Effect of concurrent visual feedback on acquisition of a weightlifting skill

Practice in front of a mirror is a common procedure for activities such as dance, gymnastics, and other sports. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect that performing with concurrent visual feedback from a mirror had on the acquisition of the power clean movement. 18 college-age males who had no prior experience with the power clean movement served as subjects who were assigned to one of two groups. One group had use of a mirror during the practice trials and the other practiced without the mirror. All subjects viewed an instructional videotape and had practice trials. All subjects were evaluated for proper technique on a pretest, a posttest without the mirror, and a posttest with the mirror. Analysis showed a significant difference between pre- and posttest performances for both groups and a significant difference between groups on the posttest performances with the mirror. Evidently the videotaped instruction was sufficient to allow both groups to improve in performance of the power clean. Differences in posttest performances with the mirror reflected the type of feedback (with or without the mirror) available during training.     

Attitudes toward sex, arousal, and the retention of contraceptive information

Previous research has suggested that women with a negative emotional orientation toward sexuality (i.e., erotophobia) have difficulty learning and retaining sexually relevant material such as contraceptive information. It has been hypothesized that these women become aroused by this material and that this arousal interferes with their ability to learn it. The importance of this issue led us to conduct the current study. Erotophobic and erotophilic women viewed presentations about contraception while their physiological responses were being monitored. In addition, they were tested on the information contained in the presentation before, immediately after, and again 4-6 weeks after the presentation. The results indicated that the erotophobic women knew less contraceptive information before the presentation and were more aroused by the presentation. This arousal, however, did not interfere with retention of the material. These results are discussed in terms of individual differences in reactions to sexual material and the ability to learn, retain, and use contraceptive information.     

The association between intelligence level and brain volume measures: a negative finding

Ratings of pre-morbid intelligence level, derived from the hospital charts of 26 chronic schizophrenics, were correlated with the post-mortem brain volume measures of cortex, white matter, central grey matter, and ventricles. Contrary to hypothesis, no significant correlations were found.     

IES Arrow Dot performance and success in a cocaine detoxification program

The IES Arrow-Dot was administered to 41 cocaine detoxification patients. This group's scores indicated lower ego functioning and higher impulsivity and superego functioning than other clinical samples. No significant differences were noted between the Arrow-Dot scores of patients who successfully completed the program and those who did not.     

Effect of reaction time condition on EMG activities of the biceps brachii muscle in elbow flexion and forearm supination

Under simple- and choice-RT conditions, the biceps brachii muscle was examined in 8 healthy male subjects to determine how the temporal and spatial characteristics of elbow flexion and forearm supination differed at the initial phase of EMG activity and whether preparation or the presence of response uncertainty influenced the EMG outputs of the two movements. In the simple-RT condition, RT of supination was significantly faster than that of flexion but EMG activity of supination was less than that of flexion. In contrast, in the choice-RT condition, RT of flexion was significantly faster than that of supination but EMG activity of flexion was significantly reduced compared to supination. These findings indicate that advanced preparation or motor set facilitates the differentiation of RTs and EMG activities of the response movements and that response uncertainty causes a significant change in the temporal and spatial specificity of both elbow flexion and forearm supination.     

Font regularity constraints on the process of letter recognition

Strings of four unrelated letters were presented for subjects to identify, followed by a patterned mask and then a forced choice test of each letter position. In Experiment 1, the type style in the regular conditions was consistent--all of the letters were of a single type font--whereas in the mixed condition, each string contained letters from two type fonts. Compared with the mixed condition, accuracy in the regular conditions was higher overall and increased at a faster rate as a function of processing time. This held across four sessions. In Experiment 2, the font in the mixed condition was varied either between or within letter strings; sizeable advantages for the regular conditions were found with both mix-methods. The results are consistent with the idea of a schemalike perceptual system that becomes tuned to the regularities of a particular font in order to process visual information efficiently.     

Chronic sweet intake lowers pain thresholds without changing brain mu- or delta-opiate receptors

Sprague-Dawley rats drank sweetened (3% dextrose + 0.144% saccharin, w/v) or unflavored water for 18 days and subsequent pain reactivity was assessed using a hot plate. Compared to the rats that consumed unflavored water, the rats that consumed sweet water responded more quickly on the hot plate indicating that their threshold for pain was lowered. Another group of rats given identical exposure to the fluids had their brains prepared for measuring opiate receptor binding using the delta-receptor ligand [3H]D-Ala-D-Leu-enkephalin ([3H]DADLE) and the mu-receptor selective ligand [3H]Tyr-D-Ala-Gly-MePhe-Gly-ol ([ 3H]DAGO). Binding of these opiates to mu- and delta-receptors in the cerebral cortex, striatum, hippocampus, hypothalamus, brain stem, and remaining brain regions was the same for the rats that drank sweet fluids and those that drank unflavored water. These findings suggest that drinking sweet fluids lowers pain thresholds but does not alter mu- and delta-receptors.