Integrating sport psychology and sports medicine in research: The dilemmas

Abstract

The recent acceleration of interest in conducting sport psychology research within sports medicine settings has prompted an introspection on the stringency of sport injury-focused research protocols and methodology. Much of the literature relating to the psychology of sport injury is anecdotal, comprised of conjecture, or is an extrapolation from allied psychological study. In addition, retrospective studies, involving the recall of an unpleasant event (i.e., sport injury) proliferate the literature. Quality research that integrates sport psychology and sports medicine presents a unique challenge because of the multifactorial nature of sport injury and the necessity for sound interpretation of research outcomes relative to the nature of psychology. sport, and injury. Confounding and complicating aspects of this integrated research include definition of injury variables, timing of data collection. evaluation of pain. and the physiological sequelae of injury. Research and methodological issues relating to sport psychology and sport injury are discussed.     

Time-dependent changes in inaccessible memory

The present experiment examined whether forgetting of contextual attributes—the loss of discriminability of background stimulus features over time—also occurs when a memory remains inaccessible (amnestic) during the retention interval. To examine this issue, rats received an acute hypothermia treatment that caused reversible anterograde amnesia for a passive-avoidance task and were tested 1 or 7 days later in either the same or a different context. At the short retention interval, the subjects discriminated between the contexts, as evidenced by the finding that reversal of amnesia occurred only in the training context. However, at the 7-day interval, recovery of the avoidance response was induced in either context, reflecting the forgetting of differentiating characteristics. These findings indicate that inaccessible memory remains susceptible to processes of modification and distortion that typically influence intact memories.     

Glucose enhancement of face recognition is unaffected by alterations of face features

Glucose improves memory on a variety of tasks has been well established in both the animal and human literature. Of particular relevance to the present experiment is the finding that administration of glucose improves face recognition performance in both healthy, young adults and in Alzheimer's patients. This experiment attempted to expand on these findings to determine if glucose-enhanced performance for face recognition is specific to certain face features (e.g., nose, eyes, or hair). In a between subjects experiment that tested healthy, young adults, a pre-training administration of glucose (50 g) was shown to improve face recognition performance relative to placebo (27.3mg saccharin); however, the significant improvement on the task was not specific to a particular feature. This result suggests that glucose did not enhance memory for individual face features, but rather enhanced overall memory for face stimuli.     

Reward Expectations: The Influence of Race, Gender and Type of Job

Previous research on pay expectations has focused on gender differences and the reasons for those differences. In this study three types of reward expectations were measured. Pay expectations (starting salary and peak salary) were assessed, as well as another reward expectation, ease of promotion. The influences of gender, race, and type of job on reward expectations were investigated. The results indicated that Caucasians have higher peak pay expectations than African Americans for all job types. Interactions were discovered between race and type of job for starting salary, and between gender and type of job for ease of promotion.     

Teacher beliefs,teacher characteristics,and school contextual factors: What are the relationships?

Background. There is a plethora of research around student beliefs and their contribution to student outcomes. However, there is less research in relation to teacher beliefs. Teacher factors are important to consider since beliefs mould thoughts and resultant instructional behaviours that, in turn, can contribute to student outcomes. Aims. The purpose of this research was to explore relationships between the teacher characteristics of gender and teaching experience, school contextual variables (socio‐economic level of school and class level), and three teacher socio‐psychological variables: class level teacher expectations, teacher efficacy, and teacher goal orientation. Sample. The participants were 68 male and female teachers with varying experience, from schools in a variety of socio‐economic areas and from rural and urban locations within New Zealand. Method. Teachers completed a questionnaire containing items related to teacher efficacy and goal orientation in reading. They also completed a teacher expectation survey. Reading achievement data were collected on students. Interrelationships were explored between teacher socio‐psychological beliefs and the teacher and school factors included in the study. Results. Mastery‐oriented beliefs predicted teacher efficacy for student engagement and classroom management. The socio‐economic level of the school and teacher gender predicted teacher efficacy for engagement, classroom management, instructional strategies, and a mastery goal orientation. Being male predicted a performance goal orientation. Conclusions. Teacher beliefs, teacher characteristics, and school contextual variables can result in differences in teacher instructional practices and differing classroom climates. Further investigation of these variables is important since differences in teachers contribute to differences in student outcomes.     

Differential effects of glucose on modulation of emotional and nonemotional spatial memory tasks

Research examining the memory-enhancing effects of glucose in humans has been limited to mnemonic tasks lacking affective components, even though glucose may be a mechanism for emotioninduced memory enhancement. This limitation does not permit analysis of interactions between the enhancing properties of emotional stimuli and glucose. Participants were administered either glucose or saccharin 15 min prior to completing a neutral or emotional spatial memory task. Performance under three glycemic conditions (100 mg/kg or 50 g glucose, or placebo) for the two sets of emotional stimuli revealed a significant interaction. Both 100-mg/kg and 50-g doses of glucose resulted in impaired performance for emotional stimuli. For neutral stimuli, a 100-mg/kg dose enhanced memory, whereas a 50-g dose showed no effect. Results indicate that the enhancing effects of emotional stimuli may be attenuated by the consumption of glucose and suggest that recent food consumption should be considered in paradigms examining memory.     

Decision frame and procedural justice: interactive effects on perceptions of distributive justice

This work examined the effect of procedural justice and item frame on responses to positively and negatively worded survey items. Under conditions of low procedural justice, there is a significant difference in the rating of distributive justice items positively and negatively framed, but not when procedural justice is high. Implications for decision frame theory and biasing of responses to survey items are considered.     

Post-training glucose administration attenuates forgetting of passive-avoidance conditioning in 18-day-old rats.

The study of memory modulation in infant rats has typically focused on reminder/retrieval treatments involving reexposure to components of the internal or external training context. Rarely have studies employed pharmacological treatments to investigate the neurochemical substrates of memory storage in preweanling rats. The present study investigated the effect of 100 mg/kg of glucose, a common memory modulator in adult mammals, on memory for passive-avoidance conditioning in 18-day-old Sprague-Dawley rats. Subjects that were administered an immediate post-training injection of glucose performed significantly better, on a retention test 24 h following training, than those animals that received saline. The glucose group also performed comparably to a control group that was tested 10 min following training. These results are consistent with those of the memory modulation literature in adults and suggest that the rapid rate of forgetting in immature organisms may be the result of a deficiency in a general memory modulatory system.