Eye quietness and quiet eye in expert and novice golf performance: an electrooculographic analysis

Quiet eye (QE) is the final ocular fixation on the target of an action (e.g., the ball in golf putting). Camerabased eye-tracking studies have consistently found longer QE durations in experts than novices; however, mechanisms underlying QE are not known. To offer a new perspective we examined the feasibility of measuring the QE using electrooculography (EOG) and developed an index to assess ocular activity across time: eye quietness (EQ). Ten expert and ten novice golfers putted 60 balls to a 2.4 m distant hole. Horizontal EOG (2ms resolution) was recorded from two electrodes placed on the outer sides of the eyes. QE duration was measured using a EOG voltage threshold and comprised the sum of the pre-movement and post-movement initiation components. EQ was computed as the standard deviation of the EOG in 0.5 s bins from –4 to +2 s, relative to backswing initiation: lower values indicate less movement of the eyes, hence greater quietness. Finally, we measured club-ball address and swing durations. T-tests showed that total QE did not differ between groups (p = .31); however, experts had marginally shorter pre-movement QE (p = .08) and longer post-movement QE (p < .001) than novices. A group × time ANOVA revealed that experts had less EQ before backswing initiation and greater EQ after backswing initiation (p = .002). QE durations were inversely correlated with EQ from –1.5 to 1 s (rs = –.48 - –.90, ps = .03 - .001). Experts had longer swing durations than novices (p = .01) and, importantly, swing durations correlated positively with post-movement QE (r = .52, p = .02) and negatively with EQ from 0.5 to 1s (r = –.63, p = .003). This study demonstrates the feasibility of measuring ocular activity using EOG and validates EQ as an index of ocular activity. Its findings challenge the dominant perspective on QE and provide new evidence that expert-novice differences in ocular activity may reflect differences in the kinematics of how experts and novices execute skills

The Intersection of Student Engagement and Student Achievement: A Study to Determine the Strength of the Relationship Between the Level of Athletic Participation and Student Achievement

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between high school students’ athletics participation, mediated by engagement, and their academic achievement. The study sought to determine if increased athletics participation, and a self-reported increased sense of engagement at school, resulted in higher SAT test scores for high school students. In addition to this, predicators of race and gender were also incorporated into the statistical analysis of the relationship between sports participation and SAT scores. Using the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09), this study analyzed the survey respondents scale of student engagement, participation in organized sports and average SAT reading, math and writing scores. This study utilized the scale of student engagement and participation in organized sports in the base year of the report (2009-2010), and then the student’s average SAT scores in the follow-up report. Through the statistical analyses presented in this study, it was found that sports participation had a positive impact on student SAT scores, meaning that as sports participation increased, students were more likely to score better on the SAT. The same goes for the independent variable of student engagement, though not to the same positive degree of sports participation. This data supports the idea that as students participate more in athletics and increase their engagement at school, they will see benefits in their academic performance

Arts, Culture & the Brain: A literature review and new epidemiological analyses

In this report, we provide an overview of the current evidence on the associations between arts and cultural engagement and the brain, and we also add to this evidence, conducting our own new analyses of cohort data

The Meaning of Physical Activity from the Perspective of Indonesian Immigrant Youth

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to examine what constitutes the experience of physical activity for Indonesian immigrant youth. Fifteen Indonesian young people aged 13 to 18 participated in the study. Data were collected through two sets of interviews. During the first set of interviews, data were gathered about physical activity experiences and the meanings that the youth ascribed to their participation. A second set of interviews were conducted to collect information about the participants’ strategies for engaging Indonesian immigrants in physical activity. Seven purposefully selected participants were the respondents in these interviews. Data were analyzed using a three step phenomenological data analysis process: horizonalization, textural and structural descriptions, and the essence of physical activity experience (Moustakas, 1994). Results indicated that the meanings of physical activity included the moving body anchored in naturalistic views of the body. Participants also identified the institutionalized forms of physical culture, along with their forms, purposes, and significance in their lives. These meanings were ascribed to their actual physical activity experiences which partly reflected acculturation processes. Results also revealed facilitators of, and barriers to, physical activity participation which were relatively similar to other groups of young people. However, the enabling factors might ineffectively facilitate participation and the hindering factors emerged as more powerful obstacles. Finally, results identified strategies to engage Indonesian immigrant youth in physical activity from the participants’ perspectives. These strategies included proactive outreach efforts by agencies providing physical activity programs. Participants’ voices and aspirations demonstrated that their cultural uniqueness might not immediately constitute the cultural capital to engage with major institutionalized forms of physical culture, especially among those who recently arrived in the United States

Exploring the Past: A Retrospective Look at the Experiences of Young Men in High School Physical Education Classes

High school physical education classes aim to provide young men with the competence and confidence needed to lead a physically active lifestyle (Borghese, 2019; Tanaka et al., 2018). As well, physical education is recognized as a significant contributor to the daily accumulation of moderate to vigorous physical activity among young men (Tanaka et al., 2018). However, a considerable gap exists in the literature regarding what specific factors influence young men to participate during their physical education classes. Using a retrospective, qualitative description study, this research project explored the previous high school physical education experiences of 10 male-identifying students at the University of Saskatchewan. Using two rounds of semi-structured, individual interviews, each participant’s previous physical education experiences were investigated at length. The findings from these individual interviews can be understood through three themes: Us and Them, The Physical Education Teacher: “Him and His Football Boys” and Physical Cultural Capital. Woven throughout these three themes, the findings suggest that several key factors play a role in determining a young man’s participation and engagement in physical education. These key factors include competitiveness, participation in community hockey or on the school football team, relationships with the physical education teacher and accruement of physical cultural capital. The findings of this study support previous research, identifying physical cultural capital as a factor that affects engagement in physical education (Jachyra, 2014). As there is a paucity of research regarding young mens’ experiences with participation in physical education, this study aimed to add relevant information to a topic that lacks sufficient research

I am not your Student-Athlete: An Investigation of Social Identity Complexity as a Stereotype Threat Mitigation Strategy and Individual Differences that may moderate the effect

Collegiate athletes must contend with negative stereotypes during their academic career (Comeaux, 2012). Such stereotypes depict student-athletes as unintelligent (Yopyk & Prentice, 2005) and overlook the benefits and variability of the collegiate athletic experience. Student-athletes are multifaceted and more than their sport. Unfair depictions can influence student-athletes’ behavior, especially in the classroom. Research shows that student-athletes’ academic performance is affected by stereotype threat (Riciputi & Erdal, 2017); which is the apprehension of confirming a negative stereotype about one’s social group (Steele & Aronson, 1995). Currently, there is no published evidence-based research on stereotype threat mitigation strategies tailored to student-athletes. Expanding the work of Gresky et al. (2005), this study explored a self-concept map activity, based on the social identity complexity theory, as one potential strategy for collegiate athletes (exploring multiple social identities). Division I student-athletes (N = 70) were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions: 1) threat-no mitigation, 2) threat-mitigation, and 3) no threat-no mitigation (control). Factorial ANOVA was employed to assess differences in participants’ scores on an SAT-style examination (writing/language and mathematics) across conditions. Academic self-concept, gender identity, and race/ethnicity served as grouping variables and potential moderators. Results showed no significant differences in overall test performance across experimental conditions, or between gender identity (female and male). Results revealed several main effects of academic self-concept and race/ethnicity on components of performance, especially on difficult test items. Specific to the main hypothesis, a marginally significant (p = .052) interaction effect of condition by race/ethnicity was observed on the difficult math items. Post-hoc analyses showed that African American student-athletes had significantly poorer scores in the control condition than Caucasian student-athletes (p = .010), and in the threat condition than did Caucasian (p = .001) and Hispanic (p = .004) student-athletes. There was no difference between these groups in the mitigation condition. African American participants’ performance on difficult math items in the mitigation condition was significantly better than their performance in the threat condition (p = .02). These results suggest that stereotype threat mitigations may work, but strategies should be culturally-specific and tailored to the challenge of the academic tasks

Gender Differences among Professional Football Fans: Serious Leisure, Emotional Expressivity, and Cognitive Distortions

Increasingly, people report that leisure activity gives their lives meaning and significantly contributes to the formation of their personal identities. In fact, many individuals rank leisure activities as essential as work, family, and religion. (Gillespie, Leffler, & Lerner, 2010; Stebbins, 1992). Recent research has demonstrated that leisure involvement provides psychological benefits that contribute to wellbeing for both men and women (Caltabiano, 1995; Kim, Heo, Lee, & Kim, 2015). National Football League (NFL) fandom in the U.S. has been identified as a leisure activity that supersedes traditional gender norms and provides opportunities for family and group involvement. Although fandom has been examined as a social phenomenon, the literature regarding emotional and cognitive consequences of fan experience is sparse. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relative influence of levels of leisure involvement, emotional expressivity, and cognitive distortions in male and female NFL fans when exposed to high-stakes, game-related stimuli. NFL fans were measured on variables of leisure involvement, emotional expression and cognitive distortions, using the Serious Leisure Inventory Measure (Gould, Moore, McGuire, & Stebbins, 2008), the Berkeley Expressivity Questionnaire Gross & John, 1995) and the Inventory of Cognitive Distortions (Yurica, 2001), following exposure to an emotional NFL fandom stimulus, after being randomly assigned to either a win or a loss condition. Results revealed that women demonstrated higher emotional expressivity (positive, negative, impulse strength, and overall) and more cognitive distortions. Being female and having higher levels of fan involvement were predictive of cognitive distortions. Finally, men and women did not differ in levels of fandom involvement

Watching the games: Critical media literacy and students’ abilities to identify and critique the politics of sports

Sport can be the source of fitter, healthier and better lifestyles. However, sport can also be a vehicle for the reproduction of problematic notions of gender, race, nationality, industry, et cetera. If people who consume and participate in sport are unequipped to identify and question these issues, they will continue reproducing these conceptions uncritically. As a proponent of Critical Media Literacy (CML), through this dissertation I encourage educators to teach students the skills and knowledge to recognize and critically assess these and other problematic discourses in sports media. In this dissertation, I set out to discover if adolescents possess these skills and knowledge. Two main questions drive this research: First, what type of knowledge do the participants have about the socio-cultural, political and economic implications of sport in our societies? And second, can the participants identify socio-political issues (e.g. gender, race, nationality, political economy) in sports media texts as they consume them? To answer these questions, I first attempted a study with youth and later I recruited 20 first year university students to participate in a 90 minute session where I showed them three sports clips and asked them to complete a short qualitative questionnaire and partake in a focus group discussion. Using Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA), I examined both the questionnaires and the transcripts from the discussions leading to a critical analysis. I found that the participants had a limited knowledge of the general and critical media issues we discussed. Though the students demonstrated some understanding of the way the sports media operates, they consistently drew from stereotypes and common sense tropes when analyzing issues of race, nationality and gender in sports. I also found that students were generally unable to identify and/or critique problematic representations present in the videos. There were only 5.6% of instances where the participants questioned these problems in the clips. Most of the time (86.23%) the participants were either unaware of the issues or saw them as normal and saw no need to resist or critique. These findings support the idea that students would benefit from receiving a critical media literacy education that teaches them to identify and question hegemonic discourses in sports media