Exploring the life skills needs of British adolescent athletes

ObjectivesYouth sport programs have been designed to facilitate positive development of young sports people by teaching life skills. It is unclear which life skills are needed by adolescent athletes and which life skills should be included in youth sport programs. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore how life skills are defined, which life skills British adolescent athletes need, and which life skills are the most important.Design and methodNineteen adolescent athletes, 10 coaches, 4 experts in sport psychology (pilot group) and 5 graduate students (pilot group) participated in a series of focus groups. An inductive analysis revealed how life skills are defined, which life skills British adolescent athletes need, and of these skills which are the most important.ResultsLife skills were defined as ranges of transferable skills needed for everyday life, by everybody, that help people thrive. Participants described the need for interpersonal skills including social skills, respect, leadership, family interactions, and communication. Personal skills including self-organization, discipline, self-reliance, goal setting, managing performance outcomes, and motivation, were also reported. Social skills were identified as the most important life skills.ConclusionsIn conclusion, findings add support to existing positive youth development research while adding an insight into which life skills should be built into youth sport programs in the United Kingdom.     

An exploratory study of consumer style: country differences and international segments

• An important consideration for marketers is determining the best approach to take when marketing their product or service across national borders. It has become clear that the answer to this is not as simple as complete standardization or adaptation, and the appropriate approach may be contingent on a complex set of variables. One key aspect of the puzzle relates to an understanding of the attitudes and behaviours of consumers. The current study examines consumer style (variables related to the way people engage in their consumption activities) as an important area of consideration related to international marketing efforts. Consumer style was investigated in three European countries and the US, using data from the DDB Brand Capital Study (a multi‐country survey). Although results showed that country differences are evident on consumption style, a cluster analysis suggests that there were four segments of consumers that transcend country boundaries. The findings add to our knowledge about consumers in these countries and the characteristics of the segments with respect to differing styles of consumption.

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The utility of the AusEd driving simulator in the clinical assessment of driver fatigue

Several driving simulators have been developed which range in complexity from PC based driving tasks to advanced "real world" simulators. The AusEd driving simulator is a PC based task, which was designed to be conducive to and test for driver fatigue. This paper describes the AusEd driving simulator in detail, including the technical requirements, hardware, screen and file outputs, and analysis software. Some aspects of the test are standardized, while others can be modified to suit the experimental situation. The AusEd driving simulator is sensitive to performance decrement from driver fatigue in the laboratory setting, potentially making it useful as a laboratory or office based test for driver fatigue risk management. However, more research is still needed to correlate laboratory based simulator performance with real world driving performance and outcomes.     

Are primary-school-aged children experts in spatial associate learning?

In two experiments (Experiment 1: N = 180, Experiment 2: N = 150), we investigated the anecdotal observation that school age children are assumed to be experts in spatial associate learning. In the first experiment, second graders, sixth graders, and adults learned the associations between 32 pictures and either a position or a word. 16 pictures had each to be associated with one position in a 4-by-4 grid of squares (spatial condition); the other 16 pictures had each to be associated to one of 16 monosyllabic words (verbal condition). After a 3 min distractor interval the associated position or word had to be retrieved with the pictures as cues. In Experiment 2, the results were replicated in principle with modifications in the experimental details. Performance improvement as a function of age turned out to be substantially larger in the verbal condition compared to the spatial one. The results are traced back to the idea that spatial associate learning is a cognitive function maturating early during life span.     

An optimal viewing position effect in the Stroop task when only one letter is the color carrier

Coloring only a single letter in the Stroop task can result in a reduction or elimination of Stroop interference. The present experiments were designed to test whether this modulation of Stroop interference occurs at all letter positions. Specifically, we investigated whether Stroop interference was reduced when the colored letter occupied the optimal viewing position (OVP). The experiments show that Stroop interference is not reduced at the OVP (Experiment 1) and that Stroop interference at the OVP is significantly greater than at other letter positions (Experiments 1 and 2). This finding has important theoretical and methodological consequences for studies of automatic processing in visual word recognition.     

Caffeine deprivation state modulates expression of acquired liking for caffeine-paired flavours

Previous studies found that caffeine consumers acquired a liking for the flavour of novel caffeinated drinks when these drinks were consumed repeatedly in a caffeine-deprived, but not nondeprived, state. Expression of this acquired liking appeared acutely sensitive to current caffeine deprivation state, but the use of between-subjects designs confounded interpretation of those studies. The present study evaluated these findings further using a within-subject design, with one flavour paired with caffeine (CS + ) and the second with the absence of caffeine (CS-). During four CS + and four CS- training days, 32 moderate caffeine consumers alternatively consumed a novel flavoured drink a CS + paired with caffeine and a CS- flavour paired with placebo. Participants evaluated both drinks before and after training in two motivational states: caffeine deprived and nondeprived. As predicted, pleasantness ratings for the caffeine-paired flavour increased overall. However, this acquired liking was only significant when tested in a caffeine-deprived state. These data are consistent with a conditioned-flavour preference model and imply that expression of acquired liking for a novel caffeinated flavour depends on the need for the effects of caffeine at the time when the drink is evaluated.     

The tragedy of a comic: fundamentalists crusading against fundamentalists

Christian Fundamentalists used to read the apocalyptic scenario through the “red” filter of communism, but since the 1980s the target has shifted to the “green tide” of Islam. One of the more colorful Fundamentalist diatribes against Islam is cartoon evangelist Jack Chick’s The Prophet, a comic book that calls Islam a Satanic plot hatched by the Catholic church. This article examines the rhetoric of Christian Fundamentalist diatribe against Islam in light of apocalyptic scenarios drawn out of biblical prophecy. Chick’s comic and the millenarian Hal Lindsay’s The Late Great Planet Earth are placed in the context of doctrinal attacks on Islam in medieval Christendom. In tracing the usage of “Islamic fundamentalism,” I argue that the term “fundamentalism” is problematic for cross-cultural studies of religious expression and movements.

A New Defence of the Modal Existence Requirement

In this paper, I defend the claim that an object can have a property only if it exists from two arguments, both of which turn on how to understand Plantinga’s notion of the α-transform of a property. For comments and discussion, thanks to David Sanson and three anonymous referees. For funding in the form of a Standard Research Grant (410-2004-0702), thanks to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).     

A boy primed Sue: feature‐based processing and person construal

Everyday social interaction is often dominated by categorical thinking, with generic group‐based knowledge structures guiding people's dealings with others. Noting the important influence that category‐cueing facial features exert during the initial stages of person construal, the current work explored the effects of hair cues on the process and temporal dynamics of sex categorization. Using a standard priming paradigm to index the products of person construal (i.e., categorical and stereotype‐ based knowledge), the results of three experiments revealed that: (i) hair cues alone are sufficient to trigger category and stereotype activation; and (ii) during the early stages of person perception, these cues have the capacity to reverse conventional priming effects and generate errors of categorical assignment (e.g., female faces prime male knowledge). These findings are considered in the context of contemporary accounts of person construal. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.