Observing Task and Ego Involvement in a Club Volleyball Setting

This study examined how task and ego involvement affected 12-and-under girls’ motivations to play competitive club volleyball. Participants included 25 girls under the age of 12, as well as 31 parents including those of the 25 girls. Parents and players completed the Achievement Goal Scale for Youth Survey (AGSYS), and open ended questions regarding their intention to continue playing and their motivations for trying out for club volleyball. After conducting a Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test, findings suggested that the parents and the players both identified as task involved individuals, implying that their motivations lie in improving skills relative to the sport instead of becoming the best athlete relative to others on the court. The study results indicated that parents and daughters ego involvement was positively correlated demonstrating that parental motivations were reflected in player motivations confirming the impact of parental involvement in their daughter’s sport decisions. A second segment included a discussion on the girls’ parents and their reasons for allowing their daughter to play in club volleyball as reflected in a task and ego involvement framework. Previously conducted studies have been completed in an attempt to discover parental motivations for allowing their child to try out for a competitive team. Research has examined specific youth motivations. Most prominent results from youth focused research include the opportunity to build social relations and boost self-efficacy regarding playing competitive sports (Allen, 2003). Minimal research has focused on understanding the relationship between parent and child motivations for youth participation in competitive sports. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between parent and youth motivation for trying out for club volleyball using a task and ego involvement framework. The information collected will be on display for youth development practitioners who assist in programs involving youth, parents and competitive sports. The findings assist in establishing research that provides information to competitive youth club managers so they can establish their club based on research based findings from both the parents and players perspectives

Observing Task and Ego Involvement in a Club Volleyball Setting

This study examined how task and ego involvement affected 12-and-under girls’ motivations to play competitive club volleyball. Participants included 25 girls under the age of 12, as well as 31 parents including those of the 25 girls. Parents and players completed the Achievement Goal Scale for Youth Survey (AGSYS), and open ended questions regarding their intention to continue playing and their motivations for trying out for club volleyball. After conducting a Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test, findings suggested that the parents and the players both identified as task involved individuals, implying that their motivations lie in improving skills relative to the sport instead of becoming the best athlete relative to others on the court. The study results indicated that parents and daughters ego involvement was positively correlated demonstrating that parental motivations were reflected in player motivations confirming the impact of parental involvement in their daughter’s sport decisions. A second segment included a discussion on the girls’ parents and their reasons for allowing their daughter to play in club volleyball as reflected in a task and ego involvement framework. Previously conducted studies have been completed in an attempt to discover parental motivations for allowing their child to try out for a competitive team. Research has examined specific youth motivations. Most prominent results from youth focused research include the opportunity to build social relations and boost self-efficacy regarding playing competitive sports (Allen, 2003). Minimal research has focused on understanding the relationship between parent and child motivations for youth participation in competitive sports. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between parent and youth motivation for trying out for club volleyball using a task and ego involvement framework. The information collected will be on display for youth development practitioners who assist in programs involving youth, parents and competitive sports. The findings assist in establishing research that provides information to competitive youth club managers so they can establish their club based on research based findings from both the parents and players perspectives

Principles governing the large-scale organization of object selectivity in ventral visual cortex

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, 2008.Page 131 blank.Includes bibliographical references.As our understanding of the brain grows, neuroscientists find themselves increasingly in the role of cartographer. Thus far, cortical maps have been found primarily in early input and late output areas, however they may also occur in higher-level regions of the brain that perform more complex functions. An example of such a region is the objectselective ventral visual cortex (VVC) in humans. This region, which is involved in the high-level task of object recognition, is comprised of several functionally defined, category-selective subregions that are laid out with remarkable systematicity and consistency across individuals. In this thesis, I use fMRI to test several hypotheses about the nature of object representations and the dimensions along which object-selective cortex might be organized. In the first study, I find evidence supporting the existence of domain-specific regions. Results from the second set of studies suggest that temporal associations do not guide the overall organization of VVC, and also provide contradictory evidence against a long-standing hypothesis that the VVC is organized based on conceptual knowledge about objects and, specifically, the distinction between animate and inanimate objects. Instead, my results suggest that associations between objects and motor actions may play a role in the location of category selectivities for a subset of object classes. Results from a third set of studies demonstrate that computational demands for acuity or spatial integration cannot account for location biases in category-selective regions, and instead suggest that experience with objects at specific retinal locations may serve as an organizing dimension. Moreover, these studies reveal systematic differences in the amount of location information contained in category-selective regions on the ventral temporal versus lateral occipital surfaces.(cont) In sum, the studies described in this thesis address several hypotheses about the large-scale organization of VVC, and, in doing so, advance our understanding of the principles that govern the layout of maps in higher-level, object-selective cortex.by Rebecca Frye Schwarzlose.Ph.D

Noncovalent Modulation of Chemoselectivity in the Gas Phase Leads to a Switchover in Reaction Type from Heterolytic to Homolytic to Electrocyclic Cleavage

In the gas phase, thermal activation of supramolecular assemblies such as host-guest complexes leads commonly to noncovalent dissociation into the individual components. Chemical reactions, for example of encapsulated guest molecules, are only found in exceptional cases. As observed by mass spectrometry, when 1-amino-methyl-2,3-diazabicyclo[2.2.2]oct-2-ene (DBOA) is complexed by the macrocycle β-cyclodextrin, its protonated complex undergoes collision-induced dissociation into its components, the conventional reaction pathway. Inside the macrocyclic cavity of cucurbit[7]uril (CB7), a competitive chemical reaction of monoprotonated DBOA takes place upon thermal activation, namely a stepwise homolytic covalent bond cleavage with the elimination of N2 , while the doubly protonated CB7⋅DBOA complex undergoes an inner-phase elimination of ethylene, a concerted, electrocyclic ring-opening reaction. These chemical reaction pathways stand in contrast to the gas-phase chemistry of uncomplexed monoprotonated DBOA, for which an elimination of NH3 predominates upon collision-induced activation, as a heterolytic bond cleavage reaction. The combined results, which can be rationalized in terms of organic-chemical reaction mechanisms and density-function theoretical calculations, demonstrate that chemical reactions in the gas phase can be steered chemoselectively through noncovalent interactions

Junior doctor psychiatry placements in hospital and community settings : a phenomenological study

OBJECTIVES: The proportion of junior doctors required to complete psychiatry placements in the UK has increased, due in part to vacant training posts and psychiatry career workforce shortages, as can be seen across the world. The aim of this study was to understand the lived experience of a Foundation Year 1 junior doctor psychiatry placement and to understand how job components influence attitudes. DESIGN: The study was conducted using a cross-sectional qualitative phenomenological approach. SETTING: Hospital and community psychiatry department settings in the North East of England, UK. PARTICIPANTS: In total, 14 Foundation Year 1 junior doctors were interviewed including seven men and seven women aged between 23 and 34 years. The majority had completed their medical degree in the UK and were White British. RESULTS: The lived experience of a junior doctor psychiatry placement was understood by three core themes: exposure to patient recovery, connectedness with others in the healthcare team and subjective interpretations of psychiatry. The experiences were moderated by instances of role definition, reaction to the specialty and the organisational fit of the junior doctor capacity in the specialty. CONCLUSIONS: The study reinforces and adds to the literature by identifying connectedness as being important for both job satisfaction and morale, which is currently damaged within the junior doctor population. The study provides in-depth insights into the lived experience of psychiatry placements and can be taken forward by educationalists to ensure the placements are meaningful experiences for junior doctors by developing role definition, belonging, structure and psychiatric care responsibility

The 'not-so-strange' body in the mirror: : A principal components analysis of direct and mirror self-observation

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of the following article: Paul M. Jenkinson, and Catherine Preston, ‘The “not-so-strange” body in the mirror: A principal components analysis of direct and mirror self-observation’, Consciousness and Cognition, Vol. 48, pp. 262-272, first published online 4 January 2017, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2016.12.007 This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.In this study we adopted a psychometric approach to examine how the body is subjectively experienced in a mirror. One hundred and twenty-four healthy participants viewed their body for five minutes directly or via a mirror, and then completed a 20-item questionnaire designed to capture subjective experiences of the body. PCA revealed a two-component structure for both direct and mirror conditions, comprising body evaluations (and alienation) and unusual feelings and perceptions. The relationship between these components and pre-existing tendencies for appearance anxiety, body dysmorphic-type beliefs, dissociative symptomatology, self-objectification and delusion ideation further supported the similarity between direct and mirror conditions; however, the occurrence of strange experiences like those reported to occur during prolonged face viewing was not confirmed. These results suggest that, despite obvious differences in visual feedback, observing the body via a mirror (as an outside observer) is subjectively equivalent to observing the body directly (from our own viewpoint).Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Contorted and ordinary body postures in the human brain

Social interaction and comprehension of non-verbal behaviour requires a representation of people’s bodies. Research into the neural underpinnings of body representation implicates several brain regions including extrastriate and fusiform body areas (EBA and FBA), superior temporal sulcus (STS), inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and inferior parietal lobule (IPL). The different roles played by these regions in parsing familiar and unfamiliar body postures remain unclear. We examined the responses of this body observation network to static images of ordinary and contorted postures by using a repetition suppression design in functional neuroimaging. Participants were scanned whilst observing static images of a contortionist or a group of objects in either ordinary or unusual configurations, presented from different viewpoints. Greater activity emerged in EBA and FBA when participants viewed contorted compared to ordinary body postures. Repeated presentation of the same posture from different viewpoints lead to suppressed responses in the fusiform gyrus as well as three regions that are characteristically activated by observing moving bodies, namely STS, IFG and IPL. These four regions did not distinguish the image viewpoint or the plausibility of the posture. Together, these data define a broad cortical network for processing static body postures, including regions classically associated with action observation

Differential brain responses for perception of pain during empathic response in binge drinkers compared to non-binge drinkers

Individuals who engage in binge drinking behaviors may show evidence of impaired cognitive function and emotional dysregulation. Impaired empathy, characterized by a reduced ability to understand and respond appropriately to feelings of others, is increasingly recognized for its role in Alcohol Use Disorders (AUD). The present study examined a population of young adult social drinkers to compare individuals who show binge drinking behavior to those who do not on measures of empathic processing and associated neural responses. A secondary aim explored similarities and differences between binge drinkers living in the UK and France. Alcohol drinking history and impulsivity ratings were recorded from seventy-one participants [(37 UK (Binge drinkers N = 19); 34 France (Binge drinkers N = 17)], who then underwent a neuroimaging study. During functional magnetic resonance imaging, participants viewed images of bodily pain (vs. no-pain), while adopting the perspective of self (pain recipient) or other (observer of someone else experiencing pain). Anterior midcingulate cortex (aMCC) and insula activation distinguished pain from no-pain conditions. Binge drinkers showed stronger regional neural activation than non-binge drinkers within a cluster spanning fusiform gyrus and inferior temporal gyrus, encompassing the Fusiform Body Area. Binge drinkers compared to non-binge drinkers also took longer to respond when viewing pictures depicting pain, in particular when adopting the perspective of self. Relationships between changes in brain activation and behavioural responses in pain versus no pain conditions (self or other perspective) indicated that whereas non-binge drinkers engage areas supporting self to other distinction, binge drinkers do not. Our findings suggest that alcohol binge drinking is associated with different empathy-related behavioral and brain responses, consistent with the proposed importance of empathy in the development of AUD