Influence of endogenous and exogenous orientations of attention on inhibition of return in a cross-modal target-target aiming task

The authors conducted 2 experiments in which participants (N = 16 in each) executed successive unimanual aiming movements to target locations that were indicated by the onset of either an auditory or a visual stimulus. In Experiment 1 (exogenous orientation), inhibition of return (IOR) effects were observed, with reliable reaction time (RT) costs associated with movements returning to the same target and a trend toward larger IOR effects in left than in right space. There was no influence of stimulus modality on the magnitude of IOR. IOR was also observed in Experiment 2 (endogenous orientation), except the influence of stimulus modality reliably mediated those effect. In that case, IOR was evident only when the previous modality was visual and the current modality was auditory. Together, the results of those 2 experiments suggest that in situations in which 2 paired movements constitute the response criteria, IOR is both supramodal and lateralized to contralateral space.     

The Experiences of Being a Talented Youth Athlete: Lessons for Parents

Involvement in organized sport can be highly demanding for young athletes who encounter many difficult situations and stressors. This can be exacerbated among youth athletes who have been recruited into talent-identification youth sport programs. Given that there are a range of negative consequences that can result when talent-identified (TI) youth athletes are unable to cope with the stressors they encounter, additional support is therefore necessary. Parents are uniquely situated to assist in this regard, but they are not always equipped to provide optimal levels of support. Therefore, the aim of this study was to understand the experiences of being a TI youth athlete and present the findings as “lessons” for parents seeking to enhance their involvement in TI youth sport settings. This article reports on qualitative data collected from the 1st year of a 3-year longitudinal study involving TI youth athletes from South Australia. Fifty male athletes (M age = 14.6 years) participated in focus groups to hear their experiences of being a TI youth athlete and understand what difficulties they want their parents to know. From the thematic analysis, 3 major themes were identified from the focus groups with TI youth athletes: (a) difficulties with being talented, (b) negotiating the future, and (c) playing for improvement. From the findings, a number of lessons for parents and youth sport organizations are offered to assist the transmission of knowledge to an applied setting.     

From “Longshot” to “Fantasy”: Obligations to Pediatric Patients and Families When Last-Ditch Medical Efforts Fail

Clinicians at quaternary centers see part of their mission as providing hope when others cannot. They tend to see sicker patients with more complex disease processes. Part of this mission is offering longshot treatment modalities that are unlikely to achieve their stated goal, but conceivably could. When patients embark on such a treatment plan, it may fail. Often treatment toward an initial goal continues beyond the point at which such a goal is feasible. We explore the progression of care from longshot to fantasy using two pediatric cases. This progression may be differentiated into four distinct stages of care related to the potential of achieving the initial goals of care. Physicians are often ill prepared for the progression of treatments from a longshot hope to an unfeasible and, therefore, typically unjustified intervention. We present a structured approach to guide clinicians at referral institutions where these situations may be common. The transition of care from “longshot” to “fantasy” is an inherent part of quaternary care for the sickest of patients that has been underexplored. Physicians are often poorly equipped to approach that transition. We advocate this approach to the shift from longshot to fantasy with the belief that such a structured method will have multiple benefits, including: reduced suffering for the patient; decreased emotional burden on patient and family; decreased provider moral distress; increased likelihood of seeking high quality palliative care earlier; and provision of honest and straightforward information to patients and their families.     

Negative Affectivity, Social Support, and the Prediction of Depression and Distress

ABSTRACT In the work we present in this article, we examined the contaminating effects of trait negative affectivity (TNA) on the relations between social support and psychological distress among college undergraduates. In the first study, it was suspected that controlling for TNA would substantially alter the associations between social support (as measured by the Social Provisions Scale) and depression at the initial assessment and later with negative mood prior to a course examination. Actual results from cross-sectional hierarchical regression analyses revealed that controlling for TNA reduced-but did not nullify-associations between reassurance of worth support and depression. TNA did not mediate the relation of reliable alliance support to state NA measured 2 weeks later prior to a course examination. Finally, a second study controlling for TNA found reassurance of worth support remained a significant prospective predictor of depression during the week of final examinations. Results are integrated with theoretical and measurement issues in social support research.     

The one-target advantage: a test of the movement integration hypothesis.

Two experiments were conducted to compare the temporal structure of single aiming movements to two-component movements involving either a reversal in direction or an extension. For reversal movements, there was no cost associated with the movement time for the first segment of the movement. However, regardless of movement direction, initiation instructions, handedness or effector, two-component extension movements were always associated with a longer movement time for the first movement segment. This disadvantage for extension movements, but not reversal movements, is consistent with the notion that there is interference between the execution of the first movement and implementation of the second movement. By contrast, because the muscular force used to break the first movement is also used to propel the second movement, reversal movements are organised as an integrated unit.     

Procedural learning in perceptual categorization

In two experiments, observers learned two types of category structures: those in which perfect accuracy could be achieved via some explicit rule-based strategy and those in which perfect accuracy required integrating information from separate perceptual dimensions at some predecisional stage. At the end of training, some observers were required to switch their hands on the response keys, whereas the assignment of categories to response keys was switched for other observers. With the rule-based category structures, neither change in response instructions interfered with categorization accuracy. However, with the information-integration structures, switching response key assignments interfered with categorization performance, but switching hands did not. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that abstract category labels are learned in rule-based categorization, whereas response positions are learned in information-integration categorization. The association to response positions also supports the hypothesis of a procedural-learning-based component to information integration categorization.