‘Believe in Yourself,Channel Energy,and Play Your Trumps’: Olympic preparation in complex coordination sports

ObjectivesThis paper is aimed at (a) analysing the psychological context of complex coordination sports (CCSs) and specific contextual factors related to Olympic Games, (b) sharing the authors' experiences in Olympic preparation of athletes in diving, figure skating, and artistic and rhythmic gymnastics with an emphasis on typical working issues and strategies; and (c) summarizing the authors' reflections on the role of the national sport system and cultural contexts in Olympic preparation and major lessons learnt in working with Olympic athletes.Design and MethodAnalysing and structuring the authors' professional experiences in working with Olympic athletes in CCSs based on the scientist-practitioner model.ResultsMajor results include (a) a summary of psychological context for Olympic athletes in CCSs; (b) the temporal structure of Olympic preparation; (c) four categories of Olympic athletes; (d) consultants' strategies, reflecting major psychological aspects of Olympic preparation in CCSs; and (e) lessons learnt in working with Olympic athletes in CCSs.ConclusionThe authors emphasize the large responsibility of sport psychology practitioners working with Olympic athletes in CCSs and share lessons learnt, with a focus on seven major sport psychology approaches validated in their practice.     

Extralinguistic control of language comprehension and production in the nonfluent child

The study investigated (1) the developmental progression postulated to exist between comprehension and production of sentences having the same grammatical form, and (2) the effects of syntactic, semantic, and extralinguistic variables on comprehension and production in nursery-school children. Comprehension trials required choices among four puzzle piece alternatives for which (a) both subject and object pieces differed (Phase I) or (b) only grammatical subject pictures differed (Phase II). During production trials children were asked to label preconstructed puzzles. Results indicated the comprehension-production relationship to vary as a function of age, sentence prepositions, and phases. Differential effects of semantic and extralinguistic variables during comprehension were found primarily for the youngest children, suggesting that logical relations among agent-actor-object were not sole controllers of language comprehension. Nonsyntactic control of production responses was not found.     

Ignoring information in binary choice with continuous variables: When is less “more”?

When can a single variable be more accurate in binary choice than multiple sources of information? We derive analytically the probability that a single variable (SV) will correctly predict one of two choices when both criterion and predictor are continuous variables. We further provide analogous derivations for multiple regression (MR) and equal weighting (EW) and specify the conditions under which the models differ in expected predictive ability. Key factors include variability in cue validities, intercorrelation between predictors, and the ratio of predictors to observations in MR. Theory and simulations are used to illustrate the differential effects of these factors. Results directly address why and when “one-reason” decision making can be more effective than analyses that use more information. We thus provide analytical backing to intriguing empirical results that, to date, have lacked theoretical justification. There are predictable conditions for which one should expect “less to be more.”     

Improvements in early care in Russian orphanages and their relationship to observed behaviors

This article describes a unique study that attempts to promote positive social‐emotional relationships and attachment between caregivers and children in orphanages in St. Petersburg, Russia. The children who reside in these orphanages are typically between birth and 48 months of age; approximately 50% are diagnosed with disabilities, and approximately 60% leave through foreign adoption. Initially, their orphanage caregivers showed a high level of current anxiety and depression and were detached from and communicated little with the children. Likewise, during baseline observations, the children demonstrated poor attachment behaviors such as indiscriminant friendliness, lack of eye contact with adults, aggression, and impulsive behavior. Two interventions were used in a quasiexperimental design: (a) training of caregivers to promote warm, responsive caregiving and (b) staffing and structural alterations to support relationship building, especially increasing the consistency of caregivers. The methodology required that both the training and staffing interventions be provided to one orphanage, only the training to a second, and neither to a third. (At any one time, ns = 80–120 in each condition.) Initial informal observations reveal positive behaviors for both the caregivers and the children, such as increased two‐way conversations, animated and enthusiastic emotional responses, and positive social and language interactions. Early data analyses show an increase in the consistency and stability of caregivers and increased scores for caregivers on every subscale of the HOME Scales. Children showed improvements in physical growth, cognition, language, motor, personal‐social, and affect, with children having severe disabilities improving the most. The implications of these findings suggest that training staff with modest educational backgrounds and structural changes are effective, can increase socially responsive caregiving behaviors, and improves social interactions of children, at least temporarily. ©2005 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health.     

Determinants of linear judgment: a meta-analysis of lens model studies

The mathematical representation of E. Brunswik's (1952) lens model has been used extensively to study human judgment and provides a unique opportunity to conduct a meta-analysis of studies that covers roughly 5 decades. Specifically, the authors analyzed statistics of the "lens model equation" (L. R. Tucker, 1964) associated with 249 different task environments obtained from 86 articles. On average, fairly high levels of judgmental achievement were found, and people were seen to be capable of achieving similar levels of cognitive performance in noisy and predictable environments. Further, the effects of task characteristics that influence judgment (numbers and types of cues, inter-cue redundancy, function forms and cue weights in the ecology, laboratory versus field studies, and experience with the task) were identified and estimated. A detailed analysis of learning studies revealed that the most effective form of feedback was information about the task. The authors also analyzed empirically under what conditions the application of bootstrapping--or replacing judges by their linear models--is advantageous. Finally, the authors note shortcomings of the kinds of studies conducted to date, limitations in the lens model methodology, and possibilities for future research.     

