-talk for the line tracking test, we refer to Chang and colleagues’ (2014, p.141) method by asking participants to tell themselves “ the weather today, my clothes’ colors, and my pets’ names.”", is unclear whether the participants had to answer those questions or they just said those words. The "Experimental procedures" section is also unclear. Were they told to use the 'instruction contents', silently or aloud, just before execution of the task after they were given the contents? In the rebuttal it was mentioned "Yes, the participant read it aloud, then use it for practice silently.", but the same info is not relayed in the manuscript. These sort of processes need to be better articulated. Also what is the experimental design? Since you mentioned paired sample t-test in one of the results, I assume its a within-subject design. This information should be included explicitly. It is not sufficient to mention "counter balanced order" on line 274 and "each self-talk twice" on line 275. Lastly, where was the experiment held? Quiet room with no others around, or done in a group? How long did each session last? These details should be provided.
In reporting the results and discussion, refer to the numbered RQ/hypotheses directly. This will improve readability tremendously.
The research question portion is still not well-defined. Essentially, the title refers to "interaction", and thus the entire paper should just focus on the interaction of the mindfulness and self-talk instruction factors. The other questions (RQ/HYP1 and RQ/HYP2), and how its currently written, distracts the reader in reaching your main contributions. It is sufficient to frame the effects of self-talk, and effects of mindfulness as simple effects after addressing the interaction question. It can also be clearer if you separate DVs, the long jump and tracking tasks as two separate RQ/HYPs. In summary, go straight to (1) interaction of mindfulness and self-talk on long jump, and then (2) interaction of mindfulness and self-talk on tracking task. Each of these should be followed up discussions of simple main effects.
Line 199. Is the Chinese version of the scale used?
Line 270. To what extent does the participants know the purpose of the study. I imagine if you were telling them that you wanted to test whether their level of mindfulness has an impact on how they use the self-talk, this may directly impact on the way they behave later.
Line 274. "Then participants completed six trials of standing long jump and 4 trials of hand-eye coordination of fine line tracking test (i.e., each self-talk twice.) " How long is the wait between the tasks? Would the increased arousal following the jump affects the tracking task?
Are the participants receiving concurrent feedback during the tracking task?
Still some rooms for improvement and I withhold my assessment of the validity.
Overall, I think this study is worthy of getting published, provided the method used has no major weakness. In terms of presentation, the RQ/HYPs need to be further streamlined as mentioned above. Most importantly, the main focus should be on "why those with high and low mindfulness dispositions would respond to self-talk
messages (task related and unrelated) differently in affecting motor performance?" This needs to be at the core of the introduction.
I think you should focus/explain why those with high mindfulness might behave differently (say, ignore possible bad performance, refocus better) when they are supplemented with task-related self-talk. The reverse, those with poor mindfulness may also be affected by task-unrelated self-talk more. This can form the backbone of your rationale, and the discussion.
Currently, questions and rationale such the one raised on Line 157 addresses part of the questions. I suggest going for the main question regarding interaction so that it is more relevant in making a theoretical contribution overall.
Please ensure the writing is in good standard throughout. E.g. on line 254, we can see "can’t".
1) Clear, unambiguous, professional English language used throughout.
Overall the writing of this study is free of any grammatical or structural written errors. For the part of the abstract, although the authors have replied to the comments, the statistical methods and results are still not accurate, as well as the interpretation of the finding is suggested to be more precise.
2) Intro & background to show context.
In the part of the introduction, the authors are recommended to make sure which sentence or description is citation or quotation. When you use the quotation, you have to present the sentences by using an italic type and citing the page numbers. For the citation, you do not have to show up the page numbers.
Line 190-192. The hypothesis (c) seems redundant because it has been included in the hypothesis (b). Please think over this suggestion.
3) Literature well referenced & relevant.
Literature has been well-referenced and relevant. The format follows the standard of APA style.
4) Structure conforms to PeerJ standard, discipline norm, or improved for clarity.
The structure of the manuscript conforms to the standard of the PeerJ and the norm of relevant disciplines.
5) Figures are relevant, high quality, well-labelled & described.
Table 2 is not well-presented by following the APA format. All the information in the figures overlapped that in Table 2. The authors are suggested to remove the overlapping information.
1) Original primary research within Scope of the journal.
This study is well-focused and properly built on previous work. The purpose of this study falls within the scope of the journal, which is to examine the effects of mindfulness disposition and instructional self-talk on motor performance.
