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 …
Summary .— Use of coloured lighting in interior spaces has become prevalent in recent years. Considerable importance is ascribed to coloured lighting in interior and lighting design. The eff ects of colour on the perception of interior spaces have been studied as surface colour; but here, the eff ects of three diff erent types of chromatic light were investigated. The lighting diff ered in co…
Summary .— The study investigated the eff ects of chunking and perceptual patterns that guide the drawings of Rey complex fi gure. Ten adult participants ( M age = 22.2 yr., SD = 4.1) reproduced a single stimulus in four drawing modes including delayed recall, tracing, copying, and immediate recall across 10 sessions producing a total of 400 trials. It was hypothesized that the eff ect of chu…
Summary .— This study examined how a physical activity course based on the Trans-Contextual Model aff ected the variables of perceived autonomy support, autonomous motivation, determinants of leisure-time physical activity behavior,basic psychological needs satisfaction, and leisure-time physical activity behaviors. The participants were 70 Turkish university students ( M age = 23.3 yr., SD =…
Summary .— Dominant (right) and nondominant (left) hand diff erences in motor performance variables were investigated during targeted rapid aiming unimanual and bimanual (to two separate targets) speed-accuracy tasks. The performance of the dominant and nondominant hands were compared during rapid targeted unimanual and bimanual reaching tasks (50 repetitions) in adult, neurologically intact…
Summary .— The goal of this study was to investigate the diff erences in physical fi tness in relation to urban or rural living environment and between two countries:Italy and Croatia. Over 14,000 students were tested during physical education (PE) lessons. Croatian students were taller and heavier than Italian students, with women achieving better results in fl exibility. Urban students were…
Summary .— Given that children with low movement skill competence engage in less physical activity, it is important to understand how children’s perceptions relate to actual movement competence. This study examined relationships between (i) children’s self-perception and objective assessments of their movement skills (object control and locomotor) and (ii) parents’ perceptions of the c…
Summary .— The purpose of the study was to investigate the eff ects of researcharticle writing motivation and use of self-regulatory writing strategies in explaining second language (L2) research-article abstract writing ability, alongside the L2 literacy eff ect. Four measures were administered: a L2 literacy test, a research abstract performance assessment, and inventories of writing motiv…
Summary .— Self-controlled feedback on a variety of tasks are well established as eff ective means of facilitating motor skill learning. This study assessed the eff ects of self-controlled feedback on the performance of a serial motor skill. The task was to learn the sequence of 18 movements that make up the Taekwondo Poomsae Taegeuk fi rst, which is the fi rst beginner's practice form learne…
Summary .— Regular aerobic exercise and milk consumption have been found to have positive eff ects on certain cognitive functions such as short-term memory and sustained attention. However, aggregated eff ects of combining these modalities have not been explored. This study examined the combined eff ects of milk supplementation and aerobic exercise on the short-term memory and sustained atte…
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…
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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…
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…