1,721,032 research outputs found
Proprioception and Performance: The role of below-knee compression garments and secondary tasks
No full textProprioception is an integral component of the voluntary and involuntary motor control processes of the body. Studies have suggested that proprioception plays an important prophylactic role in preventing injuries and can be disrupted by unnecessary conscious attention, imposed during high-stress conditions and/or due to physiological processes of ageing and injury. A systematic in-depth analysis of published literature was therefore conducted to evaluate the current state of literature pertinent to joint stabilizers (e.g. compression, taping, braces), secondary tasks and their effects on proprioception and stability. The first systematic review and meta-analysis revealed beneficial aspects of joint stabilizers, namely compression garments and taping on knee (Hedge’s g: 0.48, 95%CI: 0.35- 0.61) and ankle (0.42, 0.18- 0.65) joint proprioception. A second systematic review revealed a 1b level of evidence for the efficacy of secondary task training procedures to enhance postural stability amongst elderly participants. The review also demonstrated that secondary tasks are less efficient in enhancing postural stability among participants with prior history of falls. Following the literature review, gaps in literature were identified and experimental studies were designed to address these gaps. In the first quasi-experimental study, the effects of below-knee compression garments and secondary tasks on knee joint proprioception were studied. Statistical analysis revealed main effects of both compression (p<0.001) and secondary task (p=0.04). Thereafter, a second quasi-experimental study evaluated the effects of secondary tasks on proprioception (joint repositioning task), peak jump velocity, peak jump height, pre and post exercise. The study revealed a significant (p<0.05) enhancement of proprioception accuracy when a secondary task was implemented, pre and post exercise. Likewise, large and small effect sizes were calculated for proprioception and peak jump velocity, in between trails, pre and post exercise. The research carried out in the thesis is novel as it demonstrates that below-knee compression and secondary tasks can improve proprioception of the knee. Clinical implications are discussed with respect to proprioception in modern sports and rehabilitation settings
High Performance Leadership: The Influence of Mindfulness and Reinvestment
No full textIn the forever changing national and global markets, the need for high performing leaders is critical, particularly for organisational success. High performance leadership, established in the current study by one’s self-reported recall of performance under pressure, as well as actual level of leadership, matters when functioning within highly complex, dynamic, and pressurised environments. These environments, however, can cause leaders to perform poorly, despite having high motivation and incentives for success; a phenomenon sometimes referred to as choking.
Drawing on 119 corporate and 63 athletic individuals, the current research set out to (1) assess the role of mindfulness in performance and to examine the role of mindfulness in pressure situations and (2) introduce the notion of reinvestment, a psychological concept associated with performance failure under pressure, into Industrial/ Organisational Psychology literature.
Results of the study supported past research examining mindfulness, and reiterated the positive role that mindfulness plays in performance, particularly at high levels of employment; suggesting that individuals who hold high levels of dispositional mindfulness are more likely to reach higher levels of leadership or seniority within employment than those low in mindfulness. Additionally, the results supported past research examining reinvestment, and highlights the negative role that reinvestment plays in performance, with those individuals who have a high predisposition to reinvest when under pressure recalling lower levels of performance, and achieving lower levels of leadership within employment. Only partial support for these relationships were found for the athletic population.
Moderation analyses indicated that mindfulness and reinvestment appear to function together, for the corporate population only. Participants reporting high levels of mindfulness and high levels of decision reinvestment (specifically decision rumination) appeared to achieve performance levels that were significantly higher than participants reporting low levels of mindfulness and high levels of decision rumination. This suggests that in the organisational setting, and particularly for leaders, some level of rumination in decision making is beneficial, provided mindfulness is also present. This new finding has been termed mindful rumination, and it is argued that, in the corporate setting, engaging in mindful rumination is beneficial to making informed decisions, particularly when under pressure. This suggests that encouraging mindful rumination may be beneficial to organisational performance, and support performance at high levels of leadership. Alternatively, mindful rumination may be used to encourage career advancement.
Overall, this study explores notions of high performance leadership, which goes above-and-beyond traditional understandings. The current study has successfully introduced notions of reinvestment into organisational life, providing a foundation for future research to explore the mechanisms that underpin performance failure in the corporate setting. Additionally, this study has demonstrated that for high performing leaders, engaging in mindful rumination is beneficial to performance
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
Pupillometry as a measure of cognitive load during a motor task: Comparing analogy learning to traditional coaching methods
No full textAnalogies are thought to reduce cognitive load during motor skill acquisition, yet a reliable and direct measure of cognitive load during movement remains elusive. This thesis seeks to contribute to the existing gap by exploring the use of pupillometry as a potential tool to evaluate cognitive load during a hockey push-pass task. Additionally, the study explores whether analogy instructions contribute to consistency in mental effort and performance compared to discovery and explicit instructional approaches.
Chapter One provides a comprehensive review of relevant literature, setting the stage for the further investigation. In Chapter Two, an experiment examines pupil dilation in dual-task conditions versus single-task conditions during hockey push-passes. Results revealed significant differences in pupil dilation for single task versus dual task performance. The study also evaluates pupillometry and performance across analogy, discovery, and explicit instruction groups, finding no significant differences.
Chapter Three summarizes key findings and delves into their implications. The results suggest pupillometry's potential as an accurate measure of cognitive load during motor learning, with considerations for further refinement being addressed. The thesis concludes by emphasizing the need for additional research to deepen our understanding of the relationship between pupillometry and cognitive load measurement during a motor task
Targeted memory reactivation, errors, and sleep-dependent memory consolidation: Implications for off-line motor learning
Get PDFMemory consolidation benefits from sleep and is fundamental for motor learning. However, sleep-dependent consolidation occurs for a range of motor memories, some of which may be associated with successful practice trials and some of which may be associated with unsuccessful practice trials, or errors. Consequently, the aim of this thesis was to investigate whether it is possible to enhance sleep-dependent consolidation rates by constraining the learning environment in order to regulate errors during practice.
Chapter 1 reviews literature relevant to this question. Chapter Two presents an experiment in which we investigated whether sleep-dependent consolidation is likely to result in a higher rate of learning when many successful trials occur at the end of practice compared to when many unsuccessful practice trials occur at the end of practice. Results showed that the Successful-trials group displayed significant improvements in performance following a night of sleep, whereas the Unsuccessful-trials group did not. We concluded that sleep resulted in better learning in the successful trials group than the unsuccessful trials group because memories of more successful trials and fewer unsuccessful trials consolidated. A serial-position effect may explain these findings; however, more work is needed.
Chapter Three presents a follow-up experiment in which we used the same apparatus and protocol as in Chapter Two. However, we incorporated targeted memory reactivation to promote greater off-line consolidation of successful trials in the successful trials group, and of unsuccessful trials in the unsuccessful trials group. Results showed that both groups displayed significant improvements in performance following a night of sleep. We concluded that targeted memory reactivation may have augmented consolidation of successful trials at the expense of unsuccessful trials, but more work is necessary. The role of dopamine in memory consolidation was discussed.
The results of this thesis provide some support for the premise that it is possible to enhance sleep-dependent consolidation rates by constraining the learning environment in order to regulate errors during practice. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed in Chapter Four
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