The effects of video feedback on running form

Correct running form is important for injury prevention; as such, correct form promotes continued engagement in running as a long-term form of exercise. Researchers have shown video feedback to be an effective strategy to improve athletic form for a variety of sports, but it has not been evaluated in any behavior analytic research as a method for improving running form. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of video feedback to improve running form for regular runners. During baseline, each participant was video recorded while running without any feedback (verbal or video). During intervention, the researcher recorded the participant, then showed them the video and provided feedback on correct or incorrect form, according to a 9-step task analysis. Results show that all three participants achieved 100% correct steps on the task analysis when video feedback was used to maintain their form during follow-up.     

Screening for apraxia: a short assessment for stroke patients

Apraxia is a disorder that involves impaired ability to execute previously learned movements that cannot be attributed to basic sensory or motor disturbances. A thorough assessment of apraxia typically entails both pantomiming and imitation of transitive (tool-related), intransitive (communication-related), and meaningless gestures, presented in an array of different, process-dependent sensory conditions. Precise and detailed assessment tools are often time-consuming and a shorter screening tool may be desirable for efficient surveillance of this disorder in stroke patients. In the present study, stroke patients (N = 37) were compared to healthy controls (N = 30) in their production of commonly used transitive and intransitive gestures. Five gestures (knife, flipper, tweezers, okay sign, cab hailing) were consistently performed with poorer accuracy in stroke patients when compared to healthy controls. The combination of gestures that best captured apraxic performance was statistically determined based on Z-score data. Results provide a shortened and sensitive method of detecting apraxia in stroke patients.     

Test development and use in five Iberian Latin American countries

The abundance of scholarship on test development and use generally is higher in English‐speaking than in Iberian Latin American countries. The purpose of this article is to help overcome this imbalance by describing and identifying similarities and differences in test development and use in two Iberian (Portugal and Spain) and three of the largest Latin American (Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela) countries. The stages of test development in each country, roles of professional associations, presence of standards for test use, professionals' educational training, commonly used tests, together with prominent challenges to continued progress are discussed. Test development and use in these five countries are transitioning from a dependence on the use of translated tests to greater reliance on adapted and finally nationally constructed tests. Continued growth requires adherence to international standards guiding test development and use. Stronger alliance among professional associations in the Iberian Latin American countries could serve as a catalyst to promote test development in these regions.     

ESCOLEX: A grade-level lexical database from European Portuguese elementary to middle school textbooks

In this article, we introduce ESCOLEX, the first European Portuguese children’s lexical database with grade-level-adjusted word frequency statistics. Computed from a 3.2-million-word corpus, ESCOLEX provides 48,381 word forms extracted from 171 elementary and middle school textbooks for 6- to 11-year-old children attending the first six grades in the Portuguese educational system. Like other children’s grade-level databases (e.g., Carroll, Davies, & Richman, 1971; Corral, Ferrero, & Goikoetxea, Behavior Research Methods, 41, 1009–1017, 2009; Lété, Sprenger-Charolles, & Colé, Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 36, 156–166, 2004; Zeno, Ivens, Millard, Duvvuri, 1995), ESCOLEX provides four frequency indices for each grade: overall word frequency (F), index of dispersion across the selected textbooks (D), estimated frequency per million words (U), and standard frequency index (SFI). It also provides a new measure, contextual diversity (CD). In addition, the number of letters in the word and its part(s) of speech, number of syllables, syllable structure, and adult frequencies taken from P-PAL (a European Portuguese corpus-based lexical database; Soares, Comesaña, Iriarte, Almeida, Simões, Costa, …, Machado, 2010; Soares, Iriarte, Almeida, Simões, Costa, França, …, Comesaña, in press) are provided. ESCOLEX will be a useful tool both for researchers interested in language processing and development and for professionals in need of verbal materials adjusted to children’s developmental stages. ESCOLEX can be downloaded along with this article or from http://p-pal.di.uminho.pt/about/databases.     

Sociability and gazing toward humans in dogs and wolves: Simple behaviors with broad implications

Sociability, defined as the tendency to approach and interact with unfamiliar people, has been found to modulate some communicative responses in domestic dogs, including gaze behavior toward the human face. The objective of this study was to compare sociability and gaze behavior in pet domestic dogs and in human‐socialized captive wolves in order to identify the relative influence of domestication and learning in the development of the dog–human bond. In Experiment 1, we assessed the approach behavior and social tendencies of dogs and wolves to a familiar and an unfamiliar person. In Experiment 2, we compared the animal's duration of gaze toward a person's face in the presence of food, which the animals could see but not access. Dogs showed higher levels of interspecific sociability than wolves in all conditions, including those where attention was unavailable. In addition, dogs gazed longer at the person's face than wolves in the presence of out‐of‐reach food. The potential contributions of domestication, associative learning, and experiences during ontogeny to prosocial behavior toward humans are discussed.     

