In-session gaming as a tool in treating adolescent problematic gaming

For some adolescent gamers, playing online games may become problematic, impairing functioning in personal, family, and other life domains. Parental and family factors are known to influence the odds that adolescents may develop problematic gaming (PG), negative parenting and conflictual family dynamics increasing the risk, whereas positive parenting and developmentally supportive family dynamics protecting against PG. This suggests that a treatment for adolescent PG should not only address the gaming behaviors and personal characteristics of the youth, but also the parental and family domains. An established research-supported treatment meeting these requirements is multidimensional family therapy (MDFT), which we adapted for use as adolescent PG treatment. We report here on one adaptation, applying in-session gaming. In-session demonstration of the “problem behavior” is feasible and informative in PG. In the opening stage of therapy, we use in-session gaming to establish an alliance between the therapist and the youth. By inviting them to play games, the therapist demonstrates that they are taken seriously, thus boosting treatment motivation. Later in treatment, gaming is introduced in family sessions, offering useful opportunities to intervene in family members' perspectives and interactional patterns revealed in vivo as the youth plays the game. These sessions can trigger strong emotions and reactions from the parents and youth and give rise to maladaptive transactions between the family members, thus offering ways to facilitate new discussions and experiences of each other. The insights gained from the game demonstration sessions aid the therapeutic process, more so than mere discussion about gaming.     

Worldviews about change: Their structure and their implications for understanding responses to sustainability,technology, and political change

People hold different perspectives about how they think the world is changing or should change. We examined five of these “worldviews” about change: Progress, Golden Age, Endless Cycle, Maintenance, and Balance. In Studies 1–4 (total N = 2733) we established reliable measures of each change worldview, and showed how these help explain when people will support or oppose social change in contexts spanning sustainability, technological innovations, and political elections. In mapping out these relationships we identify how the importance of different change worldviews varies across contexts, with Balance most critical for understanding support for sustainability, Progress/Golden Age important for understanding responses to innovations, and Golden Age uniquely important for preferring Trump/Republicans in the 2016 US election. These relationships were independent of prominent individual differences (e.g., values, political orientation for elections) or context-specific factors (e.g., self-reported innovativeness for responses to innovations). Study 5 (N = 2140) examined generalizability in 10 countries/regions spanning five continents, establishing that these worldviews exhibited metric invariance, but with country/region differences in how change worldviews were related to support for sustainability. These findings show that change worldviews can act as a general “lens” people use to help determine whether to support or oppose social change.     

Doing it for the team: Soccer coaches' identity leadership predicts players' effort,turnover intentions,and performance

ObjectivesThe present research investigates how coaches' identity leadership predicts individual and team outcomes in soccer. Specifically, we tested hypotheses that coaches' identity leadership would be associated with players' perceptions of (a) higher team effort, (b) lower turnover intentions, (c) better individual performance, and (d) better team performance. In addition, we aimed to examine the relationship between coaches' identity leadership and increased team identification of players and the degree to which the associations of identity leadership with these various outcomes were mediated by players' strength of team identification.DesignWe conducted a cross-sectional study of male soccer players in Germany.MethodThe final sample consisted of 247 male soccer players nested in 24 teams that completed measures of their coaches' identity leadership, team identification, team effort, turnover intentions, and individual/team performance.ResultsAnalysis revealed a positive relationship between coaches' identity leadership and team effort, as well as individual and team performance. Moreover, coaches' identity leadership was associated with lower turnover intentions. There was also evidence that the relationships between identity leadership and the investigated outcomes were mediated by team identification.ConclusionsThese findings support claims that coaches' identity leadership is associated with better individual and team outcomes because it helps to build a sense of ‘we’ and ‘us’ in the team they lead.     

Belief in a Just World and Employee Voice Behavior: The Mediating Roles of Perceived Efficacy and Risk

Abstract

In this research, we hypothesized that employees’ belief in a just world (BJW) would be positively related to their voice behavior, i.e., the expression of ideas or opinions with the intention of engendering organizational improvement or change, and that this relation would be mediated by perceived voice efficacy and perceived voice risk. To test these hypotheses, we collected self-reported data from employees in two different countries: China (N?=?313) and Germany (N?=?190). The results revealed a positive association between BJW and employee voice behavior in both samples. The two-mediator model was confirmed in the Chinese sample, while only perceived voice efficacy played a mediating role in the German sample. Possible reasons for these differences may be related to differences in cultural dimensions and education levels between the samples. The findings emphasize the importance of bolstering employees’ belief in justice and the organizational climate, which influence perceived voice efficacy and risk, as means to increase organizational voice behavior.     

Relations entre réflexivité d’équipe,mémoire transactive et efficacité interventionnelle perçue chez les policiers-opérateurs du RAID

The objective of this study is to examine the influence of explicit (team reflexivity) and implicit (transactive memory) coordination processes on the perceived interventional effectiveness of specialized elite units (RAID) of the French national police. We test the hypothesis that transactive memory is a mediating process in the relationship between team reflexivity and perceived effectiveness. One hundred and three police-officers representing the seven French police special units replied to a questionnaire. The results show that perceived effectiveness is positively related to task reflexivity and transactive memory. The relationship between task reflexivity and perceived effectiveness is mediated by the integrated component of transactive memory (bootSE = 0.05, 95% BCa CI [0.004, 0.19]). The theoretical and practical implications are discussed with regard to the development of debriefing methods and teamwork training for the development of shared mental models.     

