Leading from the Margins: The WNBA and the Emergence of a New Model of Sports Activism in the United States

After a first wave of activist athletes influenced the 1960s Civil Rights debates and faced negative professional and personal consequences, activist athletes largely disappeared from the American Politics landscape. The return of athlete activism in the last few years has been widely covered by journalists and scholars alike. In this dissertation, I argue that this trend is not a return to the activism of the past, but the emergence of a new model of sports activism. Building on recent developments in the persuasion literature, I show how in this new model, some leagues are in a unique and unprecedented position to generate business growth because, not despite, of their political activism. The dissertation defines the new model through the league that exemplifies it the most, the Women National Basketball Association (WNBA). In doing so, it improves our understanding of the mechanisms of persuasion by non-political messengers. While some leagues operate in this new model, others remain left in a model where activism often comes at a cost or fails to yield results. This explains the backlash faced by Colin Kaepernick after he knelt during the national anthem and the limited findings from the recent experimental research focused on the NFL. The dissertation explores the conditions under which this new model of mutually beneficial business and political successes can emerge for athletes and leagues. The new model, as defined throughout the dissertation, has three key characteristics: (i) it is emerging in leagues composed of largely minoritized athletes whose existence as athletes, because of their race, gender, or sexual orientation, is inherently political; (ii) it provides opportunities for business and political successes to feed each other, but only when leagues fully embrace their political nature; and (iii) it both relies on and generates an alignment between the athletes’ and fans’ values. Chapter 1 introduces the new model and examines how it compares to the traditional model of sports activism. I discuss whether and how much a model emerging in the United States, and largely driven by women’s sports, can extend to other leagues and countries. Chapter 2 describes the recent business and political successes of the WNBA and documents how they only came after the league fully started acknowledging its players’ identities. This case study provides the groundwork for understanding the connection between the business and political models of sports leagues and how they are moderated by the identities of players and fans. In Chapter 3, I use survey experiments to show that persuasive arguments from WNBA players can change minds on policy issues, including voting rights and transgender inclusion, but only among people whose values are not in opposition to the ones carried by the WNBA. I also find evidence that the players’ arguments convince a larger audience when the identity of the players is not emphasized. When group cues are introduced, respondents in the identity-unaligned groups often end up supporting the policy less. When respondents see both persuasive information and group cues, the polarizing effects of group cues appear to overcome the “parallelizing” effects of persuasive information. While Chapter 3 focuses on athletes’ influence on political opinions, Chapter 4 investigates their impact on actual political events. I explore the role played by the WNBA in the 2020 Georgia Senate race through the lens of campaign donations, Twitter, and media coverage data. I find evidence that the WNBA had a short term effect on donations and served as an echo chamber, helping to keep the story of the race on issues that were favorable to Warnock, especially social justice. Finally, in Chapter 5, I use survey experiments to show that this commitment to activism does not come at a cost for the WNBA. I provide evidence that activism has the potential to bring new, like-minded fans to the league, while generating few risks of losing existing fans. This is especially true when players emphasize their identities and values, which suggest a trade-off in how players highlight their identities in this new model of sports activism. If the goal is to change as many people’s minds on the issues as possible, Chapter 3 shows that activist athletes are better off not emphasizing their identities, but, if the goal is to bring in new fans into the league, Chapter 5 shows that players are better off if they do. The reason for this trade-off is straightforward and well-grounded in the persuasion literature: there are more progressives to turn into new WNBA fans than there are WNBA fans to turn into progressives

