On discontinuities in motor learning: a longitudinal study of complex skill acquisition on a ski-simulator

The qualitative behavioral reorganizations that occurred during the acquisition of a complex motor skill were examined. Five novice participants practiced for 39 sessions of ten 1-min trials on a modified version of the ski-simulator. Analyses focused on the motion of the apparatus platform, modeled as a self-sustained oscillator. At the beginning of the experiment, all participants adopted a behavior that could be modeled with a highly nonlinear stiffness function and a Rayleigh damping function. The behavior in the final part of the experiment was captured by a qualitatively different model, with a linear stiffness function and a van der Pol damping behavior. The transition from the initial to the final model was gradual and was marked in most cases by an abrupt increase of oscillation frequency. During the transition stage, the 2 damping behaviors seemed alternately exploited within each trial. The results are discussed in the framework of the dynamical systems approach to motor coordination and learning, considering motor skill acquisition as a phase transition.     

Effects of practice and task constraints on stiffness and friction functions in biological movements

A dynamical model of the movements of the platform of a ski-simulator was derived from experimental data, using the graphical and statistical methods developed by Beek and Beek (Beek, P. J., & Beek, W. J. (1988). Human Movement Science, 7, 301–342). The data were collected in an experiment in which both amplitude and practice were manipulated. The data were filtered and further reduced to normalised cycles that were averaged within and across subjects. Graphical methods were applied to these averaged normalised cycles to determine the stiffness and friction terms to be included in the model. The relative contribution of each term was assessed by means of multiple regression. The model, which included cubic and quintic Duffing terms and one or two dissipative Van der Pol terms, accounted on average for 99.2% of the variance. The exact parameter setting of the model differed considerably across subjects. For one subject, a qualitatively different model, including Rayleigh instead of Van der Pol terms, provided a better account of the data. Systematic changes of the coefficients in the model, related to amplitude and the duration of practice, were evident.     

The impact of self-efficacy and implementation intentions-based interventions on fruit and vegetable intake among adults

This study tested the effect of interventions designed for people who do not eat yet the recommended daily fruit and vegetable intake (FVI) but have a positive intention to do so. Adults (N?=?163) aged 20-65 were randomised into four groups: implementation intentions (II group), self-efficacy (SE group), combination of II?+?SE group) and a control group receiving written information on nutrition. Study variables were measured at baseline, post-intervention and at 3-month follow-up. At follow-up, compared to the control group, FVI increased significantly in the II and II?+?SE groups (1.5 and 1.9 servings per day, respectively). Most psychosocial variables significantly increased compared to the control group, with the exception of SE for vegetable intake (VI). Moreover, at 3-month follow-up, change in FVI was mediated by changes in fruit intake (FI) intention and VI action planning. In conclusion, II interventions were efficient to increase FVI, with or without consideration for the development of SE. Thus, future studies should favour the adoption of this approach to bridge the intention-behaviour gap for FVI.     

Remembering the orientation of newly learned characters depends on the associated writing knowledge: a comparison between handwriting and typing

Recent data support the idea that movements play a crucial role in letter representation and suggest that handwriting knowledge contributes to visual recognition of letters. If so, using different motor activities while subjects are learning to write should affect their subsequent recognition performances. In order to test this hypothesis, we trained adult participants to write new characters either by copying them or by typing them on a keyboard. After three weeks of training we ran a series of tests requiring visual processing of the characters' orientation. Tests were ran immediately, one week after, and three weeks after the end of the training period. Results showed that when the characters had been learned by typing, they were more frequently confused with their mirror images than when they had been written by hand. This handwriting advantage did not appear immediately, but mostly three weeks after the end of the training. Our results therefore suggest that the stability of the characters' representation in memory depends on the nature of the motor activity produced during learning.     

Motivational Profiles Among Young Table-Tennis Players in Intensive Training Settings: A Latent Profile Transition Analysis

This study aimed to (a) identify motivational profiles among a sample of 141 young table-tennis players involved in intensive training settings; (b) examine the consistency or change of motivational profiles for the same athlete over time; and (c) investigate differences between these profiles on burnout, coping, stress, and recovery. Latent profile transition analysis revealed 2 or 3 distinct profiles that are similar for the 3 measurement occasions: self-determined profile, moderate profile, and low profile. Motivational profiles exhibited both stability and changes over time from an intraindividual perspective. Athletes from the self-determined profile were characterized by the best psychological adjustment.     

Investigating Physiological and Self-Reported Mediators of Stereotype Lift Effects on a Motor Task

Achievement gaps between social groups may result from stereotype threat effects but also from stereotype lift effects—the performance boost caused by the awareness that an outgroup is negatively stereotyped. We examined stereotype lift and threat effects in the motor domain and investigated their mediation by task involvement and self-confidence, measured by heart rate reactivity and self-reported indices. Males and females performed a balance task about which negative stereotypes about either males or females were given. No gender information was given in a control condition. Results showed no stereotype threat but a stereotype lift effect, participants performing significantly better after negative outgroup stereotypes were explicitly linked to performance on the balance task compared to the control condition. Concerning males, this effect was mediated by higher self-confidence and task involvement. The implications of these results for understanding the gender inequalities in the motor domain are discussed.     

Sick? Or slow? On the origins of intelligence as a psychological object

This paper examines the first moments of the emergence of “psychometrics” as a discipline, using a history of the Binet–Simon test (precursor to the Stanford–Binet) to engage the question of how intelligence became a “psychological object.” To begin to answer this, we used a previously-unexamined set of French texts to highlight the negotiations and collaborations that led Alfred Binet (1857–1911) to identify “mental testing” as a research area worth pursuing. This included a long-standing rivalry with Désiré-Magloire Bourneville (1840–1909), who argued for decades that psychiatrists ought to be the professional arbiters of which children would be removed from the standard curriculum and referred to special education classes in asylums. In contrast, Binet sought to keep children in schools and conceived of a way for psychologists to do this. Supported by the Société libre de l'étude psychologique de l'enfant [Free society for the psychological study of the child], and by a number of collaborators and friends, he thus undertook to create a “metric” scale of intelligence—and the associated testing apparatus—to legitimize the role of psychologists in a to-that-point psychiatric domain: identifying and treating “the abnormal”. The result was a change in the earlier law requiring all healthy French children to attend school, between the ages of 6 and 13, to recognize instead that otherwise normal children sometimes need special help: they are “slow” (arriéré), but not “sick.” This conceptualization of intelligence was then carried forward, through the test's influence on Lewis Terman (1877–1956) and Lightner Witmer (1867–1956), to shape virtually all subsequent thinking about intelligence testing and its role in society.     

Writing the (researcher) self: reflective practice and undergraduate research

This paper discusses the way in which postmodern emergence was used to assist a group of undergraduate students come to new understandings of research practice as they participated in a reflective component of an Undergraduate Research Summer School. Students were encouraged to ‘write the (researcher) self’ through a collaborative writing group based on the theoretical and pedagogical work of Somerville. Postmodern emergence highlights three stages of learning; firstly, assigning time for wondering, then a liminal space for becoming and finally an opportunity for generating new knowledge. This article is both the tangible product of this emergence reflective writing process and a recommendation about the capacity of undergraduate students to engage with their own professionalisation and meaning-making.