Self-determined motivation in physical education and its links to motivation for leisure-time physical activity, physical activity, and well-being in general

The present study tested a trans-contextual model based on self-determination theory of the relations between motivation in physical education, motivation in leisure-time physical activity, physical activity, and psychological well-being. Participants were 329 Norwegian upper secondary school students (M age = 16.5 yr., SD = 0.7). Students' perceptions of autonomy-supportive teachers in physical education were expected to be positively associated with students' psychological needs satisfaction in physical education, which was expected to be positively related to autonomous motivation for physical education participation. In turn, autonomous motivation for physical education was expected to be positively associated with perceived competence and autonomous motivation for leisure-time physical activity, which both were expected to be positively associated with leisure-time physical activity and psychological well-being in general. Structural equation models and bootstrapping supported the hypotheses and the indirect links between variables. Sex differences indicate that more research is needed on how to motivate girls to be more physically active in leisure time.     

Parenting styles

Parental educational styles constitute one of the key elements of family socialization. The aim of the present essay is to present the results of a research project carried out in the Principality of Asturias (Spain) among 2,965 families with children of infant and primary-school age (5-8 years old). This research attempts to analyse, among other aspects, parental behaviour tendencies in child upbringing. The analysis of the results obtained allows us to: 1) identify the most common attitudinal and behavioural tendencies of parents in the upbringing of their children; 2) determine how many people have a well defined parental style, and delimit their socio-educational characteristics. Lastly, we consider the need to change some parental behaviour patterns and stress the importance of family education programmes, with the aim of promoting appropriate parenting models and modifying or improving current practices.     

Functional neuroimaging studies of human emotions

Neuroimaging studies with positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging have begun to describe the functional neuroanatomy of human emotion. Taken separately, specific studies vary in task dimensions and in type(s) of emotion studied, and are limited by statistical power and sensitivity. By examining findings across studies in a meta-analysis, we sought to determine if common or segregated patterns of activations exist in different emotions and across various emotional tasks. We surveyed over 55 positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging activation studies, which investigated emotion in healthy subjects. This paper will review observations in several regions of interest in limbic (eg, amygdala, anterior cingulate cortex) and paralimbic (eg, medial prefrontal cortex, insula) brain regions in emotional responding.     

A Norwegian translation of the self–liking and competence scale

Although global self-esteem has historically been assumed to be a unidimensional construct, recent theory and research has challenged this assumption. Instead, it has been suggested that self-esteem might more fruitfully be viewed as a two-dimensional construct composed of: (a) self-liking, based on our perceptions of feedback from our social environment; and (b) self-competence, based on our internal conceptions of success and failure in performing tasks. The Self-Liking and Competence Scale (SLCS) is a self-esteem measure that has recently been developed based on this two-dimensional conceptualization of self-esteem. The purpose of the present research was to validate a Norwegian translation of the SLCS. 372 participants were given a translated version of the SLCS, and the translated scale exhibited psychometric properties similar to those of the original English version of the scale.     

Why does the phonological similarity effect reverse with nonwords?

The detrimental phonological similarity effect (PSE), a robust finding in serial recall of words, sometimes reverses with nonwords. The current study tested the hypothesis that nonwords benefit from phonological similarity because they are harder to retrieve. In two experiments serial recall and serial reconstruction of visually presented words and nonwords were compared. Phonological similarity is known to have a positive effect on item memory and a negative effect on position accuracy in serial recall, and the demands on item retrieval were greatly reduced in the latter task. PSE occurred for words in both tasks and was reversed for nonwords in serial recall, but not in serial reconstruction—a new finding in the literature. The following conclusions can be made: (1) the detrimental PSE on order retrieval occurs irrespective of lexicality, in accordance with prominent short-term memory models; and (2), the positive PSE on item retrieval is crucially affected by lexicality, a finding less well explained by the existing models.     

