Goal orientation, motivational climate, and dispositional flow of high school students engaged in extracurricular physical activity

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of goal orientation, motivational climate, and dispositional flow in physical education lessons on extracurricular involvement in physical activity. Questionnaires were administered to 1,103 (792 athletes; 311 nonathletes) secondary school students (M age = 14.3 yr., SD = 0.7). Analysis showed significant mean differences between groups on goal orientation and dispositional flow in physical education lessons, but none for perception of motivational climate. These findings suggest that dispositional variables are related to extracurricular involvement in physical activity.     

Eighteen month test-retest stability of the youth self report in a sample of Catalonian adolescents

The aim of this study is to assess the test-retest stability of the Spanish version of Youth Self Report after 18 mo. for a sample of 357 Catalonian high school students (158 boys and 199 girls). At Time 2 the girls' scores increased on Delinquent and Aggressive Behavior scales and, therefore on Externalizing scores. At Time 2 the boys' scores increased on Attention Problems and Delinquent Behavior and decreased on Anxious/Depressed, Social Problems, and Internalizing scales. Significant differences in the remaining scales were not observed. The test-retest intraclass correlations for the broad-band scales ranged between .62 (Internalizing) and .68 (Externalizing) and for the narrow-band scales between .37 and .67. The correlations for girls and boys were similar but slightly higher for girls on Anxious/Depressed and Thought Problems.     

Assigning Grammatical Gender During Word Production

The present study was designed to examine the processes by which grammatical gender is assigned during word production. French words varied in strength of sublexical cues, based on whether the word ending was typical for one gender rather than neutral about gender, and lexical cues, derived from the associated definite article being uninformative about gender for words beginning with a vowel, but informative for words beginning with a consonant. In Experiment 1, when native French speakers classified the gender of mentally evoked names of pictures, no effects of these cues were obtained. Experiment 2 used an improved methodology, with participants classifying the gender of words translated from English. English-speaking learners of French were influenced strongly by lexical and sublexical cues, while French speakers showed a weaker influence. However, for both speaker groups, words whose gender was classified slowly during recognition were also classified slowly during production, and error rates were similarly correlated across tasks. The conclusion was that gender is not equally available for all words once the associated “lemma” is accessed. Current models of language production may have to incorporate mechanisms allowing differential speed of access to gender information depending on a word’s formal properties.     

Trait emotional intelligence profiles of students from different university faculties

This study investigated the trait emotional intelligence (trait EI or trait emotional self‐efficacy) profiles of 512 students from five university faculties: technical studies, natural sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. Using the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire, it was hypothesised that (a) social sciences would score higher than technical studies in Emotionality, (b) arts would score higher than technical studies in Emotionality, (c) arts would score lower than technical studies in Self‐control, and (d) there would be an interaction between gender and faculty, whereby female students would score higher than male students within the social sciences only. Several other exploratory comparisons were also performed. Results supported hypotheses (a), (b), and (d), but not hypothesis (c), although the differences were in the predicted direction.     

Sustained vs. transient cognitive control: Evidence of a behavioral dissociation

This study assessed whether two well known effects associated with cognitive control, conflict adaptation (the Gratton effect) and conflict context (proportion congruent effects), reflect a single common or separate control systems. To test this we examined if these two effects generalized from one kind of conflict to another by using a combined-conflict paradigm (involving the Simon and Spatial Stroop tasks) and manipulating the proportion of congruent to incongruent trials for one conflict (Simon) but not the other (Spatial Stroop). We found that conflict adaptation effects did not generalize, but the effect of conflict context did. This contrasting pattern of results strongly suggests the existence of two separate attentional control systems, one transient and responsible of online regulation of performance (conflict adaptation), the other sustained and responsible for conflict context effects.     

When meaning matters,look but don’t touch: The effects of posture on reading

Much of the reading that we do occurs near our hands. Previous research has revealed that spatial processing is enhanced near the hands, potentially benefiting several processes involved in reading; however, it is unknown whether semantic processing—another critical aspect of reading—is affected near the hands. While holding their hands either near to or far from a visual display, our subjects performed two tasks that drew on semantic processing: evaluation of the sensibleness of sentences, and the Stroop color-word interference task. We found evidence for impoverished semantic processing near the hands in both tasks. These results suggest a trade-off between spatial processing and semantic processing for the visual space around the hands. Readers are encouraged to be aware of this trade-off when choosing how to read a text, since both kinds of processing can be beneficial for reading.     

流行音乐对中学生的影响及疏导

流行音乐以其独特的旋律、强烈的时代感吸引着一代代中学生,并随风潜入,润物无声地影响着他们的成长和发展。流行音乐已融入中学生的日常生活,也必定在潜移默化中影响着他们的观念和行为方式。因此,必须重视流行音乐对中学生的影响,并采取积极有效的措施发挥流行音乐的正功能,为中学生的成长和发展营造一个良好的文化氛围。