Today's best intelligent, adaptive, multimedia trainers have shown excellent performance; however, their results still fall far-short of what good human tutors can achieve. The overarching thesis of this paper is that future intelligent, adaptive systems will be improved by taking into account relevant, consistent, and meaningful individual differences. Specifically, responding to individual differences among trainees will (a) form more accurate individual baselines within a training system, and (b) better inform system responses (so that they interpret and respond to observable data more appropriately). One variable to consider is trait arousability, which describes individual differences in sensitivity to stimuli. Individuals' arousability interacts with the arousal inherent to a task/environment to create a person's arousal state. An individual's arousal state affects his/her attentional capacity, working memory function, and depth of processing. In this paper, two studies are presented. The purpose of the first study was to evaluate existing subjective measures of trait arousability and then develop a new measure by factor analyzing existing apparatus. From this well-populated (N = 622) study, a new reliable ([alpha] = .91) 35-item scale was developed. This scale includes two factors, negative emotionality and orienting sensitivity, which have been previously theorized but not yet so reliably measured. The purposes of the second study were to (a) validate the measure developed in the first investigation and (b) demonstrate the applied value of the arousability construct in the context of training. Results from the second study (N=45) demonstrated significant main effects, but the interaction effects were inconclusive. They neither clearly confirm nor invalidate the hypotheses, but they do raise further questions.

The thesis deals with a resistance to a psychological stress at cyclists with disabilities in context of addictive substances use. The theoretical part of the thesis summarizes findings concerning handicapped people cycling, personal characteristics of sportsmen, and also an influence of a sports performance by used substances together with an institutional framework of this issue. In the theoretical part there are described various views of the resistance to the psychological stress with an emphasis on an arousability, dispositional optimism and Sense of Coherence. A score of these three indicators was determined at respondents within an empirical part of the thesis. The aim of the thesis was to define a level of a psychological resistance at cyclists with disabilities and its relation to the addictive substances use. Partial aims of the thesis were focused on respondents´ awareness of effects of addictive substances on the sports performance, particular substances used by respondents, an openness to the addictive substances use to influence the sports performance and views of such a use in the sports environment. Scales of the arousability, Optimism Scale and Sense of Coherence, detecting levels of the arousability, dispositional optimism and Sense of Coherence, were applied in the research investigation. The research sample consisted of men ? cyclists with physical or sense handicaps, participating in cycle racing disciplines in the Czech Republic. Three hypotheses were tested in this investigation. The empirical part of the thesis has led to conclusions concerning a level of the psychological resistance at cyclists with disabilities from aspects of the Sense of Coherence, arousability and dispositional optimism. A frequency of the addictive substances use to influence the sports performance was in accordance with a predetermined hypothesis, the research sample of cyclists with disabilities showed a lower use of addictive substances to influence the sports performance compared to the cyclists without disabilities. Similarly, the openness to the addictive substances use was lower at the research sample.

Vaginal photoplethysmography was utilized in combination with standardized sleep-recording procedures to investigate changes in vaginal pulse amplitude (VPA) during both waking and sleeping conditions in low- and high-arousability females (n = 10 per group), as classified by the Sexual Arousability Inventory. Based upon previous research, it was predicted that both groups would exhibit similar mean levels of VPA during waking exposure to erotic stimuli and during various stages of sleep. Despite hypothesized physiological similarities between groups, the low-arousability group was expected to subjectively report less arousal during the waking erotic conditions.

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