Expertise effects on decision-making in sport are constrained by requisite response behaviours – A meta-analysis

ObjectivesA quantitative review of the effects of requisite responses and methods of stimulus presentation for assessing decision-making expertise in sport was undertaken.DesignAn electronic literature search was conducted in the online databases: SPORTDiscus with Full Text and ISI Web Knowledge All Databases. Articles for analysis were selected according to prior defined criteria.MethodsWe considered 111 effect sizes in studies involving 882 expert and non-expert participants. Effect sizes were calculated for six common protocols for measures responses: verbalized knowledge, eye movement measures, decision time, response accuracy, movement accuracy, and movement time. Two moderator variables were also considered to assess effects of research protocols on the dependent variables: “the requisite response” and “stimulus presentation”. A random effect model was used to calculate effect sizes.ResultsAnalysis of moderator variables suggested that expertise effects were more apparent for “requisite responses” when participants were required to actually perform sporting actions and for “stimulus presentation” under in situ task constraints than for other conditions.ConclusionsFuture empirical work on expertise and decision-making needs to consider task representativeness in considering requisite responses of participants in simulating performance environment conditions. Use of representative task constraints with performers required to perform sport actions in in situ conditions appeared the most functional empirical protocols to enhance validity of data.     

Testing the Tripartite Influence Model of body image and eating disturbance among Hungarian adolescents

We tested the Tripartite Influence Model of body image and eating disturbance on two separate samples of Hungarian boys (n = 145) and girls (n = 225), aged 10–16 years. Our results supported the model among Hungarian adolescents; however we found notable gender differences. The associations were stronger in girls compared to boys; moreover, internalization and body dissatisfaction mediated the relationship between appearance-related sociocultural influences and self-esteem only in girls. BMI and weight perception were also involved in the model, and we could present evidence that the sociocultural influence and the weight perception predict independently body dissatisfaction. Our data are in line with previous results; however, further exploration of gender, age, and culture-related differences in the pattern of associations may contribute to the refinement of intervention programs.     

Satisfaction of Health Science teachers with the convergence process of the European Higher Education Area

The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) has implied a major transformation of university studies in European countries. The aim of this study was to assess the satisfaction of university teachers in the area of Health Sciences with the convergence process to determine positive and negative aspects in their practices. The sample was composed of 1,361 teachers of Spanish public universities. They all participated in an ad hoc survey that included questions pertaining to the following issues: a) personal and professional information, b) general and institutional aspects, c) aspects related to teaching, research, and administrative work, d) methodology and the teaching-learning process, e) assessment of students, f) training of teachers, and g) coordination, organization, and resources at the school. Results reveal that teachers are not totally satisfied with the way the EHEA is being established. In conclusion, certain changes would be necessary to achieve real convergence between countries.     

Memory modulated saliency: A computational model of the incremental learning of target locations in visual search

The top-down guidance of visual attention is one of the main factors allowing humans to effectively process vast amounts of incoming visual information. Nevertheless we still lack a full understanding of the visual, semantic, and memory processes governing visual attention. In this paper, we present a computational model of visual search capable of predicting the most likely positions of target objects. The model does not require a separate training phase, but learns likely target positions in an incremental fashion based on a memory of previous fixations. We evaluate the model on two search tasks and show that it outperforms saliency alone and comes close to the maximal performance of the Contextual Guidance Model (CGM; Torralba, Oliva, Castelhano, & Henderson, 2006; Ehinger, Hidalgo-Sotelo, Torralba, & Oliva, 2009), even though our model does not perform scene recognition or compute global image statistics. The search performance of our model can be further improved by combining it with the CGM.     

The cortical representation of centrally presented words: A magnetic stimulation study

The right and left visual fields each project to the contralateral cerebral hemispheres. The current study aimed to investigate the extent of the functional overlap of the two hemifields along the vertical meridian. We applied repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over the left and right occipital cortex to investigate whether the foveal representation of words is bilaterally represented or is split between the two hemispheres. Employing a lateralized lexical decision task, we first showed a double dissociation between the stimulated cortical site and performance; right visual field (RVF) but not left visual field (LVF) performance was impaired when the left visual cortex was stimulated, and LVF but not RVF performance was impairred when the right visual cortex was stimulated. Unilateral stimulation also significantly impaired lexical decision latencies to centrally presented words. These findings support the suggestion that foveal representation of words is split. We discuss future strategies for the use of TMS in further tests of the split representation account.     