2) Research question well defined, relevant & meaningful. It is stated how research fills an identified knowledge gap.
The authors have clearly pointed out the existing knowledge gaps and described how this study could solve these questions based on the previous research.
3) Rigorous investigation performed to a high technical & ethical standard.
This study is well designed and also follows the ethical standard to claim the approval of the institutional research board while recruiting college students as the participants.
4) Methods described with sufficient detail & information to replicate.
Line 213. The authors need to report how to estimate the sample size of the formal experiment. Since the study was a mixed factorial design instead of a test-retest design, please re-estimate the sample size by using an accurate method and report this estimation in the text.
L280. The authors did not revise the statistical method in a more accurate way. The statistical methods still seem redundant. The first and second analyses utilized separate paired t-tests to compare the nature of self-talk conditions and the interactions of self-talk and mindfulness on standing long jump and line tracking task performance. Actually, these questions could be solved in the following 2 × 2 (self-talk × high vs. low mindfulness disposition) mixed design ANOVA. When you examine the main effect of self-talk on performance, the authors could figure out the differences of two self-talk conditions in gross-skill or fine-skill performance. Furthermore, when you check the simple main effects, you could find out the interactions. Therefore, the first and second analyses are suggested to be removed from the parts of statistical analyses and results. If you still have questions, please consult to an expert in statistics.
1) Negative/inconclusive results accepted.
In general, the results of this study are recommended to be revised because the interpretations of the statistical results were not completely accurate.
2) Data is robust, statistically sound, & controlled.
The figures presented in the part of the results overlapped Table 2. Furthermore, the authors are suggested to revise the results regarding those two separate two-way mixed ANOVAs. Please clearly report the main effects, interactions, and further comparisons.
3) Conclusion well stated, linked to original research question & limited to supporting results.
The discussion needs to be revised following the new results.
The authors are suggested to rewrite the parts of statistical analysis and results. Then, try to more precisely describe the findings of this study based on the new results, which will make this study increase the contribution to the effects of mindfulness and self-talk on motor performance.
Two reviewers with substantial expertise have examined your submission and provided critiques for consideration in the review process. The reviewers express interest in your submission on various accounts and offer encouragement for this line of inquiry. I agree with the positive sentiment expressed in the reviews. The investigation appears to have been well-conducted and manuscript was generally well-prepared for entry into the Peer J review process. Reservations are, nonetheless, evident in the reviewers' critiques. Their observations are presented with clarity so I'll not risk confusing matters by belaboring or reiterating their comments. While I might quibble with the occasional point, I note that I regard the reviewers' opinions as substantive and well-informed. I believe that all of the highlighted reservations require contemplation and appropriate attention in revising the document if it is to contribute appropriately to Peer J and the extant literature.
After reflecting upon my reading of the manuscript and the reviewers' observations, I have concluded that your submission is presently not suitable for publication in Peer J. Although I share the reviewers’ interest in your report, I also share their reservations. I have, however, decided to provide you with the opportunity to use their observations to good effect by inviting you to revise and resubmit the manuscript before I come to a final decision on its disposition at Peer J. If you decide to take advantage of this opportunity by resubmitting the manuscript, I will provide an unambiguous decision after evaluation of the revised report.
I ask that all reviewer observations be addressed in revising the manuscript. How and where the reviewers’ observations are addressed (or rebutted) should be explained on a point-by-point basis. Some matters will require little more than minor editing. Other matters are likely to require much more substantial contemplation and effort. I look forward to reading your revised submission and the accompanying line-by-line responses. I anticipate that both will make for interesting reading.
I note that I would reject your manuscript at this point if I was certain that the difficulties identified by the reviewers were impossible to overcome. Please understand, however, that this opportunity to revise and resubmit the manuscript does not guarantee that it will ultimately be accepted for publication. The revised manuscript and your line-by-line responses will be sent out for further reviewer input to ensure that my decision is appropriately informed.
Tsung-Min Hung, PhD., FNAK, FISSP
PeerJ editor
Research chair professor,
Department of Physical Education,
National Taiwan Normal University
Overall, the manuscript reads well, but a thorough proofread is still needed. In particular, the language used in the method section needs further work.
In the introduction section, the coverage on the mixed results regarding instructional self-talk is unnecessarily long, and distracts the reader away from the main point about the role of mindfulness. It can be summarised into a paragraph sufficiently by highlighting the results are mixed with a summary.
