Psychological determinants of whole-body endurance performance

Background: No literature reviews have systematically identified and evaluated research on the psychological determinants of endurance performance, and sport psychology performance-enhancement guidelines for endurance sports are not founded on a systematic appraisal of endurance-specific research. Objective: A systematic literature review was conducted to identify practical psychological interventions that improve endurance performance and to identify additional psychological factors that affect endurance performance. Additional objectives were to evaluate the research practices of included studies, to suggest theoretical and applied implications, and to guide future research. Methods: Electronic databases, forward-citation searches, and manual searches of reference lists were used to locate relevant studies. Peer-reviewed studies were included when they chose an experimental or quasi-experimental research design, a psychological manipulation, endurance performance as the dependent variable, and athletes or physically-active, healthy adults as participants. Results: Consistent support was found for using imagery, self-talk, and goal setting to improve endurance performance, but it is unclear whether learning multiple psychological skills is more beneficial than learning one psychological skill. The results also demonstrated that mental fatigue undermines endurance performance, and verbal encouragement and head-to-head competition can have a beneficial effect. Interventions that influenced perception of effort consistently affected endurance performance. Conclusions: Psychological skills training could benefit an endurance athlete. Researchers are encouraged to compare different practical psychological interventions, to examine the effects of these interventions for athletes in competition, and to include a placebo control condition or an alternative control treatment. Researchers are also encouraged to explore additional psychological factors that could have a negative effect on endurance performance. Future research should include psychological mediating variables and moderating variables. Implications for theoretical explanations of endurance performance and evidence-based practice are described

Scaffolding in teacher-student interaction: a decade of Research

Although scaffolding is an important and frequently studied concept, much discussion exists with regard to its conceptualizations, appearances, and effectiveness. Departing from the last decade’s scaffolding literature, this review scrutinizes these three areas of scaffolding. First, contingency, fading, and transfer of responsibility are discerned in this review as the three key characteristics of scaffolding. Second, an overview is presented of the numerous descriptive studies that provided narratives on the appearances of scaffolding and classifications of scaffolding strategies. These strategies are synthesized into a framework for analysis, distinguishing between scaffolding means and intentions. Third, the small number of effectiveness studies available is discussed and the results suggest that scaffolding is effective. However, more research is needed. The main challenge in scaffolding research appears to be its measurement. Based on the encountered and described measurement problems, suggestions for future research are made