What’s a coach to do? Exploring coaches’ perspectives of body image in girls sport

Adolescent athletes report body image concerns that negatively impact their sport experiences and participation. The coach’s perspective may be informative to how the context of sport perpetuates, supports, or protects from negative body image. Yet few coaches are represented in this area of research. The purpose of the present study was to explore coaches’ perceptions of body image in girls sport. Thirteen coaches with an average of 10 years of experience working with girls in primarily non-aesthetic team sports were interviewed. Based on inductive thematic analysis, coaches’ perceptions of the athletes’ body image concerns were reflected in four themes labelled (i) body image: the ‘elephant’ on the field (i.e., identifying the unspoken nature of body image), (ii) agents of body image in sport (i.e., parents, coaches, and media), (iii) skill over appearance (i.e., focusing on athletic skill and competence), and (vi) systemic strategies. This last theme offers several considerations for improving the sport context with a lens to improve body image. Of relevance, it was apparent that all coaches operationalized body image as predicated on appearance, body shape, and weight and this narrow simplistic perception could guide future programs and practices. Taken together, findings highlight the need to intervene with coaches to provide adequate support and education on body image in girls sport.     

Shackling the shoulders of giants

This paper informally summarizes a two-day symposium held at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., September 5–6, 2002. The issue was to what extent the progress of science and societal capacity for continued technological innovation are threatened by excessive protection of intellectual property. Excessive protection creates disadvantages not only for scientists and inventors but also for educators/students and for librarians/clientele. Speakers from a variety of disciplines and institutions agreed unanimously that scientific and technological progress is, indeed, under serious threat. Various opinions were expressed about the degree of threat, currently and prospectively, as well as what counter-measures are best suited to resist undue restrictions on creative uses of scientific and technical data and information. This summary is based entirely on the author’s notes from the symposium, and the commentary offered is his alone. My apologies to the speakers if this paper does not accurately reflect the primary intent of their presentations. The “Suggested Readings” offered at the end are not specific to the speakers’ statements but rather are offered as a general resource to aid further research. The definitive record of the symposium is planned to be available from the National Academies Press as a Proceedings publication in the summer of 2003. John Gardenier is an independent researcher, ethicist and science writer.     

Green Keynesianism: Bringing the Entrepreneurial State Back in(to Question)?

Since the global financial crisis of 2007/8, proliferating calls for a Keynesian Green New Deal have cast the publicly (and environmentally) minded state as a necessary driver of technological innovation and social transformation, while, vice versa, innovation has moved to political centre-stage. The history and genesis of this particular Green Keynesian paradigm illustrate that some of its most high-profile proponents selectively and problematically frame twentieth-century Keynesianism and the ‘public good’. It is important to examine critically the calls for an ‘entrepreneurial state’ in which Green Keynesian ideas are mobilized in support of an agenda for continued and accelerated development of commercially focused, privately developed green technologies. The entrepreneurial state represents a neoliberal re-appropriation of Green Keynesianism, where dominant financial actors (in Silicon Valley, as opposed to on Wall Street) are tapped as the visionaries who can and should set our collective innovation agenda. Although there is a need for large-scale, coordinated techno-social efforts to address climate change, supporting ‘green’ innovation cannot simply be framed as maximizing ‘innovation’ while taking the ‘state’ for granted. Instead, it must entail a careful assessment of the specific trajectories of innovation being enabled and the underlying socio-natures that they maintain and promote. Science and technology studies (STS)-informed analysis allows, and compels, asking how socio-technological innovation and their constitutive power relations are crucially interrelated, making the reshaping of the state—still the primary institution and system of social relations of collective governance—a core but neglected political, technological and ecological project of our time, with a key role for STS.     

Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Globalization of Converging Technology Policy: Technological Developmentalism in South Korea

The United States (US), European Union (EU), and South Korea had different definitions and visions of technological convergence before interacting with each other from the late 2000s. The Korean government has used Western policies as a benchmark but produces a distinct concept of technological convergence due to a particular imaginary of technology as a vehicle for national economic growth. This sociotechnical imaginary of technological developmentalism influences Korea’s translation of technological convergence from other jurisdictions. Because the sociotechnical imaginaries of different nations are difficult to communicate across national contexts, the translation of visions often changes the original meaning of things like technological convergence. Western sociotechnical imaginaries such as human enhancement and sustainable development do not translate well into South Korea due to the national imaginary of technological developmentalism. First, Korea’s Lee administration predominantly envisioned converging technology (CT) as a new growth engine, in contrast to the US and EU which emphasize visions of trans-humanist or sustainable futures respectively. Second, the Park administration’s CT vision imitates the Western societal challenge-driven rationale, but this vision was not enacted. As such, the democratic, sustainable imaginary of societal challenge-driven innovation is not easily translated into Korea’s national imaginary or technology policy.     

Controlling the flight on double-handed foiling catamarans: The role of shared equipment on the crew members' mutual modes of regulation

The purpose of this study was to contribute to the understanding of the role of shared sport equipment in the collective coordination of a team. It was conducted within an enactive approach of human cognition by mobilizing the methodological tools and methods of the Course of Action framework. Six crew members of hydrofoil sailing catamarans participated in this study. Data collection consisted in video-recording training sessions followed by individual self-confrontation interviews. A qualitative analysis of the data allowed typical modes of regulation of the flight to be characterized from each crew member's perspective. Three main modes of regulation were identified. All of them involved either salient perception of the boat's movements, or actions directed to regulating the boat’s movement. In the discussion, we propose a distinction between three types of collective sport situations, regarding the role of the material environment of athletes in their coordination. This distinction opens new perspectives both for future research on team coordination, and for pedagogical and training implications.