Marijuana (cannabis) is the most frequently used illicit drug of abuse in the United States and worldwide. Moreover, it is second only to alcohol as the most prevalent psychoactive substance seen in cases of driving under the influence of drugs.1,2 It is also by a wide margin, the drug most often detected in workplace drug-testing programs. The primary psychoactive substance in marijuana is del…
This article reports on a literature review of workplace interventions (i.e., creating healthy work environments and improving nurses’ quality of work life [QWL]) aimed at managing occupational stress and burnout for nurses. A literature search was conducted using the keywords nursing, nurses, stress, distress, stress management,burnout, and intervention. All the intervention studies included…
Nurses are loyal to their patients and coworkers. They often put the needs of others before their own and sometimes even before the needs of their families. This concern for others can cause conflicts that manifest as stress. Of the more than 2 million nurses in the United States, more than 62% work in hospitals. Hospitals are known to be both rewarding and stressful places to work. Like most w…
Perceptions of tobacco are a relatively unexplored issue in disadvantaged populations in India and France. The objectives of this study included the following: obtain qualitative information on representations of tobacco use and cessation within two vulnerable populations; identify cultural factors that influence tobacco use and cessation; and acquire information for the development of effectiv…
Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) represent an increasing proportion of morbidity and mortality throughout the world. Sustained advocacy, carried out by a skilled workforce, is an important strategy to realize the political will and implement the policy changes necessary to reduce the global burden of NCDs. Competencies for effective advocacy include a combination of scientific and technical as …
This study examined the relationship between the use of vocabulary learning strategies and self-efficacy in medical English learning, and whether after an initial sixweek course to master the basics of medical terminology, those with higher use of vocabulary learning strategies and those with a higher degree of self-efficacy would have significant score improvements in the medical English profi…
Repeated anaerobic conditions during athletic performance may cause general and local fatigue that result in postural balance deficit. Evidence suggests that improved postural balance during athletic training may decrease the risk for fallings and traumatic injuries among athletes. Twenty athletes (12 girls, 8 boys) and 20 controls (12 girls, 8 boys) ages 10–15 years participated in the curre…
There is debate as to whether or not the Ebbinghaus illusion is driven by high-level cognitive size contrast mechanisms as opposed to low-level biphasic contour interactions. In this study, we examine the variability in effects that are shared between this illusion and a different illusion that cannot be explained logically by a size contrast account. This comparison revealed that nearly one q…
This study compares two versions of progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) training (7 and 16 muscle groups) on oxygen consumption (VO2), heart rates, rating of perceived exertion and choice reaction time. Football (soccer) players (N¼26;M age¼13.4 yr., SD¼0.5) were randomly assigned to either 7 muscle groups PMR, 16 muscle groups PMR, or a control group. PMR training requires the participants …
Resilience is important in sport performers to withstand the pressure they experience. This study analyzed the relationship among resilient qualities and coping strategies in 235 Spanish athletes (126 males, 109 females; M age¼20.7 yr) who practiced different sports (79.1% team sports, 20.9% individual sports). They were evaluated at the beginning of the last competitive mesocycle and after an…
Aging is accompanied by declines in cognitive and sensorimotor functions. However,at present, the interrelation between attentional processes and dexterity in aging has not been thoroughly addressed. This study explored the relationship between executive function, working memory, and dexterity performance in 15 young and 15 healthy elderly, right-handed participants. A modified version of the P…
The transtheoretical model of behavior change (TTM) is often used to understand and predict health-related behavior. The objective of this study is to apply the TTM’s stages of change to examine patterns of attendance behavior at fitness clubs. A retrospective study was performed to study the later stages of change, using attendance data of members who cancelled their membership in 2012 in tw…
