Cognitive and somatic anxiety and self-confidence in athletic performance of beach volleyball

This study considered the influence of competitive anxiety and self-confidence state responses upon athletic performance. 66 male beach volleyball players completed the translated and modified Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 which included the original intensity scale and a direction scale of Jones and Swain. Players' performance was scored from the video records using a standard rating scales. Correlations indicated scores on Direction subscale of modified Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 and Self-confidence were moderately positively (r=.27 to .51) correlated with different skill components and sum of skill components of beach volleyball. Stepwise multiple regressions indicated that, as anticipated, directional perceptions of cognitive and somatic anxiety and self-confidence were significant predictors of beach volleyball performance but accounted for only 42% of variance. Original Intensity subscales of somatic and cognitive anxiety did not predict performance. Findings support the notion that direction of anxiety responses must be taken into consideration when examining anxiety-performance association in sport.     

Phenomenology and Perceptual Content

Terence Horgan and John Tienson argue that there is phenomenal intentionality, that is, “a kind of intentionality, pervasive in human mental life, that is constitutively determined by phenomenology alone”. However, their arguments are open to two lines of objection. First, Horgan and Tienson are not sufficiently clear as to what kind of content it is that they take to be determined by, or to supervene on, phenomenal character. Second, critics have objected that, for their conclusion to follow, Horgan and Tienson would first have to establish the covariation of phenomenology and intentional content, but even so, phenomenal intentionality would still emerge as less plausible than its converse, representationalism. I will address these two challenges by appeal to Husserlian ideas. A consideration of perceptual phenomenology (i.e., phenomenal character) shows that there is a kind of perceptual content that is, indeed, determined by phenomenal character. Such content is conceived in terms of fulfillment conditions, or what it takes to bring aspects of objects and scenes to different, and more complete, ways of givenness. We can establish the primacy of phenomenology, relative to such fulfillment‐conditional content, by tracing it back to the basic phenomenology of visual and other sensations.     

Attitudes and illusions: Herbert Leyendecker’s phenomenology of perception

In this paper, I discuss aspects of Herbert Leyendecker’s 1913 doctoral dissertation, Towards the Phenomenology of Deceptions (Zur Phänomenologie der Täuschungen), which he defended in 1913 at the University of Munich. Leyendecker was a member of the Munich and Göttingen Phenomenological Circles. In my discussion of his largely neglected views, I explore the connection between his ideas concerning “attitudes” (Einstellungen), e.g., of searching for, observing, counting, or working with objects, and the central topic of his text, perceptual illusions, thematized by Leyendecker as a kind of perceptual “deception” (Täuschung). Indeed, Leyendecker argues that a change of attitude is a necessary aspect of an illusion. I argue that Leyendecker’s use of the notion of attitude in accounting for illusions is problematic; yet I also suggest that his ideas are not devoid of philosophical interest, in relation to current debates.

     

A vignette study of novices' interviewing skills of asylum seekers

The aim of the current research was to replicate Van Veldhuizen, Horselenberg, Landstrom, et al.’s (2017) vignette study among novice Estonian police cadets to map their interviewing skills. Sixty-one police cadets from the Estonian Academy of Security Sciences were asked to respond to one of four vignettes that contained fictitious asylum narratives. Two of the vignettes contained no evidence for the origin of the asylum seeker, and the other two contained no evidence for the claim of persecution. The cadets were asked to formulate five questions that would help them to assess the credibility of the applicant's claim. We coded the style, type, and content of the questions. Our analyses showed that, in line with best practice, the cadets mainly formulated open questions in an information-gathering style. A thematic analysis revealed that when a claim about origin was assessed, cadets typically formulated questions about life in the country of origin, identity documents, and the flight to Europe. When assessing a persecution claim, in contrast, they mostly formulated case-specific questions.     

