Protocols for the Investigation of Information Processing in Human Assessment of Fundamental Movement Skills

Fundamental movement skill (FMS) assessment remains an important tool in classifying individuals’ level of FMS proficiency. The collection of FMS performances for assessment and monitoring has remained unchanged over the last few decades, but new motion capture technologies offer opportunities to automate this process. To achieve this, a greater understanding of the human process of movement skill assessment is required. The authors present the rationale and protocols of a project in which they aim to investigate the visual search patterns and information extraction employed by human assessors during FMS assessment, as well as the implementation of the Kinect system for FMS capture.     

Value Priorities and Organ Donation in Young Adults

This research identifies major personal values among American university students that predict organ-donation registration with the Department of Motor Vehicles. Participants responded to a factual test of their knowledge about organ donation, indicated whether or not they had registered as posthumous donors, and filled out a personality inventory measuring their personal values (Schwartz, 1992, 1994). The data indicated a high level of factual knowledge about organ donation; and the greater the level of knowledge, the more likely participants were registered to donate their organs. Also, participants higher in benevolence, universalism, achievement, and stimulation were more likely to have registered to donate their organs. The results are discussed in terms of the need to develop more effective health-communication campaigns by using specific health-education messages tailored to students majoring in different disciplines or to people in various occupations as a means of increasing their willingness to donate.     

Traumatic stress, perceived global stress, and life events: prospectively predicting quality of life in breast cancer patients.

The authors investigated the relationship between stress at initial cancer diagnosis and treatment and subsequent quality of life (QoL). Women (n = 112) randomized to the assessment-only arm of a clinical trial were initially assessed after breast cancer diagnosis and surgery and then reassessed at 4 months (during adjuvant treatment) and 12 months (postadjuvant treatment). There were 3 types of stress measured: number of stressful life events (K. A. Matthews et al., 1997), cancer-related traumatic stress symptoms (M. J. Horowitz, N. Wilner, & W. Alvarez, 1979), and perceived global stress (S. Cohen, T. Kamarck, & R. Mermelstein, 1983). Using hierarchical multiple regressions, the authors found that stress predicted both psychological and physical QoL (J. E. Ware, K. K. Snow, & M. Kosinski, 2000) at the follow-ups (all ps < .03). These findings substantiate the relationship between initial stress and later QoL and underscore the need for timely psychological intervention.     

Walk this way: approaching bodies can influence the processing of faces

A highly familiar type of movement occurs whenever a person walks towards you. In the present study, we investigated whether this type of motion has an effect on face processing. We took a range of different 3D head models and placed them on a single, identical 3D body model. The resulting figures were animated to approach the observer. In a first series of experiments, we used a sequential matching task to investigate how the motion of an approaching person affects immediate responses to faces. We compared observers’ responses following approach sequences to their performance with figures walking backwards (receding motion) or remaining still. Observers were significantly faster in responding to a target face that followed an approach sequence, compared to both receding and static primes. In a second series of experiments, we investigated long-term effects of motion using a delayed visual search paradigm. After studying moving or static avatars, observers searched for target faces in static arrays of varying set sizes. Again, observers were faster at responding to faces that had been learned in the context of an approach sequence. Together these results suggest that the context of a moving body influences face processing, and support the hypothesis that our visual system has mechanisms that aid the encoding of behaviourally-relevant and familiar dynamic events.     

Facets of psychopathy, heart rate variability and cognitive function

The aim of the present study was to investigate whether the four facets of Hare's Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R; Hare, 1991; Bolt, Hare, Vitale, & Newman, 2004) were related to physiological and cognitive mechanisms. Fifty-three male prisoners participated in this study. Physiological responses were measured as heart rate variability (HRV) and heart rate (HR). Cognitive functions were measured using a continuous performance test (CPT; California Computerized Assessment Package, Abbreviated version) and a working memory test (WMT); based on Baddeley & Hitch (1974). The regression analysis of the HRV revealed that the interpersonal facet explained most of the variance during baseline (28%), CPT (16%), and WMT (12%). This was also true for the HR data during baseline (28%), CPT (20%), WMT (10%), and recovery (13%). The antisocial facet explained 10% of the variance only during baseline. Subjects scoring high compared to low on the interpersonal facet also showed better cognitive functioning. The study suggests that the different facets were differently associated with both physiological and cognitive functions.     

When language comprehension reflects production constraints: Resolving ambiguities with the help of past experience

A key assumption in language comprehension is that biases in behavioral data, such as the tendency to interpretJohn said that Mary left yesterday to mean thatyesterday modifies the syntactically local verb left, not the distant verbsaid, reflect inherent biases in the language comprehension system. In the present article, an alternative production-distribution-comprehension (PDC) account is pursued; this account states that comprehension biases emerge from different interpretation frequencies in the language, which themselves emerge from pressures on the language production system to produce some structures more than others. In two corpus analyses and two self-paced reading experiments, we investigated these claims for verb modification ambiguities, for which phrase length is hypothesized to shape production. The results support claims that tendencies to produce short phrases before long ones create distributional regularities for modification ambiguities in the language and that learning over these regularities shapes comprehenders’ interpretations of modification ambiguities. Implications for the PDC and other accounts are discussed.     

Personality and modulation of the startle reflex by emotionally-toned filmclips

Several researchers have found that pleasant foreground stimuli attenuate the eyeblink component of the startle reflex while unpleasant foreground stimuli potentiate it. The effects of personality factors on such modulation of the eyeblink response, as measured by electromyographic (EMG) activity in reaction to loud acoustic startle probes, were examined in subjects viewing emotionally-toned (pleasant, unpleasant and neutral) filmclips. During the main part of the experiment, introverts had higher baseline EMG activity and lower response probability than extraverts; no differences were observed at the beginning of the experiment, during an acclimatization session. Reflex modulation, as measured by response latency, was influenced by the Psychoticism (P) factor of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire: subjects high on P showed longer latencies to eyeblink onset when probed during viewing of pleasant filmclips than subjects low on this dimension; no significant differences were observed between subjects low and high on P for neutral and unpleasant filmclips. No influence of personality factors was found on affective modulation as measured by response amplitude/magnitude. The results are discussed in relation to Gray's and Eysenck's theories of personality.