Effects of targeted interventions and of specific instructional time on reading ability in French children in grade 1

European Journal of Psychology of Education - The aim is to examine the impact of interventions on fluency and reading comprehension and how the effects of these interventions depend on the time...     

An empirical study of the construct validity of social creativity

Creativity can be broadly defined as a combination of interacting individual and environmental resources leading to the production of valuable solutions. This paper concentrates on the type of creativity that can be expressed in solving social problems. After reviewing the potentially relevant psychological and contextual variables intervening in social creativity, leading to individual differences in this capacity, we present results of a study testing the nomological validity of social creativity in a group of 70 pre-adolescents. The findings indicate that social creativity performance is linked with socially relevant variables such as social competencies, popularity, and parenting style. Finally, we discuss the relevance of a creativity approach in social domains such as violence prevention programs and education.     

School Life and Adolescents' Self‐Esteem Trajectories

This study investigates heterogeneity in adolescents' trajectories of global self‐esteem (GSE) and the relations between these trajectories and facets of the interpersonal, organizational, and instructional components of students' school life. Methodologically, this study illustrates the use of growth mixture analyses, and how to obtain proper student‐level effects when there are multiple schools, but not enough to support multilevel analyses. This study is based on a 4‐year, six‐measurement‐point, follow‐up of 1,008 adolescents (M_age = 12.6 years, SD = 0.6 at Time 1.) The results show four latent classes presenting elevated, moderate, increasing, and low trajectories defined based on GSE levels and fluctuations. The results show that GSE becomes trait‐like as it increases and that school life effects, moderated by gender, played an important role in predicting membership in these trajectories.     

Control of propulsion and body lift during the first two stances of sprint running: a simulation study

The aim of this study was to relate the contribution of lower limb joint moments and individual muscle forces to the body centre of mass (COM) vertical and horizontal acceleration during the initial two steps of sprint running. Start performance of seven well-trained sprinters was recorded using an optoelectronic motion analysis system and two force plates. Participant-specific torque-driven and muscle-driven simulations were conducted in OpenSim to quantify, respectively, the contributions of the individual joints and muscles to body propulsion and lift. The ankle is the major contributor to both actions during the first two stances, with an even larger contribution in the second compared to the first stance. Biarticular gastrocnemius is the main muscle contributor to propulsion in the second stance. The contribution of the hip and knee depends highly on the position of the athlete: During the first stance, where the athlete runs in a forward bending position, the knee contributes primarily to body lift and the hip contributes to propulsion and body lift. In conclusion, a small increase in ankle power generation seems to affect the body COM acceleration, whereas increases in hip and knee power generation tend to affect acceleration less.     

Completion of knowledge codification: an illustration through the ISO 9000 standards implementation process

This paper looks at the role played by the ISO 9000 registration process in contributing to the knowledge codification within the firms. The ISO 9000 standards concern the way a company should elaborate a quality system by providing guidelines and models. They are considered as a code, i.e. a common language, which leads to communication and industrial relationship. This paper focuses on how this code might be used within the firms to enhance knowledge codification. It explains the standards implementation process by studying the three steps needed to complete codification within the firm: (1) the starting point of the implementation; (2) the subject of the codification, that means the material and behavioural characteristics of the production process; (3) the impact of the ISO 9000 implementation on knowledge accumulation within the firm. This paper addresses the fact that the ISO implementation is related to knowledge codification through a learning process, which includes both individual and collective knowledge conversions.     

How does the World Trade Organization know? The mobilization and staging of scientific expertise in the GMO trade dispute

The World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement procedure is a key arena for establishing global legal norms for what counts as relevant knowledge. As a high-profile case, the WTO trade dispute on GMOs mobilized scientific expertise in somewhat novel ways. Early on, the Panel put the dispute under the Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Agreement through a new legal ontology; it classified transgenes as potential pests and limited all environmental issues to the 'plant and animal health' category. The selection of scientific experts sought a multi-party consensus through a fast adversarial process, reflecting a specific legal epistemology. For the SPS framing, focusing on the defendant's regulatory procedures, the Panel staged scientific expertise in specific ways that set up how experts were questioned, the answers they would give, their specific role in the legal arena, and the way their statements would complement the Panel's findings. In these ways, the dispute settlement procedure co-produced legal and scientific expertise within the Panel's SPS framework. Moreover, the Panel operated a procedural turn in WTO jurisprudence by representing its findings as a purely legal-administrative judgement on whether the EC's regulatory procedures violated the SPS Agreement, while keeping implicit its own judgements on substantive risk issues. As this case illustrates, the WTO settlement procedure mobilizes scientific expertise for sophisticated, multiple aims: it recruits a source of credibility from the scientific arena, thus reinforcing the standard narrative of 'science-based trade discipline', while also constructing new scientific expertise for the main task--namely, challenging trade restrictions for being unduly cautious.     

Lumbopelvic motor control and low back pain in elite soccer players: a cross-sectional study

This study aimed to investigate the relationship between the history of low back pain and quality of lumbopelvic motor control in soccer players. Forty-three male elite soccer players (mean age, 18.2 ± 1.4 years) filled in questionnaires related to low back pain and attended a session to assess lumbopelvic motor control by means of five tests (the bent knee fall out test, the knee lift abdominal test, the sitting knee extension test, the waiter’s bow and the transversus abdominis test). A physiotherapist, blinded to the medical history of the participants, scored (0 = failed, 1 = correct) the performance of the players for each of the tests resulting in a lumbopelvic motor control score ranging from 0 to 5. Forty-seven per cent of the soccer players reported a disabling low back pain episode lasting at least two consecutive days in the previous year. These players scored worse lumbopelvic motor control than players without a history of low back pain (lumbopelvic motor control score of 1.8 vs. 3.3, P < 0.01). The between-groups difference was particularly marked for the bent knee fall out test, the knee lift abdominal test and the transversus abdominis test (P < 0.01). In conclusion, most soccer players with a history of low back pain had an altered lumbopelvic motor control. Further research should examine whether lumbopelvic motor control is etiologically involved in low back pain episodes in soccer players.     

A winner’s curse in the bidding process for broadcasting rights in football? The cases of the French and UK markets

The winner’s curse is a well-known phenomenon in the auction theory. The main aim of this article is to verify its existence in football broadcasting rights. The underlying objective is to assess whether some indices of this situation are verified and can cause a winner’s curse. The methodology is based on the application of Andreff (2014 Andreff, Wladimir. 2014. “The Winner’s Curse in Sports Economics.” Contemporary Research in Sports Economics 14: 177–205. [Google Scholar])’s six indices and a seventh index (disappointment) to the domestic markets for broadcasting rights of the French and English football leagues. These two markets have seen an increase in the number of packages offered to broadcasters, with the possibility of several ‘winners’. The article shows that the winner of the major packages in the auction is not cursed. The curse is more likely to happen for the second mover. As such, the article suggests a practical recommendation for broadcasters interested in football rights: win the best package or keep away.     

Time-out! How psychological momentum builds up and breaks down in table tennis

ABSTRACT

The current study examined the development of psychological momentum (PM) in table tennis and the effect of a time-out. Eighty table tennis players were exposed to an audiovisual scenario, in which they either came back from 1–7 to 7–7 in an all-decisive game (positive momentum), or in which the opponent came back from 7–1 to 7–7 (negative momentum). Furthermore, at the score of 7–7 a time-out was called. One group of participants received no specific instructions during the time-out, whereas the other group received task (mastery-approach – MAp) instructions. Overall, PM perceptions increased for participants in the positive momentum condition, but decreased rapidly for participants in the negative momentum condition. In addition, the time-out led to a loss of PM in the positive momentum condition, but to a recovery of PM in the negative momentum condition. The instructions during the time-out did not make a significant difference. Together, these results suggest that scoring patterns in a table tennis game significantly affect the PM of players. Furthermore, a player or coach could benefit from calling a time-out in a negative momentum situation, as this provides an opportunity to psychologically recover.