The maximal lactate steady state is the gold standard for evaluating aerobic capacity;however, it is time-consuming. The lactate minimum protocol is an easier alternative,but is not feasible and still expensive. This study investigated whether the rating of perceived exertion of 13 is an accurate predictor of lactate minimum and maximal lactate steady state intensities. Eleven physically activ…
In a recent study, Lago-Penas and Gomez-Lopez (2014) demonstrated that during elite English soccer matches, the percentages of ball possession, entries into the final one-third of the pitch, and shots on goal were lower for the teams with a 1 goal up game status compared to those with 1 goal down condition. In addition, clubs with higher budgets preferred to control the match by dictating the p…
This study measured the durations of Japanese obstruent geminates/singletons and their adjacent vowels (V1 and V2) embedded in words repeatedly spoken by four intermediate-level Taiwanese learners of Japanese. The results indicated that the four learners were more or less at a native-like level in terms of geminate lengthening, but not in terms of the V1/V2 duration ratio. These findings sugges…
Motor impairments such as lack of standing and/or independent ambulation are common among persons with multiple disabilities. These two studies assessed technology-aided programs for persons with those impairments. Specifically, Study I assessed a program to teach two non-ambulatory adults to hand reach a stimulation-linked object by standing up. Study II assessed a program to teach a child an…
A commonly stated rationale for examining the use of ratings of perceived exertion with youth is its potential value as an assessment of intensity in physical education settings. The purpose of this study was to examine the relation between ratings of perceived exertion and heart rate in a natural physical education setting. Sixth through eighth grade students performed cardiovascular and muscl…
Year-to-year changes in sprinting in youth tennis players were examined in a mixedlongitudinal study (256 male players, aged 10–15 years: 993 measurements). Height (h),body mass (BM), lower limb explosive strength (LLES), and a 5-m sprint were measured over five years. During that period, players were classified as elite or sub-elite. To account for the repeated measurements within the indivi…
Yoga has been demonstrated to modulate autonomic nervous system activity, decreasing anxiety and stress, and improving quality of life. This preliminary study sought to examine the use of yogic techniques on persons who stutter given the interaction between physiological arousal/anxiety and stuttering that current multifactorial models of stuttering propose. Four participants (M¼52 yr, SD�…
This study investigated the development of subcortical pitch processing, as reflected by the scalp-recorded frequency-following response, during early infancy. Thirteen Chinese infants who were born and raised in Mandarin-speaking households were recruited to partake in this study. Through a prospective-longitudinal study design,infants were tested twice: at 1–3 days after birth and at three …
This study used a driving simulator to investigate whether the presence of pedestrians and traffic engineering designs that reported to have reduction effects on overall traffic speed at intersections can facilitate drivers adopting lower impact speed behaviors at pedestrian crossings. Twenty-eight men (M age¼39.9 yr.,SD¼11.5) with drivers’ licenses participated. Nine studied measures were …
The markers of external training load (ETL), distance and intensity, do not take into account the athletes’ psychophysiological stress, i.e., internal training load (ITL). Thus, the aim of this study was to evaluate the relationship between ETL and ITL using the rating of perceived exertion (RPE) and session-RPE in swimmers. Seventeen young swimmers (10 male, 15.80.87 yr and 7 female, 15.1…
This is a response to commentary by Jime´nez-Pavon (2015) on the relationships of leptin levels with children’s physical activity. The present response suggests actigraphs are superior to questionnaires for measuring children’s physical activity. Cicchella,Stefanelli, Jurimae, Saar and Purge (2013) pointed out some interesting methodological issues related to the relationships of leptin a…
Corticospinal excitability in the hand muscles decreases during smooth pursuit eye movement. The present study tested a hypothesis that the decrease in corticospinal excitability in the hand muscles at rest during eye movement is not caused by visual feedback but caused by motor commands to the eye muscles. Healthy men (M age¼28.4 yr., SD¼5.2) moved their eyes to the right with visual occlusi…
Nilsson and Axelsson (2015) made an important contribution by linking recent scientific approaches from the field of empirical aesthetics with everyday demands of museum conservators of deciding which items to be preserved or not. The authors made an important effort in identifying the valuable candidates of variables — but focused on visual properties only and on quite high-expertise aspects…
