Studying the effects of self-talk on thought content with male adult tennis players

The current study examined the effects of self-talk on thought content during a tennis forehand crosscourt exercise. 16 adult tennis players (M age = 37.3 yr., SD = 8.31) were randomly assigned to either an experimental or a control group. After completing three baseline assessments, the players of the intervention group developed and implemented self-determined instructional cue words throughout three intervention trials. The participants' thought content was divided into three categories, and repeated-measures analyses of variance indicated a significant group by time interaction for execution-related thoughts and outcome-related thoughts, but not for circumstance-related thoughts. Follow-up comparisons showed that the experimental group players' execution-related thoughts increased and outcome-related thoughts decreased significantly, whereas thought content did not change significantly in the control group. The results of this study provided evidence for the effects of self-talk on players' thought content and supported the idea that self-talk could help athletes to focus on task relevant information.     

Written Responses in a Musical Situation as a Function of the Stability of Emotional Behavior

The present study investigated the degree to which learning sets developed during formation of 20 successive concepts. Forty S s were evenly distributed among eight experimental conditions. Conditions compared were rule with attribute identification, conjunctive with disjunctive concepts, and random with ordered arrays of figures. Results showed that learning sets formed with rule identification for both conjunctive and disjunctive concepts, but not with attribute identification. Concepts were easier to learn when using systematic compared to random arrays of figures (of questionable significance), when forming conjunctive rather than disjunctive concepts (not significant), and when using rule identification instead of attribute identification. Procedural differences among studies in this area appear to be major contributors to differences among studies in the results found.     

Symmetry, Compact Closure and Dagger Compactness for Categories of Convex Operational Models

In the categorical approach to the foundations of quantum theory, one begins with a symmetric monoidal category, the objects of which represent physical systems, and the morphisms of which represent physical processes. Usually, this category is taken to be at least compact closed, and more often, dagger compact, enforcing a certain self-duality, whereby preparation processes (roughly, states) are interconvertible with processes of registration (roughly, measurement outcomes). This is in contrast to the more concrete “operational” approach, in which the states and measurement outcomes associated with a physical system are represented in terms of what we here call a convex operational model: a certain dual pair of ordered linear spaces–generally, not isomorphic to one another. On the other hand, state spaces for which there is such an isomorphism, which we term weakly self-dual, play an important role in reconstructions of various quantum-information theoretic protocols, including teleportation and ensemble steering. In this paper, we characterize compact closure of symmetric monoidal categories of convex operational models in two ways: as a statement about the existence of teleportation protocols, and as the principle that every process allowed by that theory can be realized as an instance of a remote evaluation protocol—hence, as a form of classical probabilistic conditioning. In a large class of cases, which includes both the classical and quantum cases, the relevant compact closed categories are degenerate, in the weak sense that every object is its own dual. We characterize the dagger-compactness of such a category (with respect to the natural adjoint) in terms of the existence, for each system, of a symmetric bipartite state, the associated conditioning map of which is an isomorphism.     

The Luscher Color Test: An Investigation of Validity and Underlying Assumptions

This experiment investigated several underlying assumptions and one aspect of the validity of the Luscher Color Test, a projective test developed in Europe and relatively unknown in the United States. It was predicted that Ss would report increases in “negative” feelings to the color red, while blue would have the opposite effect, and yellow would produce an increase in “positive” feelings. Twenty-three male and 23 female Ss rated their immediate reactions to the LCT colors on seven mood adjectives, following which they were given the short version LCT and the IPAT Anxiety Scale. The results supported the hypotheses regarding blue and yellow, but not those regarding red nor the validity of the LCT as an anxiety measuring instrument.     

Multicultural Personality Questionnaire: Development of a Short Form

This study reports on the development of the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire–Short Form among 511 participants. Using a split-sample scale validation design, Study 1 (N = 260) employed a principal component analysis and rigorous item selection criteria to extract a 40-item short form (MPQ–SF) from the original 91-item Multicultural Personality Questionnaire (MPQ; van der Zee & van Oudenhoven, 2000, 2001). In Study 2 (N = 251), the MPQ–SF was subjected to confirmatory factor analysis and resulted in a reasonably good fit to the data (comparative fit index = .94; root mean squared error of approximation = .066). Satisfactory coefficient alphas and high correlations with the original scales were found. Moreover, relationships with related scales were largely in the predicted direction. Specific directions for follow-up research are posited.     

An 18-month follow-up investigation of motor coordination and working memory in primary school children

The aim of the current study was to examine the relationship between motor coordination and visual working memory in children aged 5–11 years. Participants were 18 children with movement difficulty and 41 control children, assessed at baseline and following an 18-month time period. The McCarron Assessment of Neuromuscular Development provided a measure of motor skills and the CogState One-Back task was used to assess visual working memory. Multi-level mixed effects linear regressions were used to assess the relationship between fine motor skills, gross motor skills, and visual working memory. The results revealed that for children with movement difficulty, better fine motor skills at baseline significantly predicted greater One-Back accuracy and greater (i.e., faster) speed at 18-month follow-up. Conversely, fine motor skills at baseline did not predict One-Back accuracy and speed for control children. However, for both groups, greater One-Back accuracy at baseline predicted better fine and gross motor skills at follow-up. These findings have important implications for the assessment and treatment of children referred for motor difficulties and/or working memory difficulties.     

Advancing the trait EI content domain: Further evidence for the distinctiveness of interpersonal facets

This investigation sought to assess the congruence of the trait emotional intelligence (EI) sampling domain, reflected in the short form of the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (TEIQue; Petrides & Furnham, 2006), with the theoretical content of trait EI—namely, the range of personality traits implicated in emotions. First, associations of the TEIQue factors with Emotion-Oriented Coping (EOC) and Social Coping (SC) were compared. Three of the four TEIQue factors were stronger predictors of EOC than SC; only the Emotionality factor was a stronger predictor of SC. Also, Emotionality did not add to the prediction of EOC in a simultaneous regression with the other factors. Secondly, by means of Structural Equation Modelling, the 30-item composite and a theoretically altered 16-item composite were compared as mediators between the Big Five and the emotion-laden dimension of mental health. Even though all interpersonal items (i.e., those pertaining to Sociability and Emotionality) were omitted for the altered composite, it outperformed the original composite in predicting a latent mental health composite of Stress, Anxiety, and EOC. The results highlight the distinct nature of Emotionality and Sociability facets and have implications for the refinement of the trait EI content domain.