Connecting Forensics and Assessment in the Twenty-First Century

A major feature of education in the twenty-first century is assessment. Forensic educators should heighten the importance of learning outcomes and utilize assessment efforts to directly measure how forensic programs develop educational foundations for students. This article focuses on the use of tournaments and noncompetitive educational outcomes, such as engagement within academic communities, service-learning, and the promotion of the value of forensics, to connect the educational benefits of the activity to help define the mission of forensics in the twenty-first century.     

Language and reading impairments are associated with increased prevalence of non-right-handedness

Handedness has been studied for association with language-related disorders because of its link with language hemispheric dominance. No clear pattern has emerged, possibly because of small samples, publication bias, and heterogeneous criteria across studies. Non-right-handedness (NRH) frequency was assessed in N = 2503 cases with reading and/or language impairment and N = 4316 sex-matched controls identified from 10 distinct cohorts (age range 6–19 years old; European ethnicity) using a priori set criteria. A meta-analysis (N_cases = 1994) showed elevated NRH % in individuals with language/reading impairment compared with controls (OR = 1.21, CI = 1.06–1.39, p = .01). The association between reading/language impairments and NRH could result from shared pathways underlying brain lateralization, handedness, and cognitive functions.     

Anticipatory postural adjustments during cutting manoeuvres in football and their consequences for knee injury risk

Abstract

Anticipatory postural adjustments (APAs), i.e. preparatory positioning of the head, the trunk and the foot, are essential to initiate cutting manoeuvres during football games. The aim of the present study was to determine how APA strategies during cutting manoeuvres are influenced by a reduction of the time available to prepare the movement.

Thirteen football players performed different cutting tasks, with directions of cutting either known prior to the task or indicated by a light signal occurring 850, 600 or 500 ms before ground contact.

With less time available to prepare the cutting manoeuvre, the head was less orientated towards the cutting direction (P = 0.033) and the trunk was even more rotated in the opposite direction (P = 0.002), while the foot placement was not significantly influenced. Moreover, the induced higher lateral trunk flexion correlated with the increased knee abduction moment (r = 0.41; P = 0.009).

Increasing lateral trunk flexion is the main strategy used to successfully perform a cutting manoeuvre when less time is available to prepare the movement. However, higher lateral trunk flexion was associated with an increased knee abduction moment and therefore an increased knee injury risk. Reducing lateral trunk flexion during cutting manoeuvres should be part of training programs seeking the optimisation of APAs.     

National Sporting Pastimes,Spectacles of Sporting Otherness and American Imaginings, 1880–1920

This discussion focuses on how the rise of America's national sporting pastimes, during the period 1880–1920, was inextricably tied to the ambitions and outpourings of American print capitalism and a concomitant congealing of a sense of modern American nationhood. In examining this thematic, we explicate the manner in which American national sporting audiences during the period 1880–1920 were variously constituted through discourses of national and ethnic sporting difference or Otherness. Hence, we examine the popular representation of turn of the century rodeo practices (as narrated through the spectacle of the western showman William Frederick ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody's Wild West show productions), the position of early-twentieth-century American baseball in relation to other sporting cultures (graphically depicted by Albert Goodwill, or A.G., Spalding's promotional publications, specifically the 1911 America's National Game) and the national and ethnic differences discerned within the global sporting landscape more generally (explicated within the 1919 National Geographic article ‘The Geography of Games’). These performances and representations of ethnic and national sporting Otherness played an important role in re-inscribing and legitimating the (White European American) normative core of American sport culture (as manifest within and through the dominant practices of playing and/or spectating of football, baseball and basketball).     

Sequential structure in televised social behavior

Karl Erik Rosengren, Lawrence A. Wenner, &; Philip Palmgreen (Eds.). Media gratifications research: Current perspectives. Beverly Hills: Sage, 1985. 312 pp. $25.00 (cloth)

James A. Anderson. Communication research: Issues and methods. New York: McGraw‐Hill, 1987.423 pp. $32.95 (cloth)

Joseph R. Dominick &; James E. Fletcher (Eds.). Broadcasting research methods. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1985. 330 pp. $38.50 (cloth)

Roger D. Wimmer &; Joseph R. Dominick. Mass media research: An introduction (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1987. 514 pp. $36.00 (cloth)

Renata Adler. Reckless disregard: Westmoreland v. CBS, et al. and Sharon v. Time. New York: Knopf, 1986. 243 pp. $16.95 (cloth)

Rodney A. Smolla. Suing the press. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. 277 pp. $19.95 (cloth)

L. Rowell Huesmann &; Leonard D. Eron (Eds.). Television and the aggressive child: A cross‐national comparison. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1986. 314 pp. $36.00 (cloth)

Tannis MacBeth Williams (Ed.). The impact of television: A natural experiment in three communities. Orlando, FL: Academic Press, 1986.446 pp. $53.00 (cloth), $34.95 (paper)

Margaret B. W. Graham. RCA and the videodisc player: The business of research. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987. 258 pp. $19.95 (cloth)