Mental,behavioural and physiological nonlocal correlations within the Generalized Quantum Theory framework

Generalized Quantum Theory (GQT) seeks to explain and predict quantum-like phenomena in areas usually outside the scope of quantum physics, such as biology and psychology. It draws on fundamental theories and uses the algebraic formalism of quantum theory that is used in the study of observable physical matter such as photons, electrons, etc. In contrast to quantum theory proper, GQT is a very generalized form that does not allow for the full application of formalism. For instance neither a commutator, such as Planck’s constant, nor any additive operations are defined, which precludes the usage of a full Hilbert-space formalism. But it is a formalized phenomenological theory that is applicable whenever the core element of a quantum theory needs to be captured, namely in the presence of incompatible or non-commuting operations. As a consequence, it also predicts nonlocal, generalized entanglement correlations in systems other than proper quantum systems. In this paper we summarize the specific scientific evidence relating to the quantum-like mental, behavioral and physiological nonlocal correlations. Such non-local, generalized entanglement correlations are expected, both in space and time, between subsystems of a larger system, whenever observables pertaining to the global system are incompatible or complementary to observables pertaining to subsystems, as predicted by GQT. The result is a coherent explanation of a significant amount of controversial and seemingly weird occurrences that cannot be explained by classical physical laws. This review also offers a new perspective of the human mind’s potential.     

The Debate on the Moral Responsibilities of Online Service Providers

Online service providers (OSPs)—such as AOL, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter—significantly shape the informational environment (infosphere) and influence users’ experiences and interactions within it. There is a general agreement on the centrality of OSPs in information societies, but little consensus about what principles should shape their moral responsibilities and practices. In this article, we analyse the main contributions to the debate on the moral responsibilities of OSPs. By endorsing the method of the levels of abstract (LoAs), we first analyse the moral responsibilities of OSPs in the web (LoA_IN). These concern the management of online information, which includes information filtering, Internet censorship, the circulation of harmful content, and the implementation and fostering of human rights (including privacy). We then consider the moral responsibilities ascribed to OSPs on the web (LoA_ON) and focus on the existing legal regulation of access to users’ data. The overall analysis provides an overview of the current state of the debate and highlights two main results. First, topics related to OSPs’ public role—especially their gatekeeping function, their corporate social responsibilities, and their role in implementing and fostering human rights—have acquired increasing relevance in the specialised literature. Second, there is a lack of an ethical framework that can (a) define OSPs’ responsibilities, and (b) provide the fundamental sharable principles necessary to guide OSPs’ conduct within the multicultural and international context in which they operate. This article contributes to the ethical framework necessary to deal with (a) and (b) by endorsing a LoA enabling the definition of the responsibilities of OSPs with respect to the well-being of the infosphere and of the entities inhabiting it (LoA_For).     

Assessing the Rising Emphasis on Muscularity for Women: Psychometric Properties of the Brazilian Version of the Female Muscularity Scale

The female appearance ideal has undergone considerable changes in recent years, resulting in increases in drive for muscularity among Brazilian women. The Female Muscularity Scale (FMS) was developed to assess muscularity concerns among U.S. women and was shown to be a promising measure of muscularity-related attitudes and behaviors. The present studies aimed to translate and culturally adapt the FMS to Brazilian Portuguese and to explore its factorial structure among Brazilian women (Study 1: n = 202, M_age = 24.40, SD = 5.03) and to confirm the factor structure as well as evaluate convergent and divergent validity and reliability of the FMS for young adult Brazilian women (Study 2: n = 382, M_age = 22.71, SD = 4.32). Exploratory factor analysis revealed a two-factor structure (Attitudes and Behaviors subscales), each comprising five items. Confirmatory factor analysis upheld the original two-factor structure with good fit indices. The full scale and its subscales presented convergent validity through associations with measures of body dissatisfaction, drive for muscularity, body-ideal internalization, body checking and avoidance behaviors, disordered eating, and exercise engagement. Evidence of divergent validity was obtained in relation to self-esteem and depressive symptoms. The Brazilian version of FMS also presented adequate values for internal consistency and 2-week test-retest reliability. These findings support the Brazilian version of the FMS as a useful tool for investigating muscularity-related aspects of body image and body change behaviors that are increasingly a source of concern for women.