Students' use of self-talk in relation to anxiety and impulsiveness

Founded in Vygotsky s seminal work on language and thought, the contemporary explorations of self-directed speech or self-talk have offered substantial empirical support to its role as a self-regulatory tool. The aim of the present study was to reveal whether the use of self-talk is related to and may predict state and trait anxiety, and impulsiveness in university students. It was further explored whether there were gender differences in the use of self-talk and whether the rate of self-talk reported by South African and international students differed. In total, 102 students residing in South Africa who had a diverse ethnic background and different countries of origin participated in the study. They completed the State and Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), the Self-verbalization Questionnaire (SVQ) and the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS-II). The participants demonstrated an average level of impulsiveness and acceptable levels of state and trait anxiety. Students from South Africa and other African countries had a comparable rate of self-talk, but they reported a significantly higher use of self-talk compared to the findings of other studies conducted internationally (t = 5.16, df= 101, P