Training one mental skill also improves the others
1 study · 45 archers measured
The summary today
The only measurement comes from forty-five archers at a Malaysian sports school, split into three groups for six weeks and eighteen sessions: imagery only, self-talk only, or both together. Each group also improves in the skill it did not train: those who did only self-talk rise in imagery ability from 1,722 to 2,639 on the scale used, and those who did only imagery rise in belief in their own self-talk from 20.0 to 23.7. It looks like transfer, but the figures do not add up well: the self-talk-only group improves in imagery more than the group that actually trained imagery (from 1,820 to 2,327), and somatic anxiety falls by more than half in all three groups. Without a control group there is no way to separate transfer between skills from the effect of filling in the same questionnaires twice, of six weeks of extra attention or of shared expectations; every measure is a self-assessment, competition scores do not differ between groups, and the journal has questionable editorial standards. Because of the venue, the registry reports the study but does not use it to decide the status, which remains not studied.
Also phrased as: "transfer between mental skills"; "imagery and self-talk"; "targeted mental training"; "one mental technique helps the others"
In practice
People say mental skills hang together, so that whoever learns to visualise the shot also ends up talking to themselves better, or the other way round, without having to train everything.
Evidence
-
2022
Context Archers Published later
Venue with questionable editorial standards: this result does not count towards the status. 45 archers at a Malaysian sports school (mean age between 14.6 and 15.6 across the three groups), 18 sessions over six weeks, three groups with no control: in imagery ability (SIAM) the self-talk-only group goes from 1,722.11 ± 66.81 to 2,638.67 ± 65.30 and the imagery-only group from 1,820.33 ± 69.14 to 2,326.67 ± 90.99; in belief in self-talk (BSQ) the imagery-only group goes from 20.00 ± 1.55 to 23.73 ± 1.62. The combined group gains most on both (from 1,621.33 to 3,405.33 and from 21.00 to 36.20).
Effects of Imagery Training and Self-Talk towards State Anxiety and Archery Performance Questionable venue · Mohammad Amir Hakim Mat Isar, Nelfianty Mohd Rasyid, Shaharudin Abdul Aziz
-
2022
Context Archers Published later
In the same study, the signs that call for caution: selection required a SIAM score between 150 and 400, while the values in the table lie between 1,621 and 3,405; the group that did not train imagery improves in it more than the group that did; somatic anxiety falls from about 27 to about 12 in all three groups, with very narrow standard deviations. Competition scores, at 70 metres, do not differ between groups.
Effects of Imagery Training and Self-Talk towards State Anxiety and Archery Performance Questionable venue · Mohammad Amir Hakim Mat Isar, Nelfianty Mohd Rasyid, Shaharudin Abdul Aziz
Status history
- 2022 Not studied In forty-five young archers at a Malaysian sports school, those who did only self-talk also improved in imagery ability (from 1,722 to 2,639 on the scale used), and those who did only imagery also improved in belief in their own self-talk (from 20.0 to 23.7). The self-talk-only group, however, improves in imagery more than the group that trained it. It is a before and after with no control, using self-assessments only, in a journal with questionable editorial standards: the registry reports it but does not use it to decide the status, which remains not studied.
Related
Related articles
- How archery is taught: what the studies on beginners sayWhat studies tell anyone teaching archery: how much beginners improve anyway, and what courses, starting distance, videos, goals and mental work add.
- Mental skills training in archery: what the measurements on archers showWhat has been measured on archers' mental training: score, confidence, anxiety, programme length, mock competitions and each of the tools in turn.
Research lines
Cite
Campagna, M. (2026). Training one mental skill also improves the others (Version 2). In Evidence Registry. Retrieved 16 October 2026, from https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/mind/mental-skills-transfer
@misc{campagna2026_trasferimentoabilitamentali,
author = {Campagna, Matteo},
title = {Training one mental skill also improves the others},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {Evidence Registry, matteocampagna.com},
url = {https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/mind/mental-skills-transfer},
note = {Version 2; accessed 2026-10-16}
}
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