Effect of the pronunciation of an action verb in different languages and dialects on the performance of a complex motor action

Abstract

The object of the present research was to study the effect of the pronunciation of an action verb (jump at the second person of the imperative tense) upon the height of a squat vertical jump (SVJ) in a population of Algerian sportspersons, males (M) and females (F), experts in two domains, basketball (B) and volleyball (V), and in a naïf group. The results show that, in MV players (n=25), the action verb improves the performance of SVJ (by 1.7-2.5 cm) when pronounced in a maternal Arab dialect (soté, enteg, djelleb, in Kabyl and soté, negueze for high plateaus or southern subjects), in classical Arab (ikfaze), in English (jump) and in French (saute). A not significant improvement of the SVJ height (an increase of 0.5-0.7 cm) was observed with the same stimuli in FV (n=33). Among MB players (n=28) the performance was not significantly ameliorated (0.5-0.9 cm) after pronunciation of the action verb in English, French and Arabic dialect while FB athletes (n=30) improved significantly (0.7-1.0 cm), except in classic Arab (still improving by 0.5 cm). Naïf Sport students (32 males and 26 females) showed no statistically significant improvement (yet increasing the height by 0.5-0.7 cm, for both). The pronunciation of saute increased the performance in females. In similar experiments performed in Lyon, naïf male Sport students ameliorated SVJ by 2.0 cm (n=96) and females by 1.1 cm (N=45). The results show that the action verb pronunciation may stimulate a complex motor act performance in sportspersons, but with differences specifically related to the disciplines and between the genders without a clear-cut effect of the maternal language.