A prescriptive paradigm for sequencing instruction in physical education

Recent advances in the understanding of the neurological basis of motor control have made possible an explanation of motor skill acquisition in terms of the notion of programs of muscle synergies. The progressive development of an individual's capacity to control these synergies may be presented as a kind of hierarchical organization of processing levels based upon changes in the neurological location of motor control and the ability of the individual to make adjustments in the programs. This paper is an attempt to apply this information about the processing levels of motor control to the problem of the identification of a paradigm to assist practitioners in the design of sequences of motor skill learning experiences. Such a paradigm is proposed as a reformulation of Jewett's Movement Process Category System, a model originally created for use in curriculum decision-making.The proposed reformulation identifies three subphases of adaptive skill acquisition: skill construction, where a program of synergies is first automated; skill stabilization, where that program is then schematized; and skill differentiation, where that program is finally modularized. Within each of the subphases, processing levels are defined to enable the practitioner to give directions and design learning environments which will focus upon the students' gaining progressive control of the program of synergies selected for acquisition. Comments made throughout this presentation are intended to bridge the gap between motor control research and the teaching of skills, as well as encourage researchers in the motor learning/motor development areas to consider the notion of programs of muscle synergies as the fundamental explanatory unit for motor skill acquisition.     

Religious faith and adjustment to long-term hemodialysis

This study examines religious faith as associated with adjustment to end-stage renal failure and its treatment regimen of maintenance hemodialysis. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected initially and after a three-year interval in order to observe changes over time. The variable of the patient's perception of the import of religious faith was found to be positively related to interactional behavior and sick role behavior and to be inversely associated with alienation. Content analysis of qualitative responses for the item of perceived import of religious faith revealed a pattern of increasingly more positive patient attitudes occurring over time.     

EVALUATION OF BIOFEEDBACK IN THE TREATMENT OF BORDERLINE ESSENTIAL HYPERTENSION1

Direct biofeedback of blood pressure was compared with frontal EMG biofeedback and with self-instructed relaxation for the treatment of essential hypertension in a controlled group outcome study. Patients were followed up for four months after the end of treatment. Generalization of treatment effects was assessed through pre- and posttreatment measurements of blood pressure under clinical conditions in a physician's office. There were no significant reductions in diastolic blood pressure. The systolic blood pressure (SBP) of the patients receiving blood pressure biofeedback decreased 8.1 mm mercury (p = 0.07) and the SBP of the patients in the relaxation condition decreased 9.5 mm mercury (p = 0.05). In the generalization measures, there were significant reductions in SBP for the relaxation group. The results are discussed in terms of the general lack of replicability within the area of biofeedback treatment of hypertension.     

Semantic categorization in a linear order problem

The present investigation was conducted to determine whether subjects could use categorical codes based on semantic memory information (gender of names) to make rapid decisions about the order of names in a linear series. Subjects were taught linear order problems in which 12 names (six male and six female) were either randomly ordered or blocked by sex. The results support a dual-process model which proposes that subjects use both categorical information (discrete linguistic codes) and serial position information when asked to make mental comparisons of arbitrarily ordered items. Furthermore, the data indicate that both the ordinal distance between the terms in the test pair (step size) and the serial position of the test terms in the linear order affect the reaction time to a particular test comparison.     

Classifying pictures and words: Implications for the dual-coding hypothesis

In deciding that two items come from the same category, subjects were delayed if the items were presented as a word and a picture, as compared with two words or two pictures. Subjects were not delayed if the items were not to be compared. Hence, the delay appears to occur during the retrieval and comparison of know ledge about the items, not during their perceptual analysis. The results suggest that there are two distinct codes involved in the categorization of words and pictures, rather than a single code.     

The development of attitudes toward dialect in Italian children

In the Italian public school system, local dialects are explicitly discouraged and children are pressured to master standard Italian. In this study, 95 southern Italian children were given a series of tasks to determine their level of dialect production and their attitudes toward their local dialect. Production of dialect decreases sharply from the first to the third grade, but then tends to stabilize, with a slight increase in dialect use by fourth and fifth grade boys. Hence the schools have not been entirely successful in eradicating dialect. However, attitude measures indicate that by the third grade children prefer Italian over the dialect at close to the 100% level. The schools have placed many children in a conflict situation, in which they have learned negative attitudes toward their own code but cannot completely master standard Italian. Sex differences may be related to a tendency to view dialect as more masculine. Implications of this study for bidialectical school programs in Italy and the United States are discussed.     

The effect of Russian versus Hebrew instructions on the reaction to social pressure of Russian-born Israeli children

An experiment on the role of the language of instruction in mediating responses to social pressure was conducted with a sample of 41 Russian-born adolescents who had recently immigrated to Israel. The subjects were asked to respond to a series of conflict situations in which they were told that either the experimenters, their own parents, or their peers would see their answers. Instructions were given once in Russian and once in Hebrew. Contrary to the principal hypothesis, when subjected to pressure from adults the children gave more conventional moral responses under Hebrew than under Russian instructions. The result was interpreted as reflecting the tendency to respond more moralistically to the language of authority, which, for the emigréchildren, shifted from Russian to Hebrew. Regardless of the language of administration, the scores for the emigréchildren fell between those for Soviet and Israeli youngsters, but they were closer to the latter. Within the sample, the longer a child lived in one or the other society, the more his response to social pressure resembled the modal reaction of children in that society. Children from families who had or had not spoken Yiddish in the home showed marked differences in response, with the former resembling the Israeli and the latter the typical Soviet reaction. The results were interpreted as reflecting the capacity of children to adapt to conflicting socialization settings both within and across cultures.     

Effects of expectancies of different reward magnitudes in transfer from noncontingent pairings to instrumental performance

In two experiments, rats received noncontingent pairings of two stimuli with food reward, one paired with small reward and the other with large reward, and received bar press training with large reward or with small reward. When the noncontingent stimuli (NS) were presented for test during subsequent rewarded bar pressing and during early extinction of bar pressing, responding for each group was faster in the presence of the NS which was paired with the same reward magnitude that group received in bar press training than to the NS which had been paired with a different reward magnitude. As extinction progressed, all groups responded more slowly in the presence of the NS which had been paired with the large reward than in the presence of the NS which had been paired with small reward. These results were interpreted as indicating that responding in the presence of an NS depends on: (i) whether the reward expectancy elicited by the NS has been conditioned to the instrumental response, and (ii) the relationship between the reward expected in the presence of the NS and that received in test.