While the mention of attention is appropriate, there is after all a difference between attention and mindfulness. The bit about the self-regulation of attention in mindfulness is relevant but not expanded. A fuller deliberation as to why the tendency to self-regulate towards the present moment awareness would be associated with the better use of self-talk is needed after line 126. Some possible explanation could be less mind wandering, better thought suppression, and better awareness of the situation.
The paragraph starting on line 127 seems abrupt. If it is related to the rationale of research design, it should be clearly prefaced. The large vs fine muscle deliberations is fuzzy. It should be further clarified to justify the hypotheses. In any case, the use of unrelated distraction self-talk is not well-justified. It can in fact introduce other psychological influence to the experiment, such as leading the participant to perceive it as an unnaturally challenging task (nonsense task). I provide more details and advice in the General Comment section.
Figures 1a, 1b and 2 are missing.
Can we have a translation of the IRB/informed consent form in English?
The research is original and conforms to the aims and scope of the journal.
In terms of the research question, as previously alluded to, the rationale as to why the large vs fine muscle activity is tested is unclear. This is certainly an area that deserves clarification in order to fine tune the research question. The use of the unrelated distraction self-talk as the control, and its limitation also needs clarification.
The methods described does not have with sufficient detail and information to allow replication. The description of the way the self-talk message was given is unclear. Did the participant read it once aloud, and then use it for practice by silently saying it? If it is as described in the manuscript, there is no need for manipulation check as the participant said it aloud. Then again, saying it aloud does not mean that the strategy is used. So its not so straightforward. Further, to what extend is this ecologically valid? Do athletes frequently say it aloud when using the self-talk strategy?
Also, what was the lecture on self-talk about? Would knowing what self-talk is affect the result in any way? More details would be needed.
Overall, the method description is unclear.
The major flaw is in the use of the distractor self-talk. See general comments.
The results for the self-talk of manipulation check should include an explanation why this range of score is justified for ascertaining successful manipulation.
The display of results is incomplete. Only Figure 3 is shown. Figure 1a, 1b and 2 are missing. It is also not clear what they are from the text. Even in line 271, reference to Figure 1 is incorrect.
The point about generalising to older adult is unnecessary. By the same token, this result also does not generalise to adolescent. So the paragraph starting from line 339 can be removed.
Can we have a similar figure for the standing long jump as seen in Figure 3.
The results shown on Figure 3 is the main gist of this research. It suggest that those with low mindfulness cannot cope with unrelated self-talk. The author/s explained it in the discussion, which is suitably done. This is the most interesting part of the result in my opinion.
After reading this manuscript multiple times and making some suggestions, I am in the opinion that there is substantial justification needed for why the distracting self-talk condition is used. The results do not show that the instructional self-talk is useful as much as showing that unrelated self-talk is disruptive, and strong dispositional mindfulness can counteract this effect. I would be very careful about using the results to suggest that instructional self-talk is effective over the control. Here we are comparing the use of instructional self-talk with a distracting self-talk (which is not really realistic). So the hypothesis test on the “effects of self-talk on motor performance” is not really well set-up and tested.
I suggest that the author/s revise the manuscript substantially to focus just on the finding that mindfulness suppresses the ‘distractor’ effect arising from the current manipulation arrangement.
Some specific comments are provided.
Line 43. Use "Self-talk is one of the popularly used skill in PST", instead. Unless you have evidence to back it up.
Line 57. State briefly what the current study seeks to investigate at the end of para 1.
Line 60. Give a straightforward example of self-talk here.
Line 65. "Notably" starts in a new para.
Line 72. Add comma after "doing so".
Line 80. Is this an endurance task rather than a skill acquisition task that can be facilitated by instructional self-talk?
Line 81. Add "which" after studies.
Line 83. Add "too" after "results'.
Line 85. Group rather than groups.
Line 113. Add "that" after "explain".
Line 135. Add a hint to why it is important that both large and small muscle actions are investigated in this study.
Line 142. Delete “for”.
1) Clear, unambiguous, professional English language used throughout.
Overall the writing of this study is free of any grammatical or structural written errors. For the abstract, the description of statistical method is not accurate and the discussion is not clear enough to interpret the findings.
2) Intro & background to show context.
Line 75-103. The authors are recommended to concise the paragraphs which describe the findings of instructional self-talk on motor performance. It will be better to just mention the most important studies that have supported the effects of instructional self-talk on motor performance and those which have found inconsistent results. At the end of this paragraph, the most important idea is that the authors need to argue the possible variables which may result in the inconsistent findings.
