Correction of a Technical Error in the Golf Swing: Error Amplification Versus Direct Instruction

Performance errors drive motor learning for many tasks. The authors' aim was to determine which of two strategies, method of amplification of error (MAE) or direct instruction (DI), would be more beneficial for error correction during a full golfing swing with a driver. Thirty-four golfers were randomly assigned to one of three training conditions (MAE, DI, and control). Participants were tested in a practice session in which each golfer performed 7 pretraining trials, 6 training-intervention trials, and 7 posttraining trials; and a retention test after 1 week. An optoeletronic motion capture system was used to measure the kinematic parameters of each golfer's performance. Results showed that MAE is an effective strategy for correcting the technical errors leading to a rapid improvement in performance. These findings could have practical implications for sport psychology and physical education because, while practice is obviously necessary for improving learning, the efficacy of the learning process is essential in enhancing learners' motivation and sport enjoyment.     

Can Visual Illusions Be Used to Facilitate Sport Skill Learning?

Recently it has been reported that practicing putting with visual illusions that make the hole appear larger than it actually is leads to longer-lasting performance improvements. Interestingly, from a motor control and learning perspective, it may be possible to actually predict the opposite to occur, as facing a smaller appearing target should enforce performers to be more precise. To test this idea the authors invited participants to practice an aiming task (i.e., a marble-shooting task) with either a visual illusion that made the target appear larger or a visual illusion that made the target appear smaller. They applied a pre–post test design, included a control group training without any illusory effects and increased the amount of practice to 450 trials. In contrast to earlier reports, the results revealed that the group that trained with the visual illusion that made the target look smaller improved performance from pre- to posttest, whereas the group practicing with visual illusions that made the target appear larger did not show any improvements. Notably, also the control group improved from pre- to posttest. The authors conclude that more research is needed to improve our understanding of whether and how visual illusions may be useful training tools for sport skill learning.     

Revelry,Rivalry, and Longing for the Goddesses of Bengal: The Fortunes of Hindu Festivals,by Rachel Fell McDermott,New York: Columbia University Press, 2011, xviii + 372 pp. ISBN 978-0-231-12918-3, US$90.00 (cloth); ISBN 978-0-231-12919-0, US$29.50 (paperback)

This article introduces a review symposium on Sexuality in Classical South Asian Buddhism. I situate this book in the newly emerging field of Buddhism and sexuality, and also provide a discussion of previous works by the author that led to the current volume under review. I also provide a broad overview of the book itself for those unfamiliar with the work. The responses in this symposium are offered by Sarah H. Jacoby (Northwestern University), John Powers (Deakin University), and Amy Paris Langenberg (Eckerd College).     

Consequentializing and Underdetermination

The paper explores a new interpretation of the consequentializing project. Three prominent interpretations are criticized for neglecting the explanatory dimension of moral theories. Instead, it is argued that consequentializing leads to a phenomenon that is structurally analogous to one in science—the underdetermination of theory by evidence. This provides important insights into the consequentializing debate, and advances our general understanding of the moral domain.     

Homophobia in physical education and sport: The role of physical/sporting identity and attributes,authoritarian aggression,and social dominance orientation

We examined levels of, and reasons for, anti‐gay and anti‐lesbian prejudice (homophobia) in pre‐service physical education (PE) and non‐physical education (non‐PE) university students. Participants (N = 409; 66% female; N = 199 pre‐service physical educators) completed questionnaires assessing anti‐gay and lesbian prejudice, authoritarianism, social dominance orientation (SDO), physical/athletic identity and self‐concept, and physical attributes. ANCOVAs revealed that PE students had higher levels of anti‐gay (p = .004) and lesbian prejudice than non‐PE students (p = .008), respectively. Males reported greater anti‐gay prejudice (p < .001), but not anti‐lesbian prejudice, than females. Authoritarian aggression was positively associated with greater anti‐gay (β = .49) and lesbian prejudice (β = .37) among male participants. Among females, higher authoritarian aggression and SDO was associated with greater anti‐gay (β = .34 and β = .25, respectively) and lesbian (β = .26 and β = .16, respectively) prejudice. The physical identity‐related constructs of athletic self‐concept (β = .?15) and perceived upper body strength (β = .39) were associated with anti‐gay attitudes among male participants. Physical attractiveness (β = ?.29) and upper body strength (β = .29) were also associated with male participants’ anti‐lesbian prejudice. Regression analyses showed that the differences between PE and non‐PE students in anti‐gay and lesbian prejudice were largely mediated by authoritarianism and SDO. The present study is the first to examine the relationship between investment in physical/sporting identity and attributes and anti‐gay and lesbian prejudice in PE/sport participants. In the present sample, anti‐gay and lesbian prejudice was greater in pre‐service PE students than non‐PE students, but these differences appear to be explained by differences in conservative ideological traits. Additionally, physical identity and athletic attributes based around masculine ideals also appear to contribute to this prejudice in males.     

Cosmic Commons: Contact and Community

Abstract

As we Homo sapiens on planet Earth prepare for possible contact with extraterrestrial life (ET)—especially extraterrestrial intelligent (ETI) life—we need to consider ethics. What will be the ethical posture we adopt as Earth meets space? This article advocates an ethic of praxis based upon the concept of a Cosmic Commons. Intelligent extraterrestrial beings, from their experiences in biotic and abiotic environments, should share with us a universal regard for intelligence (intellilife), respect for biotic evolution, and a sense of responsibility for shared common space in our places in the universe. As we venture from Earth into space, what will be required? Not anxiety over human dis-placement to new worlds; nor should we invest our efforts in irresponsibly exploiting the natural goods of other planets. Rather, we need an ethical transformation of terrestrial human thought and conduct prior to, during, and as a consequence of extraterrestrial explorations and engagements. We need an anticipatory Cosmic Charter.     

Transhumanism and Roman Catholicism: Imagined and Real Tensions

Abstract

Transhumanists have asserted that religious people would both oppose life extension and allowing people with extended lives to die. In this paper, coming from a Roman Catholic perspective, I refute four myths associated with these claims: that the Church materially opposes life extension, that it conceptually opposes the very idea of life extension, that it opposes human genetic manipulation, and that it opposes letting people die in hospitals. I then propose that there are four real tensions that are much more significant: that material immortality is highly improbable, that injustice and inequality are major concerns, that transhuman omnipotence is impossible, and that utopianism is extremely dangerous.     

Book Review: Contemporary Perspectives on Psychotherapy and Homosexualities

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to illustrate some of the ethical and clinical difficulties which may arise when student counselling takes place under conditions which pay insufficient attention to the ground rules of therapy. It considers the importance of the frame in psychotherapy and the implications for this of working in an institutional setting. It also looks at the changes that may be made in the way the counsellor functions in the institution in order to secure the best conditions for effective counselling work with students, based on the author's personal experience.     

Churches as organisations: towards a virtue ecclesiology for today

This article is an attempt to offer insights from organisation studies to ecclesiology. To do so it draws particularly on the work of the moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre to offer a virtue ecclesiology for today. The application of MacIntyre's conceptual framework of practices, institutions, goods and virtues to all kinds of organisations, which already exists in the field of organisation studies, is extended to the church as an organisation. It suggests that the church may be re-described as an organisation in which the practices of faith are housed within the institution of the church. On this understanding, the gift of the church to the world is not simply the practices of faith but the manner in which they are institutionalised.     

Precarious life and the ethics of care: Subjectivity in an Indian religious phenomenon

This article relates certain figures of the subject in an emergent Indian pilgrimage. On the basis of ethnographic research and 15 in-depth interviews, I show that these religious subjectivities, phenomenologically immersed in highly precarious material conditions, are radically relational. Observations on the pilgrimage (en)counter the cognitivist assumptions of a body of scholarly opinion on contemporary religious practice. The analyst's attention to pilgrimage rituals and narratives traverses sociological, phenomenological, and psychoanalytic theories, and is, thereby, drawn to important questions of self, ethics, and time.