In the past, consolidation of schools was studied for the post-consolidation phase. This study focused on the pre-consolidation perceptions of administrators, teachers, and parents in the areas of academics, athletics, and interactions and collaborations between administrators, teachers, students and parents of two school districts in Mississippi that went through consolidation. Data were collected through: a) archival data, b) observations, and c) focus group interviews of administrators, teachers, and parents from the two school districts. Data from all sources were carefully reviewed and coded, further categorized, and emerging themes were related to the research questions. This study found that after consolidation, Starkville School District (SSD) students would continue to do the same academically while the Oktibbeha County School District (OCSD) students will improve and do much better academically. SSD students would continue to do the same athletically but face more competition while OCSD students will have more choices, and face more competition. All stakeholders agreed that most of the OCSD administrators will be without employment. Teachers and parents from both school districts thought the administrators from both school districts will get along fine. Moving into the future all thought teacher interactions will go well. SSD administrators, teachers, and parents thought student interactions will be fine. OCSD administrators, teachers, and parents thought initially student interactions might be rough but it will be fine later. SSD administrators, teachers, and parents and OCSD teachers thought parent interaction will go well. OCSD administrators and parents thought parent interaction would be fine if they were treated right by the SSD parents. More research during the pre-consolidation phase needs to be done. Areas like transportation and funding need to be studied. Quantitative studies for the areas looked at in this study need to be done. Longitudinal studies needs to be done in the future. Students need to be used as participants in future research.

In typical distributions (Even [John] was late), 'even' projects two expected presuppositions: 1) There are more people than John who were late and 2) John is a surprising candidate to be late. In comparatives (John is even later than Sam), there is a unique inference, which is distinct from the two aforementioned and, critically, unique to the context of comparatives. In this case, we could say that John and Sam are both late, which is not entailed from the simple comparative ‘John is later than Sam’ (Rett, 2008). The aim of this thesis is to relate the expected presuppositions (Karttunen and Peters, 1979), which constitute the broad theoretical framing of ‘even’, to the unique inference borne from comparatives. Doing so brings two research questions. First, the syntactic element that 'even' focuses must be identified. Departing from Barker (1991), I argue this syntactic element, in many comparatives with 'even', is the structure obligatorily elided under the process of Comparative Deletion (Bresnan 1973, 1975). A key argument against Barker is on the grounds of discourse. The second research question pertains to satisfying the two expected presuppositions of ‘even’, which, in turn, situates the distribution under study within the larger theoretical framing of ‘even’. Together, the arguments for both questions give an explanation as to how the unique inference is derived.

We argue that the standard focus theories reach their limits when confronted with the focus systems of the Chadic languages. The backbone of the standard focus theories consists of two assumptions, both called into question by the languages under consideration. Firstly, it is standardly assumed that focus is generally marked by stress. The Chadic languages, however, exhibit a variety of different devices for focus marking. Secondly, it is assumed that focus is always marked. In Tangale, at least, focus is not marked consistently on all types of constituents. The paper offers two possible solutions to this dilemma.

Negotiation poses a unique challenge in the modern workplace which is likely to be especially difficult for socially anxious individuals. Previous research has shown that externally focused attention strategies are useful at alleviating social anxiety symptoms and in helping improve negotiation outcomes; however this intervention has never been examined amongst socially anxious negotiators. This study examined the effect of external- and self-focused attention manipulations on anxiety, perspective (observer-field), and monetary negotiation outcomes. Thirty-eight high social anxiety (HSA) and 52 low social anxiety (LSA) female participants completed a dyadic negotiation simulation with a partner. The external-focus manipulation was successful at increasing attention focus in the desired direction, while the self-focus manipulation was not and, thus, was discarded from subsequent analyses. Results demonstrated that externally focused attention resulted in significant decreases in state anxiety during the negotiation and a significant shift in perspective from observer to field, for participants in both the HSA and LSA groups. However, these changes did not translate into better objective negotiation performance, as measured by the total commission (i.e., money) earned. The implications of the results for social anxiety and the development of workplace intervention programs are discussed.

Negotiation poses a unique challenge in the modern workplace which is likely to be especially difficult for socially anxious individuals. Previous research has shown that externally focused attention strategies are useful at alleviating social anxiety symptoms and in helping improve negotiation outcomes; however this intervention has never been examined amongst socially anxious negotiators. This study examined the effect of external- and self-focused attention manipulations on anxiety, perspective (observer-field), and monetary negotiation outcomes. Thirty-eight high social anxiety (HSA) and 52 low social anxiety (LSA) female participants completed a dyadic negotiation simulation with a partner. The external-focus manipulation was successful at increasing attention focus in the desired direction, while the self-focus manipulation was not and, thus, was discarded from subsequent analyses. Results demonstrated that externally focused attention resulted in significant decreases in state anxiety during the negotiation and a significant shift in perspective from observer to field, for participants in both the HSA and LSA groups. However, these changes did not translate into better objective negotiation performance, as measured by the total commission (i.e., money) earned. The implications of the results for social anxiety and the development of workplace intervention programs are discussed.

Attentional focus research has reliably demonstrated that an external (beyond the body) focus is superior in terms of skill performance, retention and transfer relative to an internal conscious focus on movement mechanics. This thesis extends current knowledge by evaluating the impact of external focus distance on the performance of continuous skills in an applied context. Specifically, two external focus points of different distances were compared to an undirected attention condition. Three separate studies were conducted using different kayak sprinting disciplines; two of these took place in benign environments using relatively closed skills whilst the third was carried out in an open skill context. In all cases a within-participants experimental design was employed with an independent variable of conscious focus and a dependent variable of performance time. In Study 1, using competent, experienced kayakers (n = 20) in a surf ski sprinting task, the distal external condition significantly outperformed both the undirected focus and proximal external conditions (p < .001 in both cases). The undirected focus condition was significantly faster than the proximal external focus condition (p = .003). The effect size was large (ηp2 = .55). Study 2 examined the same attentional points using youth racers in K1 sprint kayaks (n = 16). The undirected focus condition was significantly faster than the proximal external condition (p = .028); the effect size was large (ηp2 = .23). In Study 3 experienced kayakers (n = 27) were tested in a wild water racing task against the same experimental conditions. The distal external focus condition significantly surpassed both the proximal external condition and the undirected focus condition (p < .001 in both cases). The effect size was large (ηp2 = .53). The studies in this thesis show that the distance of a specified external focus is important and can have a significant influence on performance. In contrast to previous work the proximal external focus did not provide a performance advantage relative to an undirected focus condition; in studies 1 and 2 it was actually detrimental. A distal external focus was beneficial compared to both other conditions in two studies and insignificantly different to the undirected focus trial in Study 2. This thesis brings together work on focus distance and skill type in three applied and non-contrived sporting contexts. The main practical implication of this research is that distance of focus should be considered by learners and coaches with a view to optimising conscious attention. A distal external focus appears to be particularly useful in targeting attention on a pertinent point whilst simultaneously excluding cognitive competition, distractions and unnecessary attentional switching which could undermine skilled performance.

This thesis investigated possible effects of explicit and implicit focus on form (FonF) instruction on the acquisition of Spanish future of probability (SFP) by Anglophone and Francophone students at a Canadian bilingual university. We also analyzed a possible L1 transfer from French to L2 Spanish in the acquisition of SFP, due to the typological similarity of this linguistic feature in the two languages. Twenty seven B1/B2 Spanish level students including L1 English and L1 French learners of L2 Spanish were divided into three groups according to the instruction type: explicit focus on form instruction group, implicit focus on form instruction group and control group, which received no additional instruction. All the participants were tested before the lesson (pretest), immediately after (posttest) and four weeks later (delayed posttest). The battery of tests included Untimed Grammaticality Judgment (UGJT), Written Production (WPT) and Oral Production (OPT) tasks. They aimed to test our four hypotheses which focused on both short-term and long-term effects of the two types of instruction on grammaticality judgment, written and oral production of SFP, respectively. The results demonstrated a positive effect of explicit and implicit FonF instruction on grammaticality judgment, oral and written production of SFP compared to the control group. In particular, both instructional groups distinguished grammatical and ungrammatical uses of SFP with state and activity verbs immediately after the treatment. After four weeks, both groups retained the acquired knowledge equally well. In the implicit FonF group we found an advantage of the L1 French over the L1 English students, possibly due to the similarity of the future tense morphology in Spanish and French, as well as the fact that French uses future morphology for present time probability, although in very limited contexts (a subset of state verbs). The results of the WPT suggest an advantage of the explicit FonF group in both immediate and long-term results and showed no difference between the L1s in either of the instructional groups. We also noticed an overgeneralization of the use of SFP with telic verbs in both instructional groups after the treatment, which is considered ungrammatical. Therefore, our participants did not distinguish the written use of telic and atelic verbs in epistemic conditions after the two types of treatment provided. The OPT results demonstrated that similarly to the previous two tasks both experimental groups performed better than the Control group. However, there was no significant difference between the two instructional groups. L1 had no significant effect on the oral production of SFP either. Similarly to the WPT, we found an overgeneralization of the use of SFP in telic verb conditions. Overall, Anglophone and Francophone students appear to have similar opportunities for successful acquisition of SFP and both explicit and implicit FonF instruction, activities and feedback may lead to positive results in the acquisition of SFP. To conclude this thesis, we discuss some challenges of this study and possible directions of future research.

Visually focusing on the hole versus the ball in golf has shown some positive effects on putting performance (Heath et al., 2008), yet the reason for these benefits have not been tested. Considering the benefits of adopting an external focus, the purpose here was to examine whether attentional focus mechanisms contribute to the positive effects reported by Heath et al. (2008). Thirty experienced golfers were assigned to either a visual-ball focus or visual-hole focus group. Following warm-up putts, 48 experimental putts, divided equally into 16 putts across three conditions: control, task-relevant, and task-irrelevant, were performed. In the control condition, participants putted under single-task conditions, maintaining their assigned visual focus. In the other two conditions, participants putted under dual-task conditions and were instructed to focus on their wrist angles upon hearing a tone (task-relevant), or to identify an irrelevant sound (task-irrelevant). A questionnaire, designed to represent equal proportions of the ‘distance’ effect (Wulf, 2013; i.e., internal, proximal external, or distal external focus), served as a manipulation check to determine the attentional focus adopted under each condition. Analysis of the manipulation check for the control condition data only showed a significant interaction of Group and Attentional Focus F(2,56) = 4.5, p = .01. Post-hoc showed that participants had a significantly higher proximal external focus in the visual-ball focus group compared to the visual-hole focus group, whereas the visual-hole focus group was significantly higher than the visual-ball focus group for distal external focus. Additionally, an analysis with all three putting conditions indicated that participants had significantly higher internal focus for task-relevant trials, as compared to task-irrelevant or control trials. There were no significant differences found for any of the putting performance measures., however, the main effect of Condition did approach significance for MRE F(2,56) = 2.8, p = .068. This replicates the general finding that putting performance is poorest when golfers self-report using a higher internal focus. In conclusion, these results suggest that visually focusing on the hole results in a more distal external attentional focus in a golf environment than that of a ball-focus, but this does not translate to performance benefits.

No description available.

<p>The dark focus is a resting state of accommodation, which occurs when there are not enough stimuli for the eye to focus on. This means that the eye becomes more myopic and some people notice a blur for example at night time, more known as night myopia. In this study the dark focus in Swedish myopes is measured and any difference between early and late onset myopes is investigated.</p><p><strong>Method: </strong>The dominant eye of 56 myopes was first measured with static retinoscopy, using a distant target, and then with near retinoscopy, with the retinoscope beam as the target. The full working distance of 2.00 D was subtracted in both methods and the values were compared. The difference, if any, was the dark focus.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>The mean value of dark focus was 0.53 D ± 0.26 for the entire group. The mean value for early onset myopes was 0.56 D ± 0.29 and for late onset myopes the mean value was 0.47 D ± 0.21. This showed no significant difference (p-value = 0.18). No significant correlation between amount of refractive error and dark focus was found.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>The Swedish myopes in this study have a smaller mean value of dark focus than mean values found in other studies using the same technique and the previous findings that early and late onset myopes differ in mean values of dark focus is not applied to this study.</p>