This study examined the psychometric properties of the Turkish version of the Cerebral Palsy Quality of Life Questionnaire (CP QOL). A total of 149 primary caregivers completed the final version of the CP QOL–Primary Caregivers and the Children Health Questionnaire (CHQ) for children 4–12 years old (M age¼7.6 yr.,SD¼2.5); 58 children with CP ages 9 to 12 years completed the CP QOL–Child…
Recent studies have focused on the positive influence of regular physical activity on executive functioning in children. Coordinative skills (agility) and executive functions (updating, attention, inhibition and planning processes) were investigated in children before and after 6 months of a Football Exercise Program compared to a control group of sedentary peers. The participants were 44 child…
This study measured implicit and explicit attitudes toward major nursing safety violations using the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and self-reported questionnaires,respectively. Experiment 1 sampled nursing students (n¼71), and Experiment 2 sampled patient safety nurses (n¼38). Although reaction time to IAT stimuli of major nursing safety violations was quicker than of general nursing behav…
The aim of this study was to analyze the relationship between TV and computer use,study time, and physical activity, with regard to gender, school, and weekday/weekend. Adolescents (N¼1,609; M age¼14.5 yr., SD¼1.3) reported on physical activity,sedentary behavior, their parents’ employment, and environmental factors. The relationship between PA and screen media behaviors was negative on we…
Summary .— A variety of theoretical perspectives describe the crucial behavioral roles of motivation and emotion, but how these interact with perceptions of social contexts and behaviors is less well understood. This study examined whether autonomous motivation mediated the relationship between perceived autonomy support and behavioral engagement in physical education and whether this mediati…
Summary.—A light finger touch can stabilize posture despite it not providing enough force to create mechanical support. The underlying mechanism may be due to the finger touch providing information in the axis with the greatest instability. The most appropriate way to test this hypothesis is a dual-axis paradigm, i.e., to remove sway-related information from touch in either anterior-posterior…
Summary .— It has been shown recently that stroboscopic visual training can improve visual-perceptual abilities, such as central fi eld motion sensitivity and anticipatory timing. Such training should also improve a sports skill that relies on these perceptual abilities, namely ball catching. Thirty athletes (12 women, 18 men; M age = 22.5 yr., SD = 4.7) were assigned to one of two types of s…
Summary .— In his last novel, Finnegans Wake , James Joyce attempted to redirect readers’ search for meaning away from traditional paths by using many non-words (combinations, foreign words, neologisms, and onomatopoeic words). Words and non-words in the novel were analyzed in terms of the emotional meanings of their constituent sounds using the model developed by Whissell where motor resp…
Summary .— The Åstrand-Ryhming Submaximal Bicycle Test is an accurate and widely used test to estimate maximal oxygen consumption. This test requires a participant to maintain a workload over a 6-min. period. The issue facing many employing this protocol is the identifi cation of an appropriate workload for the cycling regimen. The present study is designed to identify a method for determin…
Summary .— The influence of educational status on perceptual-motor performance has not been investigated. The single- and dual-task performances of 15 Low educated adults (9 men, 6 women; M age = 24.1 yr.; 6–9 yr. of education) and 15 Higher educated adults (8 men, 7 women; M age = 24.7 yr.; 10–13 yr. of education) were compared. The perceptual task consisted of verbally classifying two …
Summary .— As it is adaptive to accurately detect and localize bodily threats, it has been proposed that the brain prioritizes somatosensory input at body locations where pain is expected. To test this proposition, the detection of tactile changes on a body location was investigated to assess whether detection was facilitated by threat of pain. Healthy participants ( N = 47) indicated whether…
Summary .— The study examined the eff ect of structural composition, position of occlusion, and education background on response time and accuracy rate of adult participants in recognition of occluded Chinese characters used in graphic design. Based on 18 Chinese characters selected from the top 4,000 most commonly used characters, a recognition experiment was conducted. Results indicated th…