Line 116. Please clarify whether mindfulness disposition is a kind of attention ability. Furthermore, it should be justified that attention is a kind of ability.
Line 136-138. The description of the purpose of the present study is needed to revise. It was to examine the moderating effect of mindfulness disposition on the relationship between instructional self-talk and motor performance, instead of the mediating effect of mindfulness disposition. In the part of hypotheses, the authors are recommended to mention how the interactions of mindfulness disposition and self-talk type would influence performance in fine and gross motor skills. So far, the authors did not describe the possible directions of the interactions.
3) Literature well referenced & relevant.
Literature has been well-referenced and relevant. The format follows the requirement of the PeerJ.
4) Structure conforms to PeerJ standard, discipline norm, or improved for clarity.
The structure of the manuscript conforms to the standard of the PeerJ and the norm of relevant disciplines.
5) Figures are relevant, high quality, well-labelled & described.
Table 2 is not well-presented by following the APA format. Some figures are disappeared from the manuscript.
1) Original primary research within Scope of the journal.
This study is well-focused and properly builds on previous work. The purpose of this study falls within the scope of the journal, which is to examine the effects of mindfulness disposition and instructional self-talk on motor performance.
2) Research question well defined, relevant & meaningful. It is stated how research fills an identified knowledge gap.
As mentioned above, the authors are suggested to clearly point out the existing knowledge gaps and then describe how this study can solve these questions based on the previous research.
3) Rigorous investigation performed to a high technical & ethical standard.
This study is well designed and also follows the ethical standard to claim the approval of the institutional research board while recruiting college students as the participants.
4) Methods described with sufficient detail & information to replicate.
Line 162. Please report how to estimate the sample size of the formal experiment. The final participants were 23 in the high mindfulness group and 26 in the low mindfulness group. Was the sample size big enough to estimate the experimental effect?
Line 230. The statistical methods seem redundant. The first analysis utilized two separate one-way repeated-measure ANOVA to compare the nature of self-talk conditions on standing long jump performance and line tracking task performance. Actually, these questions could be solved in the following 2 × 2 (self-talk × high vs. low mindfulness disposition) mixed design ANOVA. When you examine the main effect of self-talk on performance, the authors could figure out the differences of two self-talk conditions in gross-skill or fine-skill performance. Therefore, the first analysis was suggested to deleted from the parts of statistical analyses and results.
1) Negative/inconclusive results accepted.
In general, the results of this study are recommended to revise because the interpretations of the statistical results were not completely accurate.
2) Data is robust, statistically sound, & controlled.
The figures which are mentioned in the part of the results are not found in the end of the manuscript. The authors need to revise the manuscript. Furthermore, at the beginning of the results, please report the differences of two groups in the demographic data.
Line 265. Regarding the analysis of line tracking test, the mixed design ANOVA should report the main effects of self-talk and mindfulness disposition.
Line 280. In the part of the discussion, the authors mentioned that participants with low mindfulness performed poorer in-line tracking task than high mindfulness participants under unrelated self-talk condition. However, at the end of the results, the authors reported that participants of the low mindfulness group made more errors in the unrelated self-talk than instructional self-talk. The discussion did not match the results. The authors are suggested to revise the descriptions of the interactions between self-talk and mindfulness. Actually, the two interactions above could be both observed.
3) Conclusion well stated, linked to original research question & limited to supporting results.
Line 283. When using references to support the effects of instructional self-talk motor performance, the authors are suggested to use the latest and most important research. Too many references are not recommended.
Line 300. In your study, mindfulness was manipulated as a moderator instead of a mediator. Please try to clarify your description.
Line 305-325. In addition to discussing the difference of high and low mindfulness in line tracking under the unrelated self-talk condition, the authors should also discuss the difference of instructional and unrelated self-talk conditions in line tracking within the low mindfulness group. Furthermore, more citations are needed to support the findings.
Line 357. In the part of the application, given that there were no differences for the high mindfulness individuals between the utilization of instructional and unrelated self-talks, how the practitioners could apply this information to their PE classes?
Generally, the justification of research questions is needed to further improve to make the research questions clearer. The authors are also suggested to re-interpret the statistical results to precisely describe the findings of this study, which will make this study increase the contribution to the effects of mindfulness and self-talk on motor performance.
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