Flow and Happiness in Later Life: An Investigation into the Role of Daily and Weekly Flow Experiences

Fifty-four older adults ranging in age from 70 to 86 years old (M = 77.54) reported daily levels of positive and negative affect, life satisfaction and daily activities for seven consecutive days. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was used to investigate inter- and intra-individual effects of flow experiences on affect. Higher quality of flow was positively associated with high arousal positive affect (i.e., feeling peppy, enthusiastic, happy), negatively associated with low arousal negative affect (i.e., feeling sad and disappointed), and positively associated with life satisfaction. However, more frequent flow experiences throughout the week predicted lower average levels of positive affect and life satisfaction. Overall, the results demonstrate that flow is linked to the affective experiences of older adults, and that an individual’s overall propensity to experience flow may be influential beyond the immediate effects of a given flow experience.     

Data from Russian Help to Determine in Which Languages the Possible Word Constraint Applies

The Possible Word Constraint, or PWC, is a speech segmentation principle prohibiting to postulate word boundaries if a remaining segment contains only consonants. The PWC was initially formulated for English where all words contain a vowel and claimed to hold universally after being confirmed for various other languages. However, it is crucial to look at languages that allow for words without vowels. Two such languages have been tested: data from Slovak were compatible with the PWC, while data from Tarifiyt Berber did not support it. We hypothesize that the fixed word stress could influence the results in Slovak and report two word-spotting experiments on Russian, which has similar one-consonant words, but flexible word stress. The results contradict the PWC, so we suggest that it does not operate in the languages where words without vowels are possible, while the results from Slovak might be explained by its prosodic properties.     

Isatin: role in stress and anxiety

(Indoledione 2,3) isatin is an endogenous indole found both in mammalian brain and peripheral tissues. Isatin concentration in blood can exceed 1 microM and tissue concentrations vary from < 0.1 to 10 microM. Its level in the brain and periphery is increased by stress. Isatin has a wide spectrum of behavioural and metabolic effects. It is anxiogenic at lower doses and sedative at higher doses. Its most potent known in vitro actions are as an antagonist of atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP) function and NO signaling. In this review, we discuss isatin and stress in animal models, the few human studies, and also what it is known to date about the molecular mechanisms of its action. We suggest the possibility that isatin and its analogues may be interesting new pharmacological agents; Isatin antagonists may be anxiolytic, and isatin agonists may activate the HPA axis.     

Ukrainian Application of the Children's Somatization Inventory: Psychometric Properties and Associations With Internalizing Symptoms

This paper examines the psychometric properties of the Children's Somatization Inventory (CSI) in 600 10–12-year old children in Kyiv, Ukraine, replicating and extending the original findings from a sample in Nashville, Tennessee (J. Garber et al. 1991). The Kyiv children had significantly lower CSI total scores and reported significantly fewer symptoms than the American children. The Kyiv mothers, however, reported significantly more somatization symptoms in their children than did the American mothers. A factor analysis of the children's data yielded four similar factors encompassing pseudoneurologic, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, and pain/weakness symptoms. Consistent with the findings from the Nashville study, the CSI was significantly related to the children's self-reports of health and depressive and anxiety symptoms and to maternal reports of child depression and anxiety symptoms. In addition, although more children with the highest CSI scores (25+) reported various illness experiences than those with 0–1 symptoms, no differences were found in the school absentee records. Thus, the results were congruent with the findings of the Nashville study, indicating that the CSI reliably measured somatization in this Ukrainian sample.     

Eating disorders in the course of life: A qualitative approach to vital change

Eating disorders (EDs) have become one of the biggest mental-health problems in the last decades, especially among youth and women. The present study aims to analyse the suitability of Prochaska and DiClemente’s Transtheoretical Model of Change when applied to the living experiences of people diagnosed with ED and their carers. For this purpose, we applied a narrative biographic approach to the ways in which people face their problems and vital development in the ED domain. Through the narrative analysis of these autobiographies, we aimed to study the patients’ own notions of ‘change’, ‘problem’ and ‘vital trajectory’. We focused on five autobiographic interviews of persons diagnosed as ED (four women and a man). The analysis yields three discourses which organize and give sense to our participants’ vital transitions: a discourse of functional adaptation to events and experiences; one that pays attention to random events and people entering your life; and one that has the personal initiative and agency of an individual agent at its core. It also illuminates particular ways of understanding determination, contemplation and pre-contemplation. These ways of understanding change are shown to extend the possible ways of thinking about people’s lives and ED patients’ perspectives.