Crista acustica in insect ears modeled by an inhomogenous granular chain

International audienceInsect ears are found on the thorax (in some Hemiptera), the abdomen (in grasshoppers, cicadas, some moths), or the front tibia (in crickets, katydids). Crista acustica -also named Siebold's organs- is the sensory organ linked to tympanum when located in forelegs. It is a collection of individually-tuned scolopidia -the most fundamental unit of mechanoreceptor organs in insects- that can discriminate frequencies. A remarkable geometrical property of the arrangement of the soma or cell body of hearing sensing cells -the inner hair cells in the cochlea of mammals and human beings and the scolopidia in the hearing organs of invertebrates- has not yet been explored. We will focus on the arrangement of the cells of the scolopidia of crista acustica in the fore tibia of certain Orthoptera (eg, grasshoppers, crickets, katydids). It consists of a collection of perfectly aligned sensory cells which forms a crest on top of a hollow tracheal tube behind the tympanum. Such a crest can interestingly be modeled as an inhomogenous granular chain linked to a substrate. We will show that the dynamical response in both time and frequency domains of this neurally tunable chain also strongly depends on its anatomical pre-arrangement

Extended Czjzek model applied to NMR parameter distributions in sodium metaphosphate glass

The Extended Czjzek Model (ECM) is applied to the distribution of NMR parameters of a simple glass model (sodium metaphosphate, $\mathrm{NaPO_3}$) obtained by Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations. Accurate NMR tensors, Electric Field Gradient (EFG) and Chemical Shift Anisotropy (CSA), are calculated from Density Functional Theory (DFT) within the well-established PAW/GIPAW framework. Theoretical results are compared to experimental high-resolution solid-state NMR data and are used to validate the considered structural model. The distributions of the calculated coupling constant $C_Q\propto |V_{zz}|$ and of the asymmetry parameter $\eta_Q$ that characterize the quadrupolar interaction are discussed in terms of structural considerations with the help of a simple point charge model. Finally, the ECM analysis is shown to be relevant for studying the distribution of CSA tensor parameters and gives new insight into the structural characterization of disordered systems by solid-state NMR.Comment: 17 pages, 12 figures to be published in J. Phys.: Condens. Matte

Spontaneous Motor Tempo is the Easiest Pace to Act Upon for Both the Emergent and the Predictive Timing Modes

AbstractSpontaneous Motor Tempo (SMT) is a self-paced regular series of movements that correspond to the preferred and natural pace to act upon. SMT is naturally observed within daily activities such as in hand clapping and walking. In experimental settings, SMT is evaluated using synchronization finger-tapping paradigms and has been estimated to correspond to time intervals of 600ms (Fraisse, 1982). More recently, subjects have been instructed to tap at the most comfortable rate, and the SMT was found to be a little faster, with a mean SMT comprised between 450 and 500ms of time intervals (Collyer et al., 1994; Moelants, 2002). Studies using whole body movements have also determined SMT between 100-130 bpm (500-600ms) both during daily activities (MacDougall & Moore, 2005) and when walking in synchrony to music (Styns, van Noorden, Moelants, & Leman, 2007). Nevertheless, the most striking aspect of these findings is the variability reported, with ranges going from 190 to 950ms of time intervals within a given group of healthy individuals.In the present work, the objective was not to determine a global mean SMT for a group but to work at the individual level. More specifically, we questioned what the functional role of SMT might be in the production of sequences of motor actions. After developing an application on Android telephone, we measured SMT in a group of healthy young adults throughout a period of a three of weeks and tested the hypotheses that (1) the SMT is different but characteristic of a given individual and that (2) SMT corresponds to the time window in which movements are performed the best.Thirty young adults aged from 20 to 28 years participated in the experiment. They all downloaded on their telephone the SPONT application and were required to measure their SMT at 10 am for 3 consecutive days, during a two-week period. During the third week, they were invited to come to the laboratory and they were randomly assigned to either a cycling session or a finger tapping session that lasted 30minutes each. At the start of the session, all individuals sat silently for 5minutes in silence before performing a 2-minute trial of cycling or of tapping at their “preferred and most comfortable pace”. This pace was used to set the metronome frequency that was used during the remaining of the experimental session.Both groups performed a sensori-motor synchronization and continuation task with the explicit instruction to perform movements in synchrony with a regular tone sequence and to continue even when the metronome stopped. The metronome was generated by a program written in Matlab and was played through speakers. All tones had the same pitch (640Hz) and the same duration (100ms). For the cycling group, participants were seated on a stationary bike of which the saddle was adjusted to the height of the participant. The bike was set so that the strength applied on the pedal was minimal. A passive reflective marker was located on the right pedal of the bike and its position was recorded through a Qualisys 3D motion capture system at a sampling frequency of 200Hz. For the finger-tapping group, the task was to tap six visual targets one after the other, which were presented on a touch screen (EloTouch). In both tasks, the regular pacing of the metronome was manipulated for each individual to be ±500, ±400, ±300, ±200, ±100ms or equal to each individual's SMT.Resultsshowed that the group SMT was 520ms with differences ranging from 235 and 832ms of SMT. These SMTs remained consistent for all individuals throughout the 6 measured sessions. The lab-based task confirmed the preferred tempo for all subjects especially in the finger-tapping task. During the synchronization-continuation task, participants were able to perform the task correctly without apparent difficulty. Subjects however reported that the “easiest” tempi to follow were those close to their own SMT. When measuring the inter-response intervals and the asynchrony during the synchronization task, results revealed an inverted U-shape with a minimal error and variance close to each individual's SMT. The fact that timing was both performed with the highest accuracy and the greatest stability within the SMT interval was observed both in the cycling and in the finger- tapping tasks. Finally, the analysis of the continuation data showed that especially for the extreme tempi (i.e., very slow and very fast) participants drifted towards their natural SMT.Overall, the reported results confirm previous findings of best performances close to SMT (Styns et al., 2007) but go further by showing that this finding is true both in cyclic movements (that are thought to use emergent timing processes) and in sequential rhythmic movements (that are thought to use predictive timing processes). An interpretation of how spontaneous tempo and the two modes of timing can be considered within a unique theoretical framework may be considered in reference to the cognitive model of executive functions by Miake et al. (2000)

A new spice-like modeling tool for bio- and electro- acoustic systems including thermoviscous effects

International audienceA dedicated toolbox has been developed within ASYGN a recent software tool that simulates aVLSI circuits at a high-level of modeling. It accounts in both time- and frequency- domain for the specific feature of bio- and electro- acoustic systems especially when some of the constituting elements are very thin or narrow. The models correspond to systems of complex equations in which some of the complex coefficients can be frequency dependent. Results are solved and viewed in real time. The tool was developed to introduce some improvement in the model of the auditory system of the cricket. In 2007 Reeve et al. designed and tested an electrical equivalent circuit based on Michelsen 1994. The latter results from two major simplification namely the absence of thermoviscous effects and of any acoustical role of a septum located in the middle of a transverse acoustic trachea. Thanks to the weak couplings the model can be subdivided into independent elements such as tubes, cavities or membranes simply connected together. Thermoviscous effects and the role of the medial septum can now be fully investigated. Our results were first validated using Matlab. Our model reveals interesting feature compared to its historical counterpart

Combined visual and motor disorganization in patients with schizophrenia

Cognitive impairments are difficult to relate to clinical symptoms in schizophrenia, partly due to insufficient knowledge on how cognitive impairments interact with one another. Here, we devised a new sequential pointing task requiring both visual organization and motor sequencing. Six circles were presented simultaneously on a touch screen around a fixation point. Participants pointed with the finger each circle one after the other, in synchrony with auditory tones. We used an alternating rhythmic 300/600 ms pattern so that participants performed pairs of taps separated by short intervals of 300 ms. Visual organization was manipulated by using line-segments that grouped the circles two by two, yielding three pairs of connected circles, and three pairs of unconnected circles that belonged to different pairs. This led to three experimental conditions. In the “congruent condition,” the pairs of taps had to be executed on circles grouped by connecters. In the “non congruent condition,” they were to be executed on the unconnected circles that belonged to different pairs. In a neutral condition, there were no connecters. Twenty two patients with schizophrenia with mild symptoms and 22 control participants performed a series of 30 taps in each condition. Tap pairs were counted as errors when the produced rhythm was inverted (expected rhythm 600/300 = 2; inversed rhythm <1). Error rates in patients with a high level of clinical disorganization were significantly higher in the non-congruent condition than in the two other conditions, contrary to controls and the remaining patients. The tap-tone asynchrony increased in the presence of connecters in both patient groups, but not in the controls. Patients appeared not to integrate the visual organization during the planning phase of action, leading to a large difficulty during motor execution, especially in those patients revealing difficulties in visual organization. Visual motor tapping tasks may help detect those subgroups of patients

