Determination of football pitch locations from video footage and official pitch markings

The ability to determine a specific location on a football (soccer) pitch from television footage would provide a cost-effective method of obtaining competition-specific information on many professional and international teams. This study presents the accuracy and reliability of a new method of calculating ball location from simulated television coverage and known pitch markings. The coordinates of 99 markers of known location on a football pitch were digitized from video. An intersection point was determined from the equations of two lines that form pitch markings and the relationship from this point to other known pitch coordinates was calculated using a curve-fitting based method. Average error between known and reconstructed measures was 0.21 m for pitch width and 0.11 m for pitch length from a view simulating television coverage. Inter- and intra-rater reliability analyses showed researchers could consistently reconstruct pitch locations to within less than half a metre. The accuracy and reliability of this method will be sufficient for most practical uses in an applied sport environment, although the level of accuracy required will depend on the specific application. This method could be applied to other sports to determine specific locations on a pitch or court or to improve current competition analysis systems.     

A latent profile analysis of student restudy decisions

Metacognition and Learning - Do all learners make the same restudy decisions, or is there heterogeneity within the population? The present study combines three previously published datasets and...     

Rational Higher-Order Belief Revision in Young Children

Belief revision can occur at multiple levels of abstraction, including lower-level and higher-order beliefs. It remains unclear, however, how conflicting evidence interacts with prior beliefs to encourage higher-order belief revision. This study explores how 4- and 5-year-olds (N = 96) respond to evidence that directly conflicts with their causal higher-order beliefs. When shown a single event that directly violated a strongly supported prior belief, preschoolers largely maintained their initial higher-order belief. However, when the prior belief was more weakly supported and the counterevidence was stronger, children changed their minds. These findings indicate that young children can revise their higher-order beliefs and, furthermore, do so depending on the strength of both the evidence and their prior beliefs.     

Young Children's Understanding of Changes in Their Mental States

3-year-old children have difficulty reporting their past false beliefs. We investigated their ability to remember and report other types of past mental state, in particular, pretenses, images, perceptions, desires, and intentions. In a series of tasks, children were placed in one mental state, that state was changed, and they were asked to report the initial state. 4-year-olds were generally able to report all their past mental states, including beliefs. 3-year-olds were able to report past pretenses, images, and perceptions extremely well. They had great difficulty reporting past beliefs. Reporting past desires and intentions was more difficult than reporting pretenses, images, and perceptions, but slightly less difficult than reporting beliefs. The evidence suggests that 3-year-olds have difficulty understanding the nature of representation.     

Spaces and physical education pre-service teachers’ narrative identities

Stories or narratives are integral to meaning making in relation to selves, others and the choices we make in living. It follows that pre-service teachers’ narratives can provide a means for understanding experiences and processes of becoming teachers of physical education (PE). This paper reports on an interview-based inquiry from which biographical information was collated and constructed as narratives. The specific focus of this paper is demonstrating how Ricoeur's [1991a. Narrative identity. In D. Woods (Ed.), On Paul Ricoeur: Narrative and interpretation (pp. 188–199). London: Routledge; 1992. Oneself as another. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press] theorisation of narrative identity can generate understandings about incipient PE teacher identities as developed in various spaces and temporalities. Data are presented through a cluster of significant spaces: sport, families, schooling, PE and Teacher Education plus narratives. Findings indicate that in constructing narrative identities, participants activated links between spaces, their past, present and aspirational futures as teachers. Given this, I conclude by identifying possibilities for PE teacher educators in using personal narratives as resources for exploring significant lifeworld spaces and subjective possibilities.     

Understanding capacity through the processes and outcomes of interorganizational relationships in nonprofit community sport organizations

Engaging in relationships with other organizations is one way for nonprofit community sport organizations (CSOs) to acquire needed resources, knowledge, and other social benefits while achieving important public purposes and building community cohesion. This study explored the processes and outcomes of interorganizational relationships in CSOs through semi-structured interviews with presidents of these organizations (N = 20). The findings revealed key relationship processes including trust, consistency, balance, and engagement as well as specific management skills. The findings also revealed that relationships impacted CSOs through enabling improvements to program/service quality and operations, and enhancing community presence. The study contributes to the interorganizational relationship literature and our understanding of how relationships advance organizational goals in this small nonprofit context.     

A Consumer‐Driven Approach to Increase Suggestive Selling

Several research articles have been published demonstrating the effectiveness of behavioral interventions in improving suggestive selling behavior of sales staff (e.g., Johnson & Masotti, 1990; Martinko, White, & Hassell, 1989; Mirman, 1982; Ralis & O'Brien, 1986). Procedures employed in these studies made use of two classes of personnel to implement the intervention: (1) personnel internal to the organization or (2) external consultants. The current study examined the efficacy of a consumer‐driven approach to improve suggestive selling behavior of three employees of a fast food franchise. Customers delivered either a verbal prompt or praise to an employee after they had placed their order. Delivery of a prompt or praise depended on whether or not the employee made a suggestion for an additional food purchase. This consumer‐driven intervention increased suggestive selling behaviors of all three employees, and was associated with higher suggestive sales in each case.