Effects of Proximity on the Choice to Be Physically Active or Sedentary

The link between physical activity and weight loss has precipitated interest in interventions to foster adherence to exercise. It has been suggested that treatment effects, when significant, should be analyzed to determine theory-based mediators. This research assessed possible mediation of changes in Physical Self-Concept, Exercise Self-Efficacy, Total Mood Disturbance, and Body Areas Satisfaction scores on the relationship between exercise session attendance and participation by obese women in a 6-month treatment based on tenets of social cognitive theory (n = 73) or a control condition (n = 64). Participation in the treatment was associated with significantly greater exercise session attendance and significantly greater improvements in Physical Self-Concept, Exercise Barriers Self-Efficacy, and Body Areas Satisfaction. Overall, changes in the assessed psychological factors demonstrated significant mediation of the association between group membership and exercise session attendance, R² = .23, with only change in Physical Self-Concept scores providing a significant unique contribution. Extensions of this research across different sample types, and with longer durations, were suggested to refine theory and, ultimately, improve exercise adherence treatments.     

First-generation college students: Characteristics,experiences, and cognitive development

This study sought answers to three questions: (1) Do the precollege characteristics of first-generation students differ from those of traditional students? (2) Do first-generation students' college experiences differ from those of other students? (3) What are the educational consequences of any differences on first-year gains in students' reading, math, and critical thinking abilities? Answers come from 2,685 students (825 first-generation and 1,860 traditional students) who entered 23 diverse institutions nationwide in Fall 1992 and who completed one year of study. First-generation students differ from their traditional peers in both entering characteristics and college experiences. Although traditional students make greater net gains in reading during their first year, the two groups gain to about the same degree in math and critical thinking skills. Those gains, however, appear to result from somewhat different experiences.     

Using developmental evaluation as a design thinking tool for curriculum innovation in professional higher education

This paper argues for the use of ‘developmental’ evaluation as a design-based research tool for sustainable curriculum innovation in professional higher education. Professional education is multi-faceted and complex with diverse views from researchers, professional practitioners, employers and the world of politics leaving little consensus about the nature of educational ‘problems’, let alone educational ‘solutions’. Developmental evaluation is an emerging approach to evaluating innovations and/or organisations that are in a continuous state of change; it asks the evaluators to not simply appraise a final design, but to work with designers through processes of rapid reconnaissance, mapping the territory and emergent modelling. This paper provides an account of how the adoption of the dispositions and approaches of developmental evaluation increased the trustworthiness of decision-making in the design of a new post-graduate teacher education degree in Australia. The principles of developmental evaluation as a design thinking approach have application in other complex curriculum settings.     

Effects of food primes on the operant behavior of nondeprived rats

After rats had been trained to press a lever for food reward, experimenter-initiated food “primes” increased the likelihood of subsequent responding during periods in which the subjects were nondeprived. No such priming effects were found after presentation of a stimulus that had previously been paired with food. In other experiments, nonreinforced leverpresses, as well as subthreshold components of the leverpress response (e.g., forepaw raising), were also found to be enhanced by food primes. Taken together with other reports in the literature, the present findings are consistent with a “motivational aftereffects” interpretation of priming, and also with the notion that all stimuli which possess reinforcing properties possess priming properties as well.     

Multicultural Children’s Literature as a Context for Teaching Mathematics for Cultural Relevance in Urban Schools

This article reports on a teacher-research study that used multicultural texts as a context for teaching mathematics for cultural relevance during an elementary mathematics methods course. The results of the study reveal that 28 % (5 out of 18) of the teacher candidates (TCs) chose books that were culturally contextual or culturally amenable. However, 89 % (16 out of 18) of the TCs chose texts that were mathematically robust or mathematically peripheral. Four focal TCs were selected to examine how they used the texts with children to teach mathematics concepts. Math lessons fostered academic success, cultural competence, and critical consciousness. Overall, the results of the study are mixed. We conclude that some TCs’ choice of texts may reflect indifference, passive resistance, low self-efficacy, school culture, and mixed messages from the teacher–researcher. Additional studies that include follow-up interviews and classroom observations are needed to determine the factors that influence TCs’ selections of multicultural texts and their implementation of culturally relevant pedagogy with students.     

Executive Branch (and Library of Congress)

WALT DISNEY'S FANTASIA by John Culhane (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1983---$35.00)

The Wisconsin/Warner Brothers Screenplay series has produced two new volumes this year (both University of Wisconsin Press, 1983 for $17.50/6.95)

THREE SCREEN COMEDIES by Samson Raphaelson (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983---$19.95)

FILM PLOTS by Leonard J. Leff (Ann Arbor: Pierian Press, 1983---no price given)

NAPOLEON: ABEL GANCE'S CLASSIC FILM by Kevin Brownlow (New York: Knopf, 1983---$14.95)

FIFTY YEARS OF SERIAL THRILLS by Roy Kinnard (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1983---$15.00)

FILM AND RADIO PROPAGANDA IN WORLD WAR II edited by K.R.M. Short (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1983---$23.95)

STRANGERS IN PARADISE: THE HOLLYWOOD EMIGRES, 1933-1950 by John Russell Taylor (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1983---$16.95)

THE JAMES BOND FILMS: A BEHIND THE SCE/413S HISTORY by Steven Jay Rubin (New York: Crown Books, 1983---$9.95)

THE UNIVERSAL STORY by Clive Hirschorn (New York: Crown, 1983---$35.00)

STAR MYTHS: SHOW-BUSINESS BIOGRAPHIES ON FILM by Robert Milton Miller (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1983---$27.50)

REDISCOVERING FRENCH FILM edited by Mary Lea Bandy (distributed by New York Graphic Society Books through Little, Brown of Boston, 1983---$15.00 paper)     

General Motion Pictures

Dana H. Hodgdon and Stuart M. Kaminsky BASIC FILMMAKING (New York: Arco Publishing, 1982—$12.95/$7.95)

Stewart Bronfeld WRITING FOR FILM AND TELEVISION (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1981—$11.95)

Leonard Maltin TV MOVIES (New York: New American Library, 1982— $4.95)

Alan Frank THE HORROR FILM HANDBOOK (Totowa, NJ: Barnes E. Noble Books, 1982—$24.95)

Richard Dyer MacCann and Jack C. Ellis CINEMA EXAMINED: SELECTIONS FROM CINEMA JOURNAL (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1982—$9.95 paper)     

Review and criticism

The network tone of voice

Mass Communication in China, John Howkins (New York: Longman, 1982).

Television and Radio in the United Kingdom, Burton Paulu (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981).

Mass Media and Social Change, ed. Elihu Katz and Tamas Szecsko (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications Inc., 1981).

Electronic Colonialism: The Future of International Broadcasting and Communication, Thomas L. McPhail (Beverly Hills, CA.: Sage, 1981).

The First Amendment Under Seige: The Politics of Broadcast Regulation, Richard E. Labunski (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1981).