Bases expert statement on the use of music for movement among people with Parkinson's

First published in The Sport and Exercise Scientist, February 2020, Issue 63. Published by the British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences – www.bases.org.uk.Music is an artistic auditory stimulus that unfolds over time. It can prime specific actions and prompt engagement in physical activity as well as heighten motivation during motor tasks (Karageorghis, 2020). Contrastingly, it can be used to downregulate arousal to facilitate the transition from an active to a sedentary state or to ameliorate anxiety. In therapeutic applications, musical features such as rhythm, melody and harmony have been shown to elicit psychological and physiological changes (Thaut & Hoemberg, 2014). Parkinson’s is a degenerative neurological condition in which the loss of dopamine neurons results in impaired initiation and control of movement, with common symptoms including tremor, postural instability and gait disturbance. There are also non-motor effects that include apathy, anxiety and depression. Medication does not alleviate all manifestations of the condition and there is presently no known cure (Obeso et al., 2017). It is notable that people with Parkinson’s are estimated to be 30% less active than agematched peers (Ramaswamy et al., 2018). Nonetheless, evidence is emerging that a range of exercise-based and social activities that involve musical engagement can serve to address the common symptoms and enhance quality of life (Thaut & Hoemberg, 2014). This statement brings together an international interdisciplinary team to outline what is known about music-related applications for people with Parkinson’s, and to provide recommendations for exercise and health practitioners.Peer reviewe

Music and Metronomes Differentially Impact Motor Timing in People with and without Parkinson's Disease: Effects of Slow, Medium, and Fast Tempi on Entrainment and Synchronization Performances in Finger Tapping, Toe Tapping, and Stepping on the Spot Tasks

© 2019 Dawn Rose et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Introduction: Rhythmic Auditory Stimulation (RAS) has successfully helped regulate gait for people with Parkinson’s disease. However, the way in which different auditory cues and types of movements affect entrainment, synchronization and pacing stability has not been directly compared in different aged people with and without Parkinson's. Therefore, this study compared music and metronomes (cue types) in finger tapping, toe tapping and stepping on the spot tasks to explore the potential of RAS training for general use.Methods: Participants (aged 18-78 years) included people with Parkinson’s (n=30, Hoehn & Yahr Mean=1.78), Older (n=26), and Younger adult controls (n=36), as age may effect motor timing. Timed motor production was assessed using an extended synchronization-continuation task in cue type and movement conditions for slow, medium and fast tempi (81, 116 and 140 mean beats-per-minute respectively).Results: Analyses revealed main effects of cue and movement type but no between group interactions, suggesting no differences in motor timing between people with Parkinson's and controls. Music supported entrainment better than metronome in medium and fast tempi, and stepping on the spot enabled better entrainment and less asynchrony, as well as more stable pacing compared to tapping in medium and fast tempi. Age was not confirmed as a factor and no differences were observed in slow tempo.Conclusion: This is the first study to directly compare how different external auditory cues and movement types affect motor timing. The music and the stepping enabled participants to maintain entrainment once the external pacing cue ceased, suggesting endogenous mechanisms continued to regulate the movements. The superior performance of stepping on the spot suggests embodied entrainment can occur during continuous movement, and this may be related to emergent timing in tempi above 600 ms. These findings can be applied therapeutically to manage and improve adaptive behaviours for people with Parkinson’s.Peer reviewe

Online monitoring of the impact of language processing on motor processes: prehensile grip-force measures during passive listening of manual action.

A large number of recent behavioural studies have established that processing linguistic descriptions of motor actions affect overt motor behaviour. For instance, when participants are asked to make sensibility judgments on sentences that describe action toward the body (“Mark gave the book to yo