Critical issues confronting the advancement of applied sport psychology

Abstract

Despite considerable progress over the last 10 years, applied sport psychology confronts several persistent issues that continue to limit the growth and development of the field. Specifically, issues requiring more comprehensive and proactive attention and initiatives include: the training of graduate students, the accreditation of graduate programs, the job market, and the establishment of systematic educational outreach programs. Suggestions are offered regarding how enhancements in each of the aforementioned issues can be initiated, and potential benefits gained by students, faculty, and the general public are identified and discussed. Given the climate in many academic institutions emphasizing program downsizing, sport psychology may be approaching and confronting one of the most crucial crossroads in its existence. Without direct efforts to assure academic credibility and public confidence in the standards of training and practice, sport psychology may fail to actualize a meaningful future role in the competitive field of allied health service provision.     

1995 Coleman Roberts Griffith address: Profiles of excellence

Abstract

Historically circumstances that represent an extreme of the human condition attract the attention of those who record contemporary events. Perhaps one of the strongest influences on retrospectives is the achievement of excellence. Excellence is admired and hated, sought and avoided, and in a true sense rarely achieved. Excellence requires performing at the outer limit of physical, emotional and mental capacities. And even then for some this level of effort expenditure may not be enough to produce excellence. While many rationalize excellence as purely endowed or distort the concept with self-serving labels, Shin'chi Suzuki's work on developing excellence with “common” people demonstrates the various elements necessary for the opportunity to achieve excellence. Suzuki's work will be reviewed along with the profiles of selected world achievers. The prerequisites for the pursuit of excellence will be formulated and suggested along with a discussion of how the demands of achieving excellence often exceed the will to excel.     

Validation of the Spanish SIRS With Monolingual Hispanic Outpatients

Psychologists are faced with formidable challenges in making their assessment methods relevant to growing numbers of Hispanic clients for whom English is not the primary or preferred language. Among other clinical issues, the determination of malingering has profound consequences for clients. In this investigation, we evaluated a Spanish translation of the Structured Interview of Reported Symptoms (SIRS; Rogers, Bagby, & Dickens, 1992) with 80 Spanish-speaking Hispanic American outpatients. Using a between-subjects simulation design, the Spanish SIRS was found to produce reliable results with small standard errors of measurement. Regarding validity, very large effect sizes (mean Cohen’s d= 2.00) were observed between feigners and honest responders for the SIRS primary scales. We consider the potential role of the Spanish SIRS with reference to Spanish translations for other assessment instruments.     

Visual dreams in the congenitally blind?

An EEG study of sleep in congenitally blind persons revealed a significant correlation between the visual activity reported during dreaming and the decrease of alpha strength recorded from the central and occipital regions of the scalp. This provides the first objective evidence that subjects who have never had visual experiences can have dreams with virtual images that are probably mediated by the activation of the cortical areas responsible for visual representations.     

Effects of posttraining treatments in the posterior cingulate cortex on short- and long-term memory for inhibitory avoidance in rats

Adult male Wistar rats were bilaterally implanted with indwelling cannulae in the caudal region of the posterior cingulate cortex. After recovery, animals were trained in a step-down inhibitory avoidance task (3.0-s, 0.4-mA foot shock) and received, right after training, a 0.5-microl infusion of vehicle (phosphate-buffered saline, pH 7.4), of the GABA(A) receptor agonist muscimol (0.1 or 0.5 microg), of the cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA) stimulant Sp-cAMPS (0.1 or 0.5 microg), or of the PKA inhibitor Rp-cAMPS (0.1 or 0.5 microg). Animals were tested twice, 1.5 h and, again, 24 h after training, in order to examine the effects of these agents on short- and long-term memory, respectively. Muscimol (0.5 but not 0.1 microg) hindered retention for both short- and long-term memory (p <.05). Rp-cAMPS (0.1 or 0.5 microg) hindered retention for short-term memory (p <.05). In addition, these animals showed lower, but not significantly lower, latencies than controls in the test session for long-term memory (p >.10). A trend toward an amnesic effect on long-term memory was also observed after Sp-cAMPS infusion at 0.1 microg (p <.10). These results show that strong stimulation of GABAergic synapses in the caudal region of the rat posterior cingulate cortex right after training impairs short- and long-term memory (the latter less dramatically). The same occurs by inhibiting PKA activity with regard to STM and possibly to LTM.     

Retrieval practice improves learning in children with diverse visual word recognition skills

ABSTRACT

A large body of research shows that performing tests is more beneficial for the retention of studied materials than restudying those materials, a phenomenon termed “testing-effect”. A contemporary debate on the testing effect literature concerns whether the benefits of tests are equivalent for individuals with different cognitive skills, as the capacity to decode written words, for example. In the current study, we approached this issue in two experiments by examining whether testing is equally beneficial for children with diverse visual word decoding skills. To achieve this goal, we recruited sixth and fourth grade children (experiments 1 and 2, respectively) and administered a reading aloud task to assess their visual word recognition skills, and administered a memory task about an encyclopedic text to promote the testing effect. Memory for the restudied/tested contents of the encyclopedic text were probed after a seven-day interval, and although children from both experiments showed robust testing effects, such effects were not associated with their visual word decoding skills. These findings suggest that children with diverse word decoding skills can be benefited by retrieval practice.     

Child and adolescent psychopathy: Assessment issues and treatment needs

The identification of psychopathic traits in childhood and adolescence is a topic of growing interest for scientific research. The development of models to predict violent behavior, together with efficient preventive and therapeutic programs, is a major goal when assessing youths with psychopathic traits. This paper focuses on the construct of child and adolescent psychopathy, while approaching historical and conceptual issues. By discussing the “state of the art” of the construct, we will analyze different instruments to assess psychopathy in children and adolescents, as well as the available treatment modalities. Finally, we will present possible lines for research and clinical intervention according to an evolutionary approach to anger and antisocial behavior.     

Anthropology Of ‘Sinhala Buddhism’

Part of the general problem in the anthropology of Buddhism as I demonstrate in this article is that the theoretical significance of the fact that the category 'Buddhism' is a recent and Western invention has not been sufficiently appreciated. Therefore, the anthropology of ‘Sinhala Buddhism’ continues to address the ahistorical and essentialist questions of who are Buddhists and who are not. In my view, such questions can only serve to further establish the essentialist assumptions about ‘authentic Buddhism’. Contrary to that, I explain how recent scholarship has challenged such established academic assumptions as what Buddhism is and who Buddhists are, and proposes questions of a different kind.     

Epistemically self-defeating arguments and skepticism about intuition

An argument is epistemically self-defeating when either the truth of an argument’s conclusion or belief in an argument’s conclusion defeats one’s justification to believe at least one of that argument’s premises. Some extant defenses of the evidentiary value of intuition have invoked considerations of epistemic self-defeat in their defense. I argue that there is one kind of argument against intuition, an unreliability argument, which, even if epistemically self-defeating, can still imply that we are not justified in thinking intuition has evidentiary value.