Action and Variation in Perception

In her paper, ‘Action and Self‐location in Perception’, Susanna Schellenberg argues that perceptual experience of an object's intrinsic spatial properties, such as its size and shape, requires a capacity to act. More specifically, Schellenberg argues that, to have a perceptual experience of an object's intrinsic spatial properties, a subject needs to have a certain practical conception of space, or a spatial know‐how. That, in turn, requires self‐locating representations, which locate the subject, relative to the perceptual object, as a perceiver and an agent, viz., someone who has a capacity for actions. She also makes two objections, viz., the unification objection and the sentient statue objection, to Alva Noë's sensorimotor view, a different account of how perceptual experience depends on actions. I will argue that her objections jointly render problematic not only Noë's but also her own view.     

Visual field and empty space

In a paper titled “Seeing Empty Space,” Louise Richardson argues for the thesis that seeing empty space involves a certain “structural feature,” namely, “it [s] seeming to one as if some region of space is one in which if some visible object were there, one would see it” (SF; Richardson, 2010, p. 237). I will argue that there is a reason to question whether a structural feature such as SF is needed in order to visually experience empty space. I will also propose that the visual experience of empty space does involve a quite different structural feature, underscoring the mediating role of empty space in visual experience.     

Dynamics in Using Different Question Types in Estonian Police Interviews of Children

The present study examined Estonian police officers' interviewing tactics with children in cases of physical and/or sexual abuse, as there are no published studies conducted in a country formally part of the Soviet Union. Also, the dynamics in using different question types within interviews was examined. Investigative interviews with 66 children (mean age 8 years 10 months, range 4 to 14 years) were transcribed and analyzed. Option‐posing and direct questions were most frequently employed, but invitations produced significantly more information. Four to seven‐year‐old children were asked more suggestive questions than older children. As interviews progressed, the average number of explanations and general invitations per interview decreased, whereas the number of suggestive and option‐posing questions increased. This study suggests that like police officers in other countries, Estonian investigators require training in structured interviewing methods to increase the number of invitations and reduce reliance upon option‐posing and direct questions. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Corijn van Mazijk: Perception and reality in Kant,Husserl, and McDowell,New York: Routledge, 2020, 192 pp., ISBN 978-0-367-44180-7, ISBN 978-1-003-01022-7

Continental Philosophy Review - Corijn van Mazijk’s book is a critical exploration of the relations between Immanuel Kant’s, Edmund Husserl’s, and John McDowell’s...     

Congruence of actual and retrospective reports of precompetition affect and anxiety for young volleyball players

The current study examined the accuracy of retrospective recall of affect and competitive anxiety in 38 youth beach volleyball players, who were randomly assigned into two equal groups: participants who watched a video of their precompetition preparation before responding to the items, and players who did not watch a videotape. All completed the modified competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 1 hr., and the affect grid 5 min., before a competition and again 2 days later. Accuracy in recalling anxiety and affect by these players was significant in both conditions (rs = .59-.76 and .41-.59, respectively). However, in the video condition, item responses showed markedly higher percentages of agreement for the Somatic and Cognitive Anxiety subscales and the affect grid than those for the no-video condition (52.6-78.9% and 36.8-52.6%, respectively). Analysis of variance indicated that watching a video for precompetition preparation improved the accuracy of retrospective recall of anxiety and arousal. Video feedback of performance increased the accuracy of retrospective report of affect and anxiety in these young athletes.     

Constitutive strata and the dorsal stream

In his paper, “The Dorsal Stream and the Visual Horizon,” Michael Madary argues that “dorsal stream processing plays a main role in the spatiotemporal limits of visual perception, in what Husserl identified as the visual horizon” (Madary 2011, p. 424). Madary regards himself as thereby providing a theoretical framework “sensitive to basic Husserlian phenomenology” (Madary 2011). In particular, Madary draws connections between perceptual anticipations and the experience of the indeterminate spatial margins, on the one hand, and the Husserlian spatiotemporal visual horizons, on the other. I argue that Madary’s arguments, for a Husserlian view of the two visual systems, are not convincing. When the notion of visual horizon is adequately understood as a constitutive notion, there will be reason to regard the connections between dorsal processing and the Husserlian spatiotemporal horizons as tenuous at best.