Job Demand–Control–Support and diabetes risk: The moderating role of self-efficacy

Work-related stressors, including high demands and low control, play a significant role in the aetiology of diabetes. Nevertheless, most studies focus on main effects, and few consider individual differences that may moderate the stress–health association. Drawing from the Job Demands–Control-–Support (JDC-S) model, this study addresses this gap by testing how baseline levels of JDC-S affect an increase in two risk factors for diabetes—glycated haemoglobin (HbA1C) and fasting plasma glucose (FPG)—and by investigating the moderating role of self-efficacy. Participants (N = 1618) were Israeli employees who attended two consecutive routine health examinations. All were free of diabetes at baseline. JDC-S and self-efficacy were assessed at baseline (T1), and HbA1C and FPG were assessed at T1 and T2. Data were analysed with logistic and linear regressions, controlling for well-established diabetes risk factors. High demands and low support predicted an increase in HbA1C and FPG. In addition, high self-efficacy interacted with high demands and with low control in the prediction of an increase in HbA1C and FPG. Although employees with high self-efficacy might function well at work, overloading them may harm their physical health. Similarly, incongruence between employees’ sense of ability and the control given to them at work may result in physical impairment.     

Ontogeny of object permanence in a non-storing corvid species, the jackdaw (Corvus monedula)

The aim of the present study was to investigate the ontogeny of object permanence in a non-caching corvid species, the jackdaw (Corvus monedula). Jackdaws are often presented as typical examples of non-storing corvids, as they cache either very little or not at all. We used Uzgiris and Hunt’s Scale 1 tasks to determine the age at which the certain stages set in and the final stage of this capacity that is reached. Our results show that the lack of food-storing behaviour is not associated with inferior object permanence abilities in the jackdaw, as our subjects (N = 19) have reached stage 5 competence (to follow successive visible displacements) at the average age of 61 days post-hatch and showed some evidence of stage 6 competence (to follow advanced invisible displacements) at 81 days post-hatch and thereafter. As we appreciate that object permanence abilities have a very wide ecological significance, our positive results are probably the consequence of other, more fundamental ecological pressures, such as nest-hole reproduction or prey–predator interactions.     

Attentional priming releases crowding

Views of natural scenes unfold over time, and objects of interest that were present a moment ago tend to remain present. While visual crowding places a fundamental limit on object recognition in cluttered scenes, most studies of crowding have suffered from the limitation that they typically involved static scenes. The role of temporal continuity in crowding has therefore been unaddressed. We investigated intertrial effects upon crowding in visual scenes, showing that crowding is considerably diminished when objects remain constant on consecutive visual search trials. Repetition of both the target and distractors decreases the critical distance for crowding from flankers. More generally, our results show how object continuity through between-trial priming releases objects that would otherwise be unidentifiable due to crowding. Crowding, although it is a significant bottleneck on object recognition, can be mitigated by statistically likely temporal continuity of the objects. Crowding therefore depends not only on what is momentarily present, but also on what was previously attended.     

Psychoacoustic abilities as predictors of vocal emotion recognition

Prosodic attributes of speech, such as intonation, influence our ability to recognize, comprehend, and produce affect, as well as semantic and pragmatic meaning, in vocal utterances. The present study examines associations between auditory perceptual abilities and the perception of prosody, both pragmatic and affective. This association has not been previously examined. Ninety-seven participants (49 female and 48 male participants) with normal hearing thresholds took part in two experiments, involving both prosody recognition and psychoacoustic tasks. The prosody recognition tasks included a vocal emotion recognition task and a focus perception task requiring recognition of an accented word in a spoken sentence. The psychoacoustic tasks included a task requiring pitch discrimination and three tasks also requiring pitch direction (i.e., high/low, rising/falling, changing/steady pitch). Results demonstrate that psychoacoustic thresholds can predict 31% and 38% of affective and pragmatic prosody recognition scores, respectively. Psychoacoustic tasks requiring pitch direction recognition were the only significant predictors of prosody recognition scores. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying prosody recognition and may have an impact on the assessment and rehabilitation of individuals suffering from deficient prosodic perception.