A Theory of Physical Activity Maintenance

Regular physical activity is related to numerous psychological and physical benefits. Physical activity interventions have had varying degrees of success with adoption; however, maintenance over the long term is even more difficult to achieve, as the majority of individuals who start a physical activity program drop out or relapse. Although the physical activity maintenance literature is scant, there is evidence that the predictors of adoption are different from those of maintenance. Thus, it follows that physical activity adoption and maintenance require unique approaches. The explanatory power of such predictors, however, is limited by the absence of a cogent theoretical framework. Therefore, this paper presents the Physical Activity Maintenance (PAM) theory, which incorporates individual psychosocial variables (goal-setting, motivation, and self-efficacy), and contextual variables of the environment and life stress (triggers of relapse). Goal-setting is framed as satisfaction, attainment, and commitment; motivation as self-motivation and expectations; and self-efficacy as both barrier and relapse. The contextual variables may facilitate or impede physical activity maintenance directly and indirectly via the individual psychosocial variables. The PAM is presented to stimulate research on physical activity maintenance and advance our understanding of how and why people do and do not maintain physical activity long term.     

Endogenous shifts of attention cause distortions in the perception of space: Reviewing and examining the attentional repulsion effect

ABSTRACT

The functioning of spatial attention and its effects on visual processing are typically studied using chronometric and accuracy measures of behaviour. However, a growing body of literature has studied the attentional repulsion effect (ARE). Simply put, when attention is focused on one location in the visual field, stimuli appearing nearby the attended location are perceived as being located further away from the attended location than they physically are. The ARE is particularly compelling, as it is best explained by considering the receptive field properties of visual cells, thus allowing for more direct comparisons between behaviour and neural functioning. Nonetheless, most research testing the ARE has manipulated spatial attention exogenously. Furthermore, for studies that have explored endogenous attention and the ARE, empirical evidence is conflicting. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to address this inconsistency by testing the effect of voluntary attention on spatial repulsion using an optimal operationalization of endogenous attention. Centrally presented, highly informative double-cues were used to shift attention, and placeholders were included in the display to help anchor attention. Overall, we observed strong spatial repulsion effects when attention was shifted endogenously, providing compelling evidence that voluntary deployments of attention can cause perceptual distortions of space.