Distributed Cognition in Sports Teams: Explaining successful and expert performance

Abstract

In this article we use a hybrid methodology to better understand the skilful performance of sports teams as an exemplar of distributed cognition. We highlight key differences between a team of individual experts (an aggregate system) and an expert team (an emergent system), and outline the kinds of shared characteristics likely to be found in an expert team. We focus on the way that shared knowledge contributes to expert team performance. In particular, we suggest that certain kinds of shared knowledge (both embodied and declarative) and shared skill, potentially developed through a team’s history of playing and training together, facilitate successful coordination. These kinds of shared knowledge and skill may be less developed in a team of experts without a shared history. Exploring the expert performance of sports teams informs our understanding of distributed cognition and collaboration more generally and creates avenues for further philosophical and empirical investigation.     

School phobia and separation anxiety: Diagnostic and treatment comparisons

There exists substantial confusion regarding the comparative diagnostic criteria and treatment implications for school phobia and separation anxiety. A literature survey demonstrates the tendency of school personnel to put all youngsters exhibiting these disorders into one group called “school refusers.” Treatment issues are handled in a similar fashion despite accumulating evidence of treatment-relevant differences between the disorders. Variables that facilitate a finer diagnostic discrimination are presented. After reviewing pertinent treatment distinctions between the two disorders, specific behaviorally oriented methods are recommended.     

The Young Child's Pictorial Representation of the Human Figure

This study investigated reasons for the omission of the torso typical in most young children's drawings of the human figure. Do they have an incomplete mental image of the human figure; if so will the torso be omitted from a manikin task too? As the head is normally drawn first, is the torso simply forgotten; if so will children include it if they are asked to draw the torso first? Eighty tadpole‐drawers (aged between 2 years 7 months and 5 years) were randomly allocated to a drawing or a manikin condition; they were further subdivided into a head‐first or torso‐first condition. Significantly more children produced a conventional figure when they constructed a manikin compared with those who were asked to draw; the order of body parts (head‐first vs torso‐first) had no significant effect. These results suggest that young children omit the torso from their human figures because they have yet to devise a way of drawing it, perhaps because it is a relatively unimportant item; there is little evidence that they have simply forgotten it or that their mental model for the human figure is incomplete.     

Communicating New Library Roles to Enable Digital Scholarship: A Review Article

ABSTRACT

Academic libraries enable a wide range of digital scholarship activities, increasingly as a partner rather than as a service provider. Communicating that shift in role is challenging, not least as digital scholarship is a new field with many players whose activities on campus can be disjointed. The library's actual and potential contributions need to be broadcast to a diverse range of internal and external constituencies, primarily academic staff, university management, library colleagues and related project teams, often with different perspectives. Libraries have significant contributions to offer and a focused communications strategy is needed to embed libraries in digital scholarship and to create new perceptions of their role as enabling partners.     

Factors Underlying Technology Adoption in Academic Libraries in Kuwait

The study analyzed factors shaping adoption of technology in academic libraries in Kuwait. The research was based on interviews conducted with library directors, staff, and users, combined with observation and document analysis. A major aspect of the Kuwaiti context was a relative lack of financial restraints and an enthusiasm for technology within society as a whole. Other important influences shaping technology adoption specifically within libraries were the top down decision-making style and a quest for prestige, in a context of a lack of library culture among users, shortage of professional staff, and a strong, perhaps exaggerated, faith in technology as a solution to problems.