The relationship of anthropometric measurements with psychological criteria in female athletes

Sports and exercise settings as well as other socio-cultural environments emphasize a thin and physically fit female body. However, there is a clear need for a better understanding of the physical and psychological correlates of social physique anxiety and body image dissatisfaction in female athletes. This study aimed to examine the association of the social physique anxiety, body image satisfaction, and personality with the anthropometric measurements in female college athletes according to their sport type using the Co-Plot technique. The sample included 63 female athletes ranging in age from 18 to 26. Results of the Co-Plot analysis revealed a significant association among social physique anxiety, personality and anthropometric measurements. This means that certain physical measurements may lead to greater social physique anxiety and body image dissatisfaction in female athletes. It was found that females having higher levels of social physique anxiety and thus, lower levels of body image satisfaction may be less emotionally stable and more negatively perfectionist. In conclusion, the results of the present study provided evidence to the claim that both physical self-perception and anthropometric measurements may be closely associated with psychological criteria in female athletes.     

Locked into the System? Critical Community Psychology Approaches to Personal Debt in the Context of Crises of Capital Accumulation

The considerable and sustained boom in personal debt recently has in many countries around the world led to experiences of over‐indebtedness that are associated with very considerable distress and suffering. This article explores critical perspectives that situate personal debt, material deprivation and suffering, and specific ways of knowing and acting, within the context of recent political and economic practices. There is a need to focus on positioning people's experiences of debt within a broader matrix of factors of national and international practices and policies, including globalisation, changing labour markets, and poorly regulated financial industries. These factors appear to have allowed a network of international financial institutions to adopt practices that have proved successful in creating personal debt. Yet, an individualised discourse of financial capability has been propagated, configuring personal debt as a problem of irresponsible individual consumption. In order to explore ways of resisting reactionary and individualised modes of addressing personal debt, proposals will be made of alternative paradigms for responding to personal debt, defined by two dimensions of community psychological practice, with examples. This article aims to increase collective awareness of the systemic character of debt and the collective responses required. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Religious Cognition and Behaviour in Autism: The Role of Mentalizing

Mentalizing, or theory of mind, has been argued to be critical for supporting religious beliefs and practices involving supernatural agents. As individuals with autism spectrum conditions have been found to have deficits in mentalizing, this raises the question as to how they may conceive of gods and behave in relation to gods. To examine this, we compared high-functioning individuals with autism spectrum conditions (HFA) to typically developing individuals across seven key aspects of religious cognition and behaviour: (a) strength of belief, (b) anthropomorphism of god concepts, (c) felt closeness toward the god, (d) prayer habits, (e) attraction to prayer, (f) efficacy of prayer, and (g) a sense of agency while praying. A battery of mentalizing tasks was administered to measure mentalizing ability, along with the Autism-Spectrum Quotient. As expected, typically developing subjects performed better than HFA subjects in the advanced mentalizing task. However, no statistically significant differences were found with first-order and second-order false belief tasks. In contrast to our predictions and previous research on the religiosity of HFA, we found very little differences between the groups in their religious cognition and behaviour. Moreover, the relationship between mentalizing ability and most of our measures of religious cognition and behaviour was weak and negative. Our data suggest that HFA's deficits in mentalizing appear to have only minimal impact on the way they interact and think about gods. We end the article by reevaluating the role mentalizing may have in religious cognition and behaviour.     

Effect of Force Sense to Active Joint Position Sense and Relationships between Active Joint Position Sense,Force Sense,Jumping and Muscle Strength

Abstract

We aimed to investigate the effect of external load on the joint position sense (JPS) accuracy and its relation to the target jump height. The present study also aimed to explore the relationship between force sense (FS) and maximum voluntary isometric contraction (MVIC). Participants’ MVIC levels were determined during the 45-degree knee extension task. Then, participants were asked to execute a knee JPS task with external load (EL-JPS) and with no-load (EL-JPS). To assess jumping accuracy participants were instructed to jump with their 50% of maximum jump height. Results indicated that EL-JPS error values were lower than NL-JPS. EL-JPS was correlated to jumping errors. However, the relationship between NL-JPS and jumping errors was not significant. A significant correlation was found between MVIC and FS errors.     

The Relationship Between Mindfulness and Happiness in Student-Athletes: The Role of Self-Compassion—Mediator or Moderator?

Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy - In the present study, the mediating and moderating role of self-compassion in the relationship between mindfulness and happiness was...     

The jumping to conclusions bias associated with symptoms in schizophrenia: which factors influence this bias?

ABSTRACT

Jumping-to-conclusions (JTC) bias has been found to be associated with delusions. However, there is limited data about which other factors are related to JCT bias. The aim of the current study was to investigate the effects of psychotic, cognitive, impulsivity and anxiety symptoms on JTC bias. We compared individuals with paranoid schizophrenia, non-paranoid schizophrenia, generalized anxiety disorder and healthy individuals in terms of JTC bias. Beads task (90:10 and 60:40 versions), Tower of London task, BPRS, SAPS, SANS and BIS-11 were applied. Our results show that the factors related with JTC bias were different on each version of the Beads task. Education levels, anxiety and negative symptoms of individuals with schizophrenia were found to affect JTC bias on 90:10 version of task, whereas positive symptoms and impulsivity levels were related to JTC bias on 60:40 version. These results are important as they contribute to our understanding of this relationship.