Interference resolution: Insights from a meta-analysis of neuroimaging tasks

A quantitative meta-analysis was performed on 47 neuroimaging studies involving tasks purported to require the resolution of interference. The tasks included the Stroop, flanker, go/no-go, stimulus-response compatibility, Simon, and stop signal tasks. Peak density-based analyses of these combined tasks reveal that the anterior cingulate cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, inferior frontal gyrus, posterior parietal cortex, and anterior insula may be important sites for the detection and/or resolution of interference. Individual task analyses reveal differential patterns of activation among the tasks. We propose that the drawing of distinctions among the processing stages at which interference may be resolved may explain regional activation differences. Our analyses suggest that resolution processes acting upon stimulus encoding, response selection, and response execution may recruit different neural regions.     

The brain basis of emotion: a meta-analytic review

Researchers have wondered how the brain creates emotions since the early days of psychological science. With a surge of studies in affective neuroscience in recent decades, scientists are poised to answer this question. In this target article, we present a meta-analytic summary of the neuroimaging literature on human emotion. We compare the locationist approach (i.e., the hypothesis that discrete emotion categories consistently and specifically correspond to distinct brain regions) with the psychological constructionist approach (i.e., the hypothesis that discrete emotion categories are constructed of more general brain networks not specific to those categories) to better understand the brain basis of emotion. We review both locationist and psychological constructionist hypotheses of brain-emotion correspondence and report meta-analytic findings bearing on these hypotheses. Overall, we found little evidence that discrete emotion categories can be consistently and specifically localized to distinct brain regions. Instead, we found evidence that is consistent with a psychological constructionist approach to the mind: A set of interacting brain regions commonly involved in basic psychological operations of both an emotional and non-emotional nature are active during emotion experience and perception across a range of discrete emotion categories.     

Distraction and placebo: two separate routes to pain control

An explosion of recent research has studied whether placebo treatments influence health-related outcomes and their biological markers, but almost no research has examined the psychological processes required for placebo effects to occur. This study tested whether placebo treatment and cognitive distraction reduce pain through shared or independent processes. We tested the joint effects of performance of an executive working memory task and placebo treatment on thermal pain perception. An interactive effect of these two manipulations would constitute evidence for shared mechanisms, whereas additive effects would imply separate mechanisms. Participants (N = 33) reported reduced pain both when they performed the working memory task and when they received the placebo treatment, but the reductions were additive, a result indicating that the executive demands of the working memory task did not interfere with placebo analgesia. Furthermore, placebo analgesia did not impair task performance. Together, these data suggest that placebo analgesia does not depend on active redirection of attention and that expectancy and distraction can be combined to maximize pain relief.     

Patterns of Ethnic Intolerance in Europe

This paper examines the patterns of ethnic intolerance in European societies based on data from the 1999/2000 wave of the European Values Survey. We analyze the differences in intolerance targeted toward Muslims, Jews, immigrants, Gypsies, and persons of different race, using modernisation theory and ??competition for scarce resource?? theories as our point of departure. Furthermore, we focus on the differences in the levels of intolerance in Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and Turkey. The present paper builds on previous empirical research, especially findings of recent multilevel analyses. Our larger and more extensive data material enables us to introduce two important improvements in this line of research. Theoretically, we are able to test if there are differences in the patterns of intolerance targeted toward specific minority groups. Methodologically, the number of countries in our data material is much larger, allowing us to apply multilevel models in a more statistically appropriate setting. Our results show that Gypsies stand out as an ethnic group particularly exposed to intolerance. The level of intolerance is lowest in Western Europe and highest in Turkey. In addition, the level of intolerance against Jews is particularly high in Turkey.     

The neural bases of distracter-resistant working memory

A major difference between humans and other animals is our capacity to maintain information in working memory (WM) while performing secondary tasks, which enables sustained, complex cognition. A common assumption is that the lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) is critical for WM performance in the presence of distracters, but direct evidence is scarce. We assessed the relationship between fMRI activity and WM performance within subjects, with performance matched across distracter and no-distracter conditions. Activity in the ventrolateral PFC during WM encoding and maintenance positively predicted performance in both conditions, whereas activity in the presupplementary motor area (pre-SMA) predicted performance only under distraction. Other parts of the dorsolateral and ventrolateral PFCs predicted performance only in the no-distracter condition. These findings challenge a lateral-PFC-centered view of distracter resistance, and suggest that the lateral PFC supports a type of WM representation that is efficient for dealing with task-irrelevant input but is, nonetheless, easily disrupted by dual-task demands.