The Effects of Covert Recruitment on Cognitive Processing in Action Video Game Players

Cognitive processing among video game players has been widely investigated. However, there has been serious debate regarding how methodological issues could be affecting these results. Our study is being conducted to assess the effects of covertly recruiting participants on performance in a Multiple Object Tracking (MOT) task. Covert recruitment conceals the role of video game experience in our study until after the cognitive task is completed. Additionally, we extend our research to include female participants, who have historically been omitted from cognitive video game research. The experiment began by administering the MOT task first, followed by a brief survey. The survey asked questions about how many hours each participant played, per week, of different genres of video games, as well as demographic information. Our results suggest that video game players (VGPs) of both genders perform better than non-video game players (NVGPs) when tracking a larger number of objects. This suggests that VGPs have an advantage in environmental awareness and visual short-term memory skills

The effect of body composition on match physical performance in highly trained male football players

The aim of this study was to estimate the effect of body composition on match physical performance in highly trained male football players. For this purpose, body composition and match physical performance were collected over a five-month period from a Norwegian men´s team playing in the top division during the 2021 season. Dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) was used to collect information regarding the players´ body fat percentage [BF%] and lean muscle mass [LMM], while ZXY Sport Tracking system was used to collect match physical performance as total distance [TD], high intensity running [HIR], sprint distance [SpD], max speed and acceleration [ACC]. 15 players with mean (standard deviation) age, weight, and height of 24.8 (2.9) years, 77.4 (8.0) kg, and 181.7 (7.2) cm, constituted the sample. Due to missing observations, analysis was done both for complete and imputed cases, with the full dataset containing 62 observations. Linear-mixed modeling was used to estimate the effect of LMM and BF%, adjusted for playing position, on match physical performance. The largest associations were found between BF% and TD and between LMM and max speed, respectively. A one standard deviation increase in BF% decreased the relative total distance covered during match-play by ~0.3 standard deviations, while a one standard deviation increase in LMM increased max speed by ~0.3 standard deviations. However, the confidence intervals for all examined associations were wide, and no significant findings were found. Based on the results from this study, the effect of body composition on match physical performance is likely trivial compared to playing position

The Norwegian Press and the Reception of Donald Trump’s Native American Narratives

Abstract Indigenous Peoples face a challenge in gaining visibility in western news outlets. It is well established that when they are made visible, coverage leans into representing stereotypes rather than giving voice to members of Indigenous Peoples or their spokespersons. This study aims to determine to what extent this dynamic can be found in the Norwegian Press. Specifically, it investigates the Norwegian Press and their reception of the US president Donald Trump's use of the word Pocahontas as a nickname for his political opponent US senator Elizabeth Warren. In the Norwegian context, it is interesting how the Norwegian news outlets covered the events, and in what way they gave a stereotypical representation of Indigenous Peoples and if they made the Indigenous response to Trump's and Warren's statements visible. Furthermore, the reception in the Norwegian context should be analyzed according to the political position of the different news outlets. To study this, a quantitative study of news articles regarding the topic, from 18 online news outlets was done. The language in the articles was then coded and each online news outlet reception was analyzed. The results showed that the Norwegian Press did use stereotyping language and words coined by Trump to a high degree. Native American and Indigenous People's voices were included only in a minority of articles, and there was a tendency for center-right wing media to give more visibility to the Native American response, than center-left wing media. The results suggest that Norwegian news outlets largely perpetuate the dynamic where Indigenous peoples are made less visible in western media. On this basis, attention should be given to how coverage is done of Indigenous issues and efforts made to give a less stereotypical representation while including Indigenous people's voices in the Norwegian Press

Registering and uploading datasets in the generation CP central registry

Poster presented at Generation Challenge Programme 2009 Annual Research Meeting. Bamako (Mali), 20-23 Sep 200

An Empirical Analysis of Energy Demand in Namibia

Using a unique database of end-user local energy data and the recently developed Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach to cointegration, we estimate the long-run elasticities of the Namibian energy demand function at both aggregated level and by type of energy (electricity, petrol and diesel) for the period 1980 to 2002. Our main results show that energy consumption responds positively to changes in GDP and negatively to changes in energy price and air temperature. The differences in price elasticities across fuels uncovered by this study have significant implications for energy taxation by Namibian policy makers. We do not find any significant cross-price elasticities between different fuel types.Energy demand; ARDL; Cointegration