Summary .— The relationship between the criterion for choosing and the selfchoice eff ects (greater recall in a self-choice compared to a forced-choice condition)on intentional memory was examined. Thirty-three female nursing school volunteers were administered 24 word pairs in a 2 × 2 design to assess the infl uence of motivation upon free recall. When word pairs were presented to particip…
Summary .— Sequential strategies of digitized tablet drawings by 6–7-yr.-old children ( N = 203) of average and below-average handwriting ability were analyzed. A Beery Visual Motor Integration (BVMI) and a Bender-Gestalt (BG) pattern, each composed of two tangential shapes, were predefi ned into area sectors for automatic analysis and adaptive mapping of the drawings. Girls more often beg…
Summary .— Perturbations in Delayed Auditory Feedback (DAF) and speech rate were examined as sources of disruptions in speech between men and women. Fluent adult men ( n = 16) and women ( n = 16) spoke at a normal and an imposed fast rate of speech with 0, 25, 50, 100, and 200 msec. DAF. The syllable rate signifi - cantly increased when participants were instructed to speak at a fast rate, a…
Summary .— This study explored the relationship between anxiety and scuba diving performance of young individuals ( N = 44; 16.9 yr., SD = 1.2) participating in an introductory scuba diving activity. The question was whether the well-known negative correlation between anxiety and scuba diving performance found for experienced and middle-aged scuba divers will be observed in young participant…
Summary .— This study investigated the relationship between suffi cient amounts of physical activity among Brazilian adolescents and the economic and social indicators of the cities where they live. Data from a large national survey including 109,104 boys and girls ages 13 to 15 yr. (47.8% boys, 52.2% girls) were analyzed. The economic and social indicators were the Human Development Index (…
Summary .— The objective of this study was to demonstrate the sequential process (i.e., social factors ➔ mediators ➔ motivation ➔ consequences) underlying the Hierarchical Model of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation at the contextual level in instruction using three teaching tools, modifi ed balls, a high net, and colored balls and cones in a college-level tennis class in South Korea. 1…
Summary.—Understanding the developmental levels of fundamental movement skills has a critical role in the improvement of motor competence in childhood. In this respect, the use of Microsoft Kinect to assess vertical jumping skill and to predict developmental levels in 9- to 12-yr.-old children was evaluated. 41 boys and girls repeated the countermovement jump test three times. Vertical jumpi…
Summary .— A study by Witchalls, et al . (2013 ) mentioned that the addition of focal vision to proprioception testing with walking produces greater proprioceptive acuity than peripheral vision alone (measured ankle proprioception in athletes with or without chronic ankle instability during a stepping task on the Active Movement Extent Discrimination Apparatus; AMEDA). According to this study…
Summary .— The associations between subjective ratings and objectively measured moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) were examined in normal,and overweight and obese, pubertal boys and compared with their parents' reports. In total, 224 boys ( M age = 12.2 yr.) completed the self-report questionnaire and wore an accelerometer for 7 consecutive days. Questionnaire-based indexes of ph…
Summary .— Adequate profi ciency at object control skills, which is infl uenced by biological and environmental constraints, underlies the development of more complex sport-specifi c skills. This study describes profi ciency at six object control skills and demographic correlates associated with each skill and each skill criteria in 9- to 10-year-old children who were randomly selected from 2…
Summary .— Girls are said to outperform boys in the human fi gure drawing, but some disagreement exists among studies regarding such sex diff erences, and the reasons for these sex diff erences are unclear. The study examined how sex, age,and graphic fl uency aff ect scores at the human fi gure drawing in large sample of children aged fi ve to 12 years. To that end, the Draw-a-Person Test was…
Summary .— The objective was to determine whether gait is symmetric in healthy children 6–7 years of age and to assess the eff ects of laterality and the anatomical zone of the foot. 46 children were subjected to gait symmetry analysis in which the plantar and lateral pressures associated with kicking a ball, static balance, and dynamic support were measured. There were no signifi cant diff…
Summary .— This study tested the hypotheses that loading the ankle with a 2.3 kg weight would modify deviation (unilateral loading) and distance (unilateral and bilateral loading) during three blind navigation tasks. Ankle loading increased the distance traveled while navigating toward a previously seen target at an 8 m distance and reduced the undetected fore-aft displacement while stepping …