Sport in Australia:An overview

Shifting patterns of work and leisure,together with demographic changes,an increasingly di-verse array of sport and leisure opportunities,commodification,commercialisation and globalisation have had a distinct impact on leisure and recreation/sport in many western countries,including Australia. This short paper overviews some trends in sport in contemporary Australia and discusses the question about the future of sport in this country.     

Infant approach behavior as related to attachment.

The chief purpose of this study was to identify characteristics that distinguish approach as an attachment behavior from approach serving other behavioral systems. Locomotor approaches of 16 male and 10 female white middle-class infants to an attachment figure (the mother) and to a nonattachment figure (the visitor-observer) were examined under naturalistic conditions at home. Observations were made during 4-hour home visits at 3-week intervals; those from 26 to 54 weeks were used. When approach was examined in a free-choice situation and without regard to behavioral context, infants approached the mother proportionally (though slightly) more often than the visitor (p less than .05). In 2 behavioral contexts, however, spontaneous infant approaches were sharply differential to the mother; approaches accompanied by crying and approaches terminating in a pickup appeal were directed almost exclusively to the mother (p less than .0001 for both). Touching upon completion of the approach was not differential, except in the context of a pickup appeal. Object-oriented approaches were more often directed to the visitor than to the mother (p less than .002) and may be either exploratory or affiliative. It is suggested that neither approach nor touching can be assumed to serve the attachment system without consideration of context- both environmental and behavioral.     

Starting with a clean slate: An analysis of member identification with a new sports team

Soccer in Australia underwent a series of changes following a Federal Government inquiry into its future. A report into the Structure, Governance and Management of Soccer in Australia (2003) recommended a process of structural change, aimed at repositioning and re-branding soccer as association football. The restructure yielded the replacement of the National Soccer League with the A-League, five new Australian teams and a concerted attempt to separate soccer from its ethnic ties in the antipodes. This paper examines member identification in relation to a specific A-League club’s members. Using the Sports Spectator Identity Scale (Wann & Branscombe, 1993) to measure sport fan identity in a new team context, a survey of club members of Sydney FC (n = 510), was undertaken. Survey findings indicated that members of Sydney FC reported relatively strong team identification in the first year of the new competition, with some nuanced differences based on age and income. The SSIS demonstrated a good level of fit in relation to a new sports team, although it is evident that rivalries and identification with a new team need time to develop fully.     

On‐screen print: the role of captions as a supplemental literacy tool

Children living in poverty are 1.3 times as likely as non‐poor children to experience reading difficulties and lack key oral experiences that contribute to early literacy development. The purpose of this research was to study the effects of viewing commercially available educational television with closed captions. Seventy second‐ and third‐grade economically disadvantaged children living in urban locations participated in this experimental research design. Children were randomly assigned to view videos with or without closed captions. Captions helped children recognise and read more words, identify the meaning of those words, generate inferences regarding programme content and transfer these skills to a normative code‐related skill task. Risk status moderated word recognition performance: those at risk benefited from captions while those who were not at risk recognised more words when captions were absent.     

Developmental Differences in Memory During Early Childhood: Insights From Event‐Related Potentials

Age‐related differences in behavioral and electrophysiological indices of memory were examined in 3‐ to 6‐year‐old children (N = 76). Behaviorally, no differences were observed in children's ability to identify old items; however, 3‐year‐old children were less accurate in correctly rejecting new items, and 3‐ and 4‐year‐old children recalled fewer contextual details compared to 5‐ and 6‐year‐old children. Age‐related differences in electrophysiological measures (800–1,000 ms after stimulus onset) were observed both to items recalled with contextual details, which increased between 3 and 4 years, and items recalled without contextual details, which were greatest in 5‐year‐old children, even after adjusting for global age‐related differences. These findings, interpreted within a dual‐process framework, may suggest changes in both recollection and familiarity processes during early childhood.     

Developmental Differences in Relations Between Episodic Memory and Hippocampal Subregion Volume During Early Childhood

Episodic memory shows striking improvement during early childhood. However, neural contributions to these behavioral changes are not well understood. This study examined associations between episodic memory and volume of subregions (head, body, and tail) of the hippocampus—a structure known to support episodic memory in school‐aged children and adults—during early childhood (n = 45). Results revealed significant positive relations between episodic memory and volume of the hippocampal head in both the left and right hemispheres for 6‐ but not 4‐year‐old children, suggesting brain–behavior relations vary across development. These findings add new information regarding neural mechanisms of change in memory development during early childhood and suggest that developmental differences in hippocampal subregions may contribute to age‐related differences in episodic memory ability.