Thèse (M.Sc.)--Université de Sherbrooke (Canada), 2008. / Titre de l'écran-titre (visionné le 1 février 2007). In ProQuest dissertations and theses. Publié aussi en version papier.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Fairleigh Dickinson University, 1997. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 58-02, Section: B, page: 0972. Chairperson: Neil A. Massoth.

Thesis (Psy.D.)--Fairleigh Dickinson University, 2002. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 63-02, Section: B, page: 1046. Chairperson: Judith Kaufman. Available also in print.

<p>There is a growing amount of research evaluating behavioral approaches for skill acquisition in sports. Few of these studies have focused on yoga and skill acquisition. There is a need for a low effort yet effective way to teach yoga postures to individuals who do not take private yoga classes and may practice at home. This study evaluated the effects of using a picture-based task analysis and self-evaluation on the skill acquisition of yoga postures. A multiple baseline across yoga postures was used. During the task analyses intervention, the participants received a task analysis, performed the posture, and scored the task analysis upon the completion of the posture. Results showed that the task-analysis and self-evaluation increased the accuracy of all the poses.

Over recent years there have been isolated incidents of parental-spectator misconduct at minor hockey games that have received national media attention. To appreciate this social phenomenon in Canadian rinks, it is imperative to grasp the significance of the parent-child relationship to parent-spectatorship and the experienced emotions of parent-spectatorship. Located within a conceptual framework informed by theories of emotion (Lazarus, 1966, 1991, 1999; Weiner, 1977, 1980b, 1980a, 2006) and parent-child bond (Bowlby, 1982, 1999), this exploratory-based study delves further into the emotional experience encompassing parents' relationship with their children and the consequences it may have on spectator behaviour. Results indicate that participants encounter a multitude of emotions as a consequence of being both parent and spectator simultaneously. The present study also responds to an apparent lacuna of research currently investigating parent-spectator misconduct. In doing so it provides insights that may assist scholars and sport practitioners wishing to create safe and enjoyable environments for parents to watch their children engage in sport.

The objectives of this research are twofold. The first objective is to complement and extend our knowledge of the psychological mindset that high performance athletes bring to their training and competitive setting that enables them to perform their best. The second objective is focused on achieving a better understanding of the thirty-seven to fifty percent of an athlete's life that is spent outside of physical training and rest/sleep portion of her or his life. To this end, the research studied the lives, thoughts and emotions of eight high performance athletes who had already won medals at the international and Olympic level and were continuing to train for the next Olympics. A three phase process of interviews was conducted with each of the eight athletes and encompassed training, training camps, national trials, international competitions and a 1997 World Championships, over a nine-month period, from December, 1996 to August, 1997. Ten general dimensions were developed that captured the complexity of the lives of the eight athletes. Within the first general dimension, Mental Mindset, a model was developed, in collaboration with the eight athletes. The nine other general dimensions that developed over the course of analysis were Beginnings, Personal Description, The Ebb and Flow of Self Confidence, Meaning of Excelling in Sport, Will, Degrees of Balance, Joy's in an Athlete's Life, Relationships, Difficulties and Dilemmas, and an eleventh dimension, a special case of A Girl on Boys' Teams. Three of these dimensions, Ebb and Flow of Self Confidence, Will and Degrees of Balance emerged from the words and thoughts of the athletes over the course of the three phases of interviews. The other six dimensions were introduced by the researcher in the initial framework. Along with the ten general dimensions, was a sense that each of these athletes were 'living with excelling.' There were both commonalities among the athletes and a uniqueness in the way each of the athletes viewed her or his journey in high performance sport and in life outside of sport. This sense of uniqueness included a 'fierce intensity' that five of the athletes brought to their lives in sport; a 'sense of fragility' that one of the athletes brought to his life, particularly in terms of his level of self-confidence; a 'reflective' manner that was the essence of one of the athletes; and a simple, 'uncomplicated' manner and view of life that was the essence of the eighth athlete. The commonalities included getting an early start in sport (for most but not all); a strong sense of belief, self-confidence and will, when they were performing well; considerable support from others; joy inside and outside the world of sport; learning to accept the inevitable ups and downs and difficulties; and finally, finding a degree of balance in their life. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Chapter 1 studies the effects of fighting corruption on public service delivery. While corruption crackdowns have been shown to effectively reduce missing government expenditures, their effects on public service delivery have not been credibly documented. This matters because, if corruption generates incentives for bureaucrats to deliver those services, then deterring it might actually hurt downstream outcomes. The chapter exploits variation from an anti-corruption program in Brazil, designed by the federal government to enforce guidelines on earmarked transfers to municipalities, to study this question. Combining random audits with a differences-in-differences strategy, we find that the anti-corruption program greatly reduced occurrences of over-invoicing and off-the-record payments, and of procurement manipulation within health transfers. However, health indicators, such as hospital beds and immunization coverage, became worse as a result. Evidence from audited amounts suggests that lower corruption came at a high cost: after the program, public spending fell by so much that corruption per dollar spent actually increased. These findings are consistent with those responsible for procurement dramatically reducing purchases after the program, either because they no longer can capture rents, or because they are afraid of being punished for procurement mistakes. Chapters 2 and 3 study the psychology of droughts. Chapter 2 tests whether uncertainty about future rainfall affects farmers’ decision-making through cognitive load. Behavioral theories predict that rainfall risk could impose a psychological tax on farmers, leading to material consequences at all times and across all states of nature, even within decisions unrelated to consumption smoothing, and even when negative rainfall shocks do not materialize down the line. Using a novel technology to run lab experiments in the field, we combine recent rainfall shocks and survey experiments to test the effects of rainfall risk on farmers’ cognition, and find that it decreases farmers’ attention, memory and impulse control, and increases their susceptibility to a variety of behavioral biases. Chapter 3 investigates whether index insurance can shield farmers against the cognitive effects documented in the previous chapter. In theory, insurance could mitigate those effects by alleviating the material consequences of rainfall risk. To test this hypothesis, we randomly assign offers of an index insurance product, and find that it does not affect farmers’ cognitive load. These results suggest that farmers’ anxiety might be relatively difficult to alleviate. / Political Economy and Government

Complex animal behaviors are likely built from simpler modules, but their systematic identification in mammals remains a significant challenge. Here we use depth imaging to show that three-dimensional (3D) mouse pose dynamics are structured at the sub-second timescale by using a newly developed 3D imaging and machine learning-based automated phenotyping system, which we term Motion Sequencing (MoSeq). Computational modeling of these fast postural dynamics effectively describes mouse behavior as a series of reused and stereotyped modules with defined transition probabilities, which collectively encapsulate the underlying structure of mouse behavior within a given experiment. By deploying MoSeq in a variety of experimental contexts, we show that it unmasks strategies employed by the brain to generate specific adaptations to changes in the environment, and captures both predicted and previously-hidden phenotypes induced by genetic, neural, and pharmacological manipulations. We directly compare the predictive power of behavioral representations built by MoSeq against traditional measurