Summary .— This study examined the eff ects of audio-visual aids on anxiety,comprehension test scores, and retention in reading and listening to short stories in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms. Reading and listening tests, general and test anxiety, and retention were measured in English-major college students in an experimental group with audio-visual aids ( n = 83) and a con…
• How have sociologists theorized and researched mental health and illness? • In what ways do sociologists approach this topic differently to those from other disciplines? • How do we understand mental health problems in their social context? This bestselling book provides a clear overview of the major aspects of the sociology of mental health and illness, and helps students to devel…
Summary .— The goal of this study was to investigate diff erences in physical activity (PA) levels between early, average, and late maturing boys and the eff ect of chronological age, body mass index, and fat mass. PA was measured by accelerometry in 10–14-yr.-old boys ( N = 265) during seven consecutive days. Biological maturation groups (early, average, and late) were created. Average an…
Summary .— There have been ongoing debates as to whether the syllable frequency eff ect is dependent purely on phonological representation or is also aff ected by the orthographic representation of the syllable. In two experiments, the authors investigated the eff ect of the phonologic and orthographic frequencies on the syllable frequency eff ect by manipulating the fi rst syllable's phonolo…
Summary .— Previous research has indicated that exercise can lead to decreased depression symptoms. The relationship of depression with right frontal lobe activity and self-image (body, eating, and exercise) were investigated as reasons why depressive symptoms might lead to decreased exercise. 120 college students (79 women) completed design fl uency tasks followed by a set of questionnaires…
Summary .— The purpose of this study was to translate and culturally adapt the Sensory Profi le (SP), which is used to measure sensory processing abilities of children ages of 3–10 years, and test its reliability and validity for use with Turkish children with autism. A cross-cultural adaptation process was carried out by bilingual experts, following typical guidelines. The test-retest rel…
The transport properties of concrete measure the ability of fl uids to move through it. The equations for them were fi rst documented by the end of the nineteeth century (Fick 1855 ; Darcy, 1856 ) and applied to concrete by the middle of the twentieth century (Powers et al ., 1954 ). However, they remain diffi cult to measure, particularly if the common in situ tests are used. Interest in …
I suspect that the writing of almost any book is a labour of love, and this is no exception. What you have before you is in some ways a culmination of my interest, over several decades, in the interdisciplinary and systematic analysis of fisheries, and in seeking out approaches to improving the sustainability of fisheries. I have sought, in writing this, to produce something accessible to e…
The infrastructure of constructed facilities for the transportation and housing of people, goods, and services, which grew exponentially over the latter half of the last century is rapidly approaching a critical period, with increasing signs of deterioration and reduced functionality. Defi ciencies in the existing bridge inventory, for example, range from those related to wear, environment…
Summary .— This study examined whether parental attachment mediates the relationship between parental social support and self-esteem in Korean middle and high school athletes. 591 sports athletes attending middle and high schools that specialize in sport volunteered. Parental social support and parental attachment had a signifi cant positive eff ect on self-esteem; parental attachment had a g…
Summary .— This study evaluated whether the judogi colour (blue or white)could infl uence a combat outcome (victory or defeat) in 1,233 judo offi cial combats. Sex, age group, and level of competition were also considered in the analysis. Binomial probability tests showed a higher probability of an athlete's winning a combat wearing blue judogi for both sexes, levels of competition (regional …
An article published by Suminski, Wasserman, Mayfi eld, and Mc-Clain in the August 2013 issue of Perceptual & Motor Skills highlighted the infl uence of adult perceptions about environmental infl uence on physical activity. Interviews with both women and men between the ages of 18 and 91 years provided self-reported information about their own physical activities in their neighborhoods, as wel…
Summary .— Current accounts of the Ebbinghaus illusion emphasize either size contrast or contour interaction processes. To assess these alternatives, four variants of the Ebbinghaus fi gure were constructed using 1, 5, 9, or 13 small circles dispersed along the perimeter of larger contextual circles. 30 observers ranked the perceived size of the central circles and a single control circle. Th…
Summary .— This study identifi ed several physiological indices that can accurately monitor mental workload while participants performed multiple tasks with the strategy of maintaining stable performance and maximizing accuracy. Thirty male participants completed three 10-min. simulated multitasks: MATB (Multi- Attribute Task Battery) with three workload levels. Twenty-fi ve commonly used men…
Summary .— This study assessed whether video self-modeling improves running performance and infl uences the rate of perceived exertion and heart rate response. Twelve men ( M age = 26.8 yr., SD = 6; M body mass index = 22.1 kg.m –2 , SD = 1) performed a time to exhaustion running test at 100 percent maximal aerobic velocity while focusing on a video self-modeling loop to synchronize their …
Summary.—The goal was to study reaction time and maximal velocity of upper limbs of healthy young adults of both sexes during transition from a simple to a more involved task. Performance of dominant and non-dominant arms was recorded. Participants were 43 healthy, right-handed, untrained men (n = 22) and women (n = 21),18–22 years old. The simple task required a single jerk-like movement. …
Summary .— According to social cognitive theory, group cohesion and selfeffi cacy have been identifi ed as important environmental and individual elements in students’ physical activity. This study examined the correlations among group cohesion, exercise self-effi cacy, perceived interest, and physical activity among 143 le college students ( M age = 21.2 yr., SD = 4.2) enrolled in aerobic…
Summary.—This study examined choking in basketball by identifying the effects of game outcome and situational variables during the last 5 min. and overtimes of close games. The sample consisted of two 5 min. segments (last 5 min. of the game, n = 147, of which 97 did not go into overtime; 5 min. of overtime, n = 50) drawn from 147 games from the Spanish Professional Basketball League (2007 to…
Summary .— This cross-sectional study examined fundamental movement skill competency among deprived preschool children in Northwest England and explored sex diff erences. A total of 168 preschool children (ages 3–5 yr.) were included in the study. Twelve skills were assessed using the Children's Activity and Movement in Preschool Motor Skills Protocol and video analysis. Sex diff erences we…
Summary .— The present study examined human-computer interactions in which the operator has to detect errors made by software designed to automatically recognize technical documents. The goal was to assess the eff ect of user-initiated interruptions of the recognition process to correct these errors. Participants were asked to check the interpretations, either with or without the possibility …
Settlement calculation is one of the three major issues in foundation engineering and it has not yet been resolved completely. Especially settlement calculation of super high-rise buildings still remains the most difficult problem for engineers. Due to lack of practical settlement data, there is few systematic research result and rarer monograph to investigate this special problem. This bo…
Stock identification involves delineation of population structure of fishery resourcesda central theme in fisheries science and management. Developments in molecular biology and chemistry and advances in image analysis and tagging technologies have prompted revolutionary changes in many stock identification approaches. Stock identification is developing as an increasingly interdisciplinary fiel…
The provision of earthquake resistant structures and facilities is one ofthe main concerns of Civil and Earthquake Engineering Profession. As such, the main objective of seismic instrumentation program for civil engineering structural systems is to improve our understanding of the behavior and potential for damage of structures under the dynamic loads of earthquakes. As a result of this und…
In the present decade, the world has witnessed many great earthquakes like Bhujj in India in 2001, Iran in 2003, the Asian Tsunami in Indonesia in 2004 and Pakistan in 2005 resulting in the death of thousands of people and significant property damage. Housing and safety are basic human needs. Structures adequately designed for usual loads need not necessarily be safe for earthquake forces.…
1 In Benin cashew plantations, yields and nut quality are lost mainly as a result of insect pests. In the present study, we investigated the effectiveness of the African weaver ant Oecophylla longinoda as a biocontrol agent against Beninese cashew pests. 2 In a 2-year study, nut yield and quality were compared among: (i) trees with weaver ants O. longinoda; (ii) trees where weaver ants we…
Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) is a promising crop for food security in dry areas. Studies have been conducted to define nitrogen (N) fertilization levels and to understand the responses of quinoa to drought, but little is known about the response of this crop to N fertilization under drought stress. The aim of this study was to investigate whether N fertilization could improve quinoa yield…
Despite the importance of mucilage for soil–plant relations, little is known about the effect of soil drying on mucilage exudation. We introduce a method to collect mucilage from maize growing in wet and dry soils. Mucilage was collected from brace roots. The amount of mucilage exuded did not change with soil water content and transpiration rate. Mucilage exuded in dry soils had a higher …
Summary .— This study assessed the concurrent and construct validity of the Borg 6–20 Scale and WHEEL Scale during arm ergometry exercise stress testing in ( n = 24) adolescents and adults with spina bifi da. Signifi cant, moderate, positive correlations were observed between power output and relative heart rate and power output to relative VO 2 peak. Further, a moderate, signifi cant corre…
Summary .— Sensory information from the environment is used for body orientation and maintaining posture for eff ective movement, and the eff ects of specifi c senses on orientation and posture can be tested by removing input. In the present study, fi eld dependence was used to evaluate the importance of vision in the perception of verticality when an upside-down posture was adopted under wat…
Summary .— Visual fi xation patterns were analyzed to gain insight into developmental changes in attention allocation in a cross-modal task. Two patterns that have been associated with increased task diffi culty, gaze aversion and fi xation duration,were recorded using an eye-tracker. In this exploratory study, 37 elementary age children ( M age 7–10 yr.) and 23 undergraduates engaged in vi…
Summary .— The motor skill required to decrease the variability in muscle force steadiness can be challenging. The purposes of this study were to determine whether muscle force steadiness improved following repeated trials and whether the number of trials varied for healthy younger adults, healthy older adults, and older adults who have fallen to obtain stable muscle force steadiness measure…
Summary .— This study investigated the postural response of kayakers and rowers to imposed optic fl ow. The athletes, with experience in unstable water environments,should have a specifi c postural response to optic fl ow. 12 male participants with kayaking and rowing experience and 12 with no specifi c sports experience were asked to stand still with and without room motion. This study varie…
Summary .— Currently, almost all online materials use hyperlinks to provide users access to background, supplemental, or alternative information presented in context, greatly increasing the potential integration of information. However, a major problem is that people do not navigate hyperlinks eff ectively when the links become more topologically complex. Thus, identifi cation of the variable…
Summary .— The goal was to identify the advantages and disadvantages of using intentional guidance to teach to discriminate between good and bad circumstances to shoot in basketball. A simulated shot-adequacy learning task was developed,in which participants were asked to decide, in each trial, whether the player in possession of the ball should shoot or not. After each decision, they receive…
Summary .— Asthma is a chronic lung disease characterized by airway hyper-reactivity,infl ammation, and obstruction. Asthma is also a leading cause of school absenteeism,and thus of concern to physical educators and health professionals. The purpose of this study was to assess aerobic performance by children with and without asthma. All participants were tested on the Progressive Aerobic Car…
Summary .— The purpose of this study was to examine the predictors and trends of gross motor skills in children from low-income families. The participants were 1,460 children ( M age = 8.39 yr., SD = 1.83; K–6th grade) recruited from three Title I schools. The Test of Gross Motor Development–2nd Edition (TGMD–2) assessed motor skills, FITNESSGRAM assessed health-related fi tness, and pe…
Summary .— When navigating, people tend to overestimate distances when routes contain more turns, termed the route-angularity eff ect . Three experiments examined the source and generality of this eff ect. The fi rst two experiments examined whether route-angularity eff ects occur while viewing maps and might be related to sex diff erences or sense of direction. The third experiment tested wh…
Summary .— Anticipation is informed by experience. Having focused on action eff ects in the past will lead to diff erences when the focus is now on the eff ector. Boules-type throwing movements were presented as point-light displays of shoulder and arm-markers. Activation in motor-related areas measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging was compared between two tasks: Task A anticipa…
Summary .— Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy, the present study investigated how listening to diff erently valenced music is associated with changes in hemoglobin concentrations in the prefrontal cortex area, indicating changes in neural activity. Thirty healthy people (15 men; M age = 24.8 yr., SD = 2.4; 15 women; M age = 25.2 yr., SD = 3.1) participated. Prefrontal cortex activati…
Summary .— Markey, Chin, Vanepps, and Loewenstein (2014 ) demonstrated six methods for the induction of boredom. However, a clear and testable defi nition of boredom should be established prior to experimental manipulation of the construct. Defi ning boredom from a functional emotion perspective is one approach that aff ords a defi nition separable from the outcomes associated with boredom an…
Summary .— Listening to music during strength workouts has become a very common practice. The goal of this study was to assess the eff ect of listening to self-selected music on strength performances. Thirty-one resistance-trained men ( M age = 24.7 yr., SD = 5.9; M height = 178.7 cm, SD = 4.7; M body mass = 83.54 kg,SD = 12.0) were randomly assigned to either a Music group ( n = 19) or to a…
Summary .— Evidence suggests that task-based training approaches can improve the performance of children with handwriting diffi culties. The present case study tests the effi cacy of the Handwriting Task Program (HTP). Three male children (9–10 yr. old) with poor handwriting skills and diff erent developmental disorders participated in the HTP, twice per week, for 13 wk. Handwriting legibi…
We consider a general auction market model with divisible commodities and price functions of participants and show that it can be suitable for proper description of complex systems with active elements. Using its equivalent variational inequality reformulation, we obtain a general existence result under mild additional conditions on price functions.We show that the basic network flow equilibri…
Summary .— This study provided validity evidence for the Godin-Shephard Leisure-Time Physical Activity Questionnaire (GSLTPAQ) to classify respondents into active and insuffi ciently active categories. Members of a fi tness center [45 women and 55 men; mean ( SD ) age = 45.5 (10.6) yr.] completed the questionnaire. Using only moderate and strenuous scores, those with a leisure score index ≥…
Summary .— The aim of this study was to investigate the eff ect of proprioception on working memory. It was also of interest whether an acute and highly intensive period of exercise would yield working memory gains. The training group completed a series of proprioceptively demanding exercises. There were also control classroom and yoga groups. Working memory was measured using a backward dig…
Summary .— This study assessed the relative age eff ect (RAE) in judo athletes who participated in the Olympic Games from 1964 to 2012. The names and birthdates of the Olympic judo athletes were collected from open-access websites. Data from male ( n = 1,762) and female ( n = 665) competitors were analyzed separately. Chi-squared tests were performed to investigate REA in medalists, and by w…
Background: Osgood-Schlatter disease (OSD) is a traction apophysitis of the tibial tuberosity. Ultrasonography (US) is able to detect pathologic changes, such as cartilage swelling and fragmentation of the tibial tubercle ossification center. Purpose: To compare the US stages of tibial tuberosity development and the physical features and prevalence of OSD in this patient cohort. Study Design:…
Background: Several previous investigations have determined potential risk factors for stress fractures in athletes and military personnel. Purpose: To determine factors associated with the development of stress fractures in female athletes. Study Design: Case-control study; Level of evidence, 3. Methods: A total of 88 female athletes (cross-country, n ¼ 29; soccer, n ¼ 15; swimming, n ¼ …
Background: There are limited data on injuries sustained during men’s lacrosse. As the sport gains popularity, practitioners will be more likely to treat lacrosse players. Purpose: To analyze data from the 2010 World Lacrosse Championships. Study Design: Descriptive epidemiology study. Methods: This was a prospective observational study of injuries reported during the 2010 World Lacrosse C…
Background: Superficial skin injuries are considered minor, and their incidence is probably underestimated. Insight into the incidence and mechanism of acute skin injury can be helpful in developing suitable preventive measures and safer playing surfaces for soccer and other field sports. Purpose: To gain insight into the incidence and severity of skin injuries related to soccer and to describ…