Influence of regression model and initial intensity of an incremental test on the relationship between the lactate threshold estimated by the maximal-deviation method and running performance

Abstract

This study investigated the influence of the regression model and initial intensity during an incremental test on the relationship between the lactate threshold estimated by the maximal-deviation method and performance in elite-standard runners. Twenty-three well-trained runners completed a discontinuous incremental running test on a treadmill. Speed started at 9 km · h^?1 and increased by 1.5 km · h^?1 every 4 min until exhaustion, with a minute of recovery for blood collection. Lactate–speed data were fitted by exponential and polynomial models. The lactate threshold was determined for both models, using all the co-ordinates, excluding the first and excluding the first and second points. The exponential lactate threshold was greater than the polynomial equivalent in any co-ordinate condition (P < 0.001). For both models, the lactate threshold was lower when all co-ordinates were used than when the first and the first and second points were excluded (P < 0.001). 10-km race pace was correlated with both the exponential and polynomial lactate thresholds for all the co-ordinate conditions (r ≥ 0.75, P < 0.001 and r ≥ 0.56, P < 0.05, respectively). The results suggest that the exponential lactate threshold should be used instead of the polynomial equivalent since it is more strongly associated with performance and is independent of the initial intensity of the test.     

Ethics in the mentoring of gerontologists: rights and responsibilities

This article examines professional codes of ethics as they apply to the mentoring of gerontology students, supervisees, or proteges. Ethics codes from the disciplines represented in professional gerontology were evaluated according to the specificity of their ethical mentoring guidelines. Three levels of specificity were identified. General "do no harm" statements are most common. Clear, explicit guidelines or rules are much less frequent. Where explicit mentoring guidelines exist, they focus on the use or misuse of the power of the professional/mentor in the mentoring relationship. Specific suggestions regarding the rights and responsibilities of both parties in the mentoring relationship, reflecting both formal ethics codes and the authors, experiences, are made.     

The Influence of Teacher Expectations about Twice-Exceptional Students on the Use of High Quality Gifted Curriculum: A Case Study Approach

Twice-exceptional students show evidence of high academic performance or potential and also have a disability that impedes their ability to learn. Twice-exceptional students remain under-represented in gifted programs, and some researchers attribute such under-representation to the negative beliefs and low expectations about twice-exceptional students held by teachers. While researchers have begun to investigate the curricular models and instructional strategies that are effective for twice-exceptional students, little research addresses how teacher beliefs and expectations about student ability are reflected in the ways teachers implement such models and strategies for twice-exceptional students in gifted classrooms. Even less research addresses gifted students with emotional and behavioral disabilities. We used a case study of a third-grade teacher using a structured, model-based language arts curriculum to better understand how her expectations about a gifted student with an emotional disability influenced her instructional choices. Using observational and interview data, the case study approach allowed the researchers to personalize the experiences of this teacher and provided a context in which to examine the subtleties of teacher expectations when teaching a gifted student with an emotional disability. Implications for educational practice, particularly the need for comprehensive school-based support systems for students with emotional disabilities, are discussed.     

Infants' Forgetting of Correlated Attributes and Object Recognition

Infants as young as 3 months of age can encode the relations among object features. Because object recognition depends critically upon a match between perceived feature configurations and representations of the object in long-term memory, the present experiments focused on infants' long-term memory for feature correlations. In 3 experiments with 72 3-month-olds, we documented the forgetting functions of different feature correlations, examined their relation to infants' memory for individual features, and replicated the findings with different stimuli. Infants were trained to activate a mobile composed of two kinds of blocks that differed in color, the figures displayed on them, and the figures' colors and were tested after different delays with recombinations of either the block colors, the figures, or the figure colors. Infants remembered some of the original feature combinations for up to 3 days but forgot all of them after 4 days. Even after 4 days, however, infants remembered the individual features that had entered into the original combinations. These results demonstrate that very young infants not only encode the relations among object features but also remember them for several days. Moreover, there is a dissociation in memory between features and feature relations: Feature relations are forgotten sooner than the individual features that comprise those relations.     

Happiness as a Goal of Counseling: Cross-cultural Implications

The article examines the construct of happiness within the context of counseling and holistic health (body, mind and spirit). It discusses happiness as a goal of counseling as reflected in selected counseling theories that focus on humanistic principles, holistic health, positive psychology, personal growth and the client’s intentional choice-making in life. Moreover, the article considers within-cultural and cross-cultural implications of happiness, and presents recommendations for counseling professionals who counsel clients or train future counselors.     

A reexamination of the effect of big-time football and basketball success on graduation rates and alumni giving rates

To determine the impact on the academic mission, the models in this study test whether there is statistical evidence that student graduation rates or alumni giving rates are influenced by pigskin or hoop success for major universities after adjustment for key academic variables. Using a sample of big-time sports universities and models comparable to other research, the evidence presented in this article indicates that having a highly successful football team has a positive impact on both the overall graduation rate and the alumni giving rate. In contrast, a successful basketball team has no significant effect on either of these key measures of academic success.     

Engaging young students in scientific investigations: prompting for meaningful reflection

This study examined the verbal prompts a tutor used to promote reflection and young students’ responses to these prompts. Seven children (ages 8–12) participated in 260 min of one-on-one tutoring to learn scientific concepts related to gear movement; the tutor spontaneously provided these students with 763 prompts for reflection. Prompts reliably induced reflection: Students responded verbally 87% of the time. Turn-by-turn discourse analysis revealed seven distinct types of prompts and 11 distinct types of verbal responses. High-level prompts were strongly associated with high-level responses. A log-multiplicative association model with two dimensions (temporality and certainty) represented the relationships between prompt and response types; from this model, odds ratios estimated the strength of association between specific pairs of prompt and response types. Findings are discussed in terms of the effects that reflection may have on students’ developing understanding of scientific concepts.     

Cultivating critical thinkers: Exploring transfer of learning from pre-service teacher training to classroom practice

This study explores the transfer of critical thinking skills and dispositions from pre-service teacher training to classroom practice and student achievement in the cases of two graduates from a course on critical thinking-integrated instruction. Two 7th and two 8th grade classes were randomly assigned as experimental (CT-integrated instruction), or comparison (traditional instruction) groups. Empirical results demonstrated that, in these two cases, the teachers successfully developed CT-integrated instruction for effectively fostering students' CT skills and dispositions, while improving student achievement. Future research should include larger and more representative samples to avoid bias and reliably evaluate CT-based teacher training initiatives.