The effects of exergaming on physical activity among inactive children in a physical education classroom

Childhood obesity, which is due in part to lack of physical activity, is a serious concern that requires the attention of the behavioral community. Although excessive video game play has been noted in the literature as a contributor to childhood obesity, newer video gaming technology, called exergaming, has been designed to capitalize on the reinforcing effects of video games to increase physical activity in children. This study evaluated the effects of exergaming on physical activity among 4 inactive children in a physical education (PE) classroom. Results showed that exergaming produced substantially more minutes of physical activity and more minutes of opportunity to engage in physical activity than did the standard PE program. In addition, exergaming was socially acceptable to both the students and the PE teacher. Exergaming appears to hold promise as a method for increasing physical activity among inactive children and might be a possible intervention for childhood obesity.     

Learning of monotonic and nonmonotonic sequences in domesticated horses (Equus callabus) and chickens (Gallus domesticus)

[Hulse and Dorsky, 1977] and [Hulse and Dorsky, 1979] found that rats, like humans, learn sequences following a simple rule-based structure more quickly than those lacking a rule-based structure. Through two experiments, we explored whether two additional species—domesticated horses (Equus callabus) and chickens (Gallus domesticus)—would show this same propensity. In both experiments, subjects encountered either a structured or unstructured sequence of food quantities in a runway paradigm. In both experiments, subjects exposed to structured patterns of food quantities learned to track sequences of food quantities more efficiently than those exposed to patterns lacking such structure by running fast for large food quantities and slowly for small food quantities. These results provide evidence that horses and chickens track simple sequences similarly to humans and rats.     

Maintaining Order and Following the Rules: Gender Differences in Punishing Inmate Misconduct

For this article, we examine gender differences in how staff members address inmate misconduct. Using in-depth interviews with forty-three correctional employees, we focus on how their various disciplinary styles create interpersonal conflict between staff members. We find that over half of interviewees are identified as “formal responders” who consistently punish inmate misconduct with formal sanctions, even if doing so creates conflict within the organization. However, female formal responders also claim that they work closely with male inmates to explain the importance of following the rules. They state that this puts them at odds with their male co-workers who misinterpret this behavior as instigating sexual relationships.     

The Counselor Feedback Training Model: Teaching Counseling Students Feedback Skills

Giving and receiving feedback is an important counseling skill; therefore, it is crucial to focus on this skill within counselor training. This article presents the Counselor Feedback Training Model, a developmental approach designed to assist counselor educators in teaching counseling students how to give and receive feedback.     

Elimination of sex difference in direction giving

Past studies have shown that men provide more cardinal information and mileage estimates than women when describing routes learned from maps. In the current study, we examined whether this sex difference would persist if more legends were added to the maps. The participants looked at maps for 3 min and then wrote down directions from memory. Their usage of cardinal directions, mileage estimates, landmarks, and left–right directions was coded and analyzed. The results showed that men and women used cardinal directions equally for the 4-legend maps, whereas men used more cardinal directions than women for 1-legend maps as shown previously. Our results suggested that subtly drawing attention to cardinal directions successfully eliminated the sex difference in usage, although a different pattern was seen for mileage estimates. The underlying mechanisms are discussed.     

Explaining sex differences in mental rotation: role of spatial activity experience

Males consistently outperform females on mental rotation tasks, such as the Vandenberg and Kuse (1978) Perceptual and Motor Skills, 47(2), 599–604, mental rotation test (MRT; e.g. Voyer et al. 1995) in Psychological Bulletin, 117, 250–265. The present study investigates whether these sex differences in MRT scores can be explained in part by early spatial activity experience, particularly those spatial activities that have been sex-typed as masculine/male-oriented. Utilizing an online survey, 571 ethnically diverse adult university students completed a brief demographic survey, an 81-item spatial activity survey, and the MRT. Results suggest that the significant relation between sex of the participant and MRT score is partially mediated by the number of masculine spatial activities participants had engaged in as youth. Closing the gap between males and females in spatial ability, a skill linked to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics success, may be accomplished in part by encouraging female youth to engage in more particular kinds of spatial activities.     

Reactions to the fate of one’s brain-child after its disclosure

After generating an idea we believe is original, we want it to be credited as original and receive recognition for it. So, we would be upset if its originality were questioned, or if our link to that intellectual self-extension were threatened, and we would cope with self-protective strategies. This rationale prompted an experiment with seventy-five female undergraduates. They (P) were to imagine drafting a paper for submission to a national creativity fair proposing a novel method for determining the structure of things, but then decided against submitting it. Fellow-participant, O, learning of P's decision to withdraw, borrows P’s draft. Later, P submits a revised, retitled draft that, unfortunately, goes astray. Still later P discovers that O, without P's knowledge and consent, submitted a copy of P’s original draft to the fair, listing O’s name, both names, or P’s name as author(s), and that the idea was or was not judged as original. Origination and recognition credit allocation had predicted effects on P’s emotional reaction, evaluation of the judges’competence, and of O’s trustworthiness. Unexpect-edly low self-evaluated creativity and sociability, and low desire for future collabora-tion, were obtained when recognition went to P and O jointly. We discuss the applica-bility of belief agreement-attraction and cognitive balance models, of imitation as flattery, of self-esteem as a moderator, and whether our results are culture-bound. Finally, we note how the reactions hint at conflict between inclinations toward altru-ism versus narcissistic self-interest when it comes to sharing one’s self-generated intellectual products with others.     

Memory for language organization in concrete and abstract sentences

Subjects were presented with concrete and abstract sentences equal in lexical complexity and comprehension rating and tested on their ability (1) to recognize the words used in the sentences when presented at a 3-sec rate and (2) to recreate the initial sentences when presented with a list of the words used. Only on this second task was there a significant concrete/abstract difference. In a second experiment, there was a significant concrete/abstract difference in word recognition when a 6-sec decoding rate was used. It was suggested that the best explanation of these results could be offered by a semantic analog model of language memory.

     

Self-Compassion and Predictors of Criminality

The main focus of this article is to conduct an exploratory investigation of self-compassion, a positive indicator of mental health, as a predictor of violence and criminality within a sample of prisoners. Correlation and regression analyses were used to explore the relationship that self-compassion has with self-control, self-esteem, and social connectedness. Associations between self-compassion and the subscales of self-control were also examined. Results from both correlational analysis and regression indicate that self-compassion is correlated with all 3 variables. Correlations revealed that self-compassion was related to all 6 subscales of self-control. Regression, however, revealed that impulsivity was the only predictor of self-compassion. Further analysis revealed problems with multicollinearity. Implications and limitations of these results are discussed.