The time course of attention during two golf putts of different lengths in a group of experienced golfers

Previous research using the dual-task paradigm to assess the time course of attention has been conducted with many sport-specific movements, such as a tennis serve, a volleyball set, a horseshoe pitch, and a basketball free-throw. However, this line of research has not been applied to a golf putting stroke which differs from previous sport skills because it requires that participants strike the ball with a club rather than propelling it directly from their hands. In the current study, a dual-task paradigm was used to investigate the time course of attention during two golf putts: one from 6 feet (easy condition) and one from 12 feet (difficult condition). A sample of experienced golfers (N = 20) with a handicap of 17 or less participated in the study. Participants were asked to respond verbally to an auditory tone presented at three probe positions during the two putts. The order of the putts and the presentation of the auditory cue at each probe position were randomized and catch trials were used to prevent anticipatory effects. The first hypothesis of this study stated that the time course of attention would follow a similar pattern for both shots. Specifically, it was hypothesized that attentional demand would be greatest just before the putter contacted the golf ball. The second hypothesis of this study stated that the increased task difficulty of the 12-foot putt would result in greater overall attentional demand during this putt than during the 6-foot putt. The results of a repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) for putting performance indicated no significant differences in the level of performance (p > .05) for probe positions across the short putt. However, a repeated-measures ANOVA for putting performance on the long putt indicated that participants' level of performance changed based on probe position (p .05), indicating that attentional demand remains constant throughout the putting stroke. The results of a repeated-measures ANOVA for reaction time also indicated that reaction times on the long putt were significantly higher than reaction times for the short putt (p < .05), indicating that the long putt required an overall higher level of attentional demand than the short putt. These findings suggest that experienced golfers demonstrate a constant level of attentional demand throughout the putting stroke on a 6-foot putt. These findings also suggest that experienced golfers were unable to maintain primary task performance on the 12-foot putt and that the 12-foot putt required higher attentional demand than the 6-foot putt as a result of increased task difficulty

A production of And Miss Reardon drinks a little

It was the purpose of this study to research, produce and analyze the play And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little by Paul Zindel. The research of the play involved tracing previous productions of the play, the author's background, and study of the play itself. The production involved casting the play, assembling the crews and staging the play for performance on the mainstage of W. Raymond Taylor Theatre at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The analysis involved evaluation of the finished performance in all areas of the production

Should I stay or should I go? Stress, coping, and retention among novice teachers

There are many factors that lead to stress and burnout of teachers that ultimately result in up to half of teachers leaving the profession before their sixth year of experience. This study is a mixed-method approach to the problem that began with surveying n=385 secondary teachers of all content areas. The Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) was used to measure the teachers’ burnout levels, the Classroom Appraisal of Resources and Demands (CARD) was used to measure stress, and the Preventive Resources Inventory (PRI) was used to determine the teachers’ preventive coping skills. An independent t-test was conducted that found the stress and burnout levels between new and experienced teachers are not statistically different. Additionally, multiple regression tests were conducted with various combinations of independent and dependent variables. It was found that stress and burnout were significant predictors of job satisfaction. It was also revealed that years of experience, job satisfaction, and burnout are significant predictors of stress, while job satisfaction, preventive coping skills, and stress were significant predictors of burnout. This project aims to further research mathematics teachers as they are teachers in one of the most critical needs area of education. After the collection and analysis of the surveys, four mathematics teachers were chosen for follow-up interviews where they were questioned about their stressful occasions, coping mechanisms, and their ideas on mathematics teacher retention. The teachers were chosen randomly from groups that were stratified based on their preventive coping skills and stress levels

The Beliefs of K-12 Public School Principals About Disabilities and How Those Beliefs Inform Their Leadership of Students With Disabilities

The leadership of the school principal is an integral part of a successful school. A principal’s leadership goes beyond hiring teachers, managing building, and balancing budgets. The leadership of principals involves their work with instruction and influence on students. A principals’ leadership is shaped by factors that include knowledge, skill, experiences, and beliefs. The beliefs of principals have a direct impact on the leadership of principals. This phenomenological case study investigated what principals’ believed about disability and how these beliefs influenced their leadership of students with disabilities. Principles developed by the Council of Exceptional Children were used as the conceptual framework of the study. Through the use of interviews, principals indicated what they believed about disability, leadership of students with disabilities, the relevancy of degree programs, and needs they had in leading students with disabilities. Three major themes were drawn from the interviews. These themes included leadership, experiences, and knowledge. In addition to the emerging themes, the study provided answers to the original research questions and a revision to the original conceptual framework. Implications for principals, local education agencies, and graduate school programs are included along with suggestions for future research

Effects of mood and cognition on the social information-processing mechanisms underlying aggression

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of executive functions and anger activation on the social information-processing mechanisms related to aggressive behavior. The social information-processing stages examined were attribution, goal selection, and response evaluation. Participants were randomly assigned to either an anger or neutral mood induction and listened to three different scenario types: accidental, ambiguous and hostile. Hypotheses were: 1) the anger group when compared to the neutral would demonstrate more hostile aggressive responding in interpretation attribution, goal evaluation, and response evaluation in the ambiguous and hostile conditions, 2) executive functioning would moderate the relationship between anger and hostile-aggressive responding. Results are discussed in terms of integrating affect and executive function into models of social information processing

Prior event rate ratio adjustment produced estimates consistent with randomized trial: a diabetes case study

Objectives: Electronic health records (EHR) provide a valuable resource for assessing drug side-effects, but treatments are not randomly allocated in routine care creating the potential for bias. We conduct a case study using the Prior Event Rate Ratio (PERR) Pairwise method to reduce unmeasured confounding bias in side-effect estimates for two second-line therapies for type 2 diabetes, thiazolidinediones, and sulfonylureas. Study design and settings: Primary care data were extracted from the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (n = 41,871). We utilized outcomes from the period when patients took first-line metformin to adjust for unmeasured confounding. Estimates for known side-effects and a negative control outcome were compared with the A Diabetes Outcome Progression Trial (ADOPT) trial (n = 2,545). Results: When on metformin, patients later prescribed thiazolidinediones had greater risks of edema, HR 95% CI 1.38 (1.13, 1.68) and gastrointestinal side-effects (GI) 1.47 (1.28, 1.68), suggesting the presence of unmeasured confounding. Conventional Cox regression overestimated the risk of edema on thiazolidinediones and identified a false association with GI. The PERR Pairwise estimates were consistent with ADOPT: 1.43 (1.10, 1.83) vs. 1.39 (1.04, 1.86), respectively, for edema, and 0.91 (0.79, 1.05) vs. 0.94 (0.80, 1.10) for GI. Conclusion: The PERR Pairwise approach offers potential for enhancing postmarketing surveillance of side-effects from EHRs but requires careful consideration of assumptions.This article is freely available via Open Access. Click on the Publisher URL to access it via the publisher's site.The MASTERMIND (MRC APBI Stratification and Extreme Response Mechanism IN Diabetes) consortium is funded by the U.K Medical Research Council funded study grant number MR/N00633X/1. The funder had no role in study design, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation, or writing of the report. IQVIA provided some funding for this project.published version, accepted version (12 month embargo), submitted versio

The Intelligibility Of Esophageal Speech With And Without Visual Cues

The purpose of this study was to determine if the intelligibility of esophageal speech is improved by the addition of the visual component to the auditory component

Providing Feedback on the Lexical Use of ESP Students’ Academic Presentations: Teacher Training Considerations

This chapter offers a description of a methodology for providing training to pre-service English for Academic and Specific Purposes (EAP/ESP) teacher trainees in giving evidence-based feedback on the lexical composition of ESP students’ academic presentations. It also discusses a study based on the analysis of the mock feedback provided by the EAP/ESP teacher trainees (n=20) to ESP students’ presentations with a focus on the effects of training. The results revealed that the training was successful in areas such as raising the teacher trainees’ awareness of how to evaluate various lexical categories in an ESP presentation, how to incorporate their evaluation into the feedback they give to the students, how to highlight relevant lexical deviations in an evidence-based manner, etc. There were, however, a couple of areas that needed to be emphasised more in the training process. The results confirmed that providing training on evidence-driven feedback to teacher trainees planning to teach in an EAP/ESP context is a necessary component of ESP teacher education

Fate of the Josephson effect in thin-film superconductors

The dc Josephson effect refers to the dissipationless electrical current -- the supercurrent -- that can be sustained across a weak link connecting two bulk superconductors. This effect is a probe of the fundamental nature of the superconducting state. Here, we analyze the case of two superconducting thin films connected by a point contact. Remarkably, the Josephson effect is absent at nonzero temperature, and the resistance across the contact is nonzero. Moreover, the point contact resistance is found to vary with temperature in a nearly activated fashion, with a UNIVERSAL energy barrier determined only by the superfluid stiffness characterizing the films, an angle characterizing the geometry, and whether or not the Coulomb interaction between Cooper pairs is screened. This behavior reflects the subtle nature of the superconductivity in two-dimensional thin films, and should be testable in detail by future experiments.Comment: 16 + 8 pages. 1 figure, 1 tabl