The effect of progressively increased physical efforts on visual evoked potentials in volleyball players and non-athletes

We assessed the effect of physical effort with increasing intensity on neural activity in the visual pathway in volleyball players (n = 10) and non-athletes (n = 10). Participants performed three 10-min tests of increasing intensity on a cycle ergometer. Each participant was assigned individual workloads below the lactate threshold (40% [Vdot]O(2max)), at the lactate threshold (65-75% [Vdot]O(2max)), and above the lactate threshold (80% [Vdot]O(2max)). Four recordings of visual evoked potentials were made: pre-exercise and immediately after each of the three subsequent tests. We assessed neural activity of the visual pathway by examining the amplitude and latency of the N75, P100, and N135 components of the visual evoked potentials waveform. Pre-exercise P100 wave latency was shorter (P < 0.05) in volleyball players than in non-athletes. In non-athletes, the latency of P100 following the first and second effort (40% and 65-75% [Vdot]O(2max)) was reduced compared with pre-exercise (P < 0.01). However, P100 latency increased and P100 amplitude decreased after the third test (80% [Vdot]O(2max)) in non-athletes. In contrast, no significant changes in the latency or amplitude of visual evoked potentials were observed in the athletes in the three tests. Neural conductivity in the visual pathway after exercise might be at least partially dependent on the individual's personal training adaptation status.     

Ingroup norms, intergroup contact and intergroup anxiety as predictors of the outgroup attitudes of majority and minority youth

This study focused on the interplay of perceived parental and peer norms and the quality of intergroup contact in predicting outgroup attitudes among majority and minority youth. In addition, the role of intergroup anxiety on the contact-attitude association was studied simultaneously with the effects of social norms. 225 adolescents (93 Finnish majority and 132 Russian-speaking minority youth) were surveyed. As was hypothesized, the effects of intergroup contact and social norms on the outgroup attitudes were different depending on the group status: perceived norms and the quality of intergroup contact had a joint effect on outgroup attitudes only among minority youth. While perceived norms and contact experiences affected the outgroup attitudes of majority group members independently of each other, minority group members’ negative contact experiences were associated with negative attitudes towards the majority only when the perceived ingroup norms supported the expression of negative attitudes. Surprisingly, intergroup anxiety mediated the contact-attitude association only in minority youth, and the effect of contact quality on outgroup attitudes was stronger among the minority than among the majority. The results are discussed in relation to the specific intergroup context in question. It is suggested that both positive ingroup norms and pleasant personal contact experiences play a crucial role in the formation of positive attitudes among minority as well as majority youth, and in some contexts positive norms may be even more important than positive intergroup contact.     

Educational trajectories of LIS students: Continuities and transformations

The information sector is a dynamic disciplinary and professional field, located in a fluid social and technological environment. The educational choices of students in library and information science (LIS) departments is an important aspect of the process through which they construct their ambitions, plans, and future capabilities, and so research on students' choices and their educational careers as social processes is also important. Through a detailed consideration of case study accounts of students from LIS departments in Greece, the argument for the importance of social and cultural factors in the formation of students' identity is advanced. Data were collected in two research phases using a questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews. Analysis of data demonstrates the complexity of the process of making educational choices, revealing how individual, family, social, and institutional factors interrelate with the ways young people cope with contingencies, and with social and personal relations. How these complex influences facilitate or impede students' trajectories within higher education institutions is also shown, as well as how they act upon the construction of their pedagogic identities. Of considerable significance is the finding that students from lower social class backgrounds tend to form pedagogic identities that are fragile. By contrast, students from families with significant amounts of cultural and social capital are in a position to exploit the academic and social resources of institutions, and to construct embedded identities with a strong scientific basis. More research is needed to illuminate how LIS departments could develop mechanisms to reduce such discrepancies.     

Peer effects on youth screen media consumption in Catalonia (Spain)

It is well known that young people are major consumers of screen media and that their peers are one of the principal determinants of youth behavior as regards their patterns of consumption and other activities. On the basis of these premises, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the influence of classroom peers on youth screen media consumption. More specifically, it considers the time spent watching TV, playing console games and surfing the Internet. Data are drawn from a single representative survey of secondary school students aged 14–16 in Catalonia (Spain) in 2008. Having accounted for problems of endogeneity, our analysis shows that peer consumption has a positive and statistically significant effect on an individual’s console and Internet use. While the magnitude of this effect is not great in the case of the former use, peer effects are quite marked in that of Internet consumption. Moreover, gender differences are observed when media consumption is examined separately. Thus, peer effects on console use are statistically significant only for boys, while the influence of peers on an individual’s Internet use is higher among boys than it is among girls.     

Normalization between stimulus elements in a model of Pavlovian conditioning: Showjumping on an elemental horse

Harris and Livesey. Learning & Behavior, 38, 1-26, (2010) described an elemental model of associative learning that implements a simple learning rule that produces results equivalent to those proposed by Rescorla and Wagner (1972), and additionally modifies in "real time" the strength of the associative connections between elements. The novel feature of this model is that stimulus elements interact by suppressively normalizing one another's activation. Because of the normalization process, element activity is a nonlinear function of sensory input strength, and the shape of the function changes depending on the number and saliences of all stimuli that are present. The model can solve a range of complex discriminations and account for related empirical findings that have been taken as evidence for configural learning processes. Here we evaluate the model's performance against the host of conditioning phenomena that are outlined in the companion article, and we present a freely available computer program for use by other researchers to simulate the model's behavior in a variety of conditioning paradigms.     

Captive students and duelling podia: a collaborative approach to teaching the Frontier in American Literature and Film

In this essay, we explore how the same theories and metaphors’ used historically to describe the frontier, are useful ways of thinking about both team teaching and English studies as an interdisciplinary field. Defining the frontier as both imprecise and liminal encourages the students, as well as the instructors, to work within an open space of all sorts of possibilities and no easily fixed answers. Such an approach illustrates the blurred line between written and visual texts and highlights how long the idea of the frontier has captivated US national consciousness, from early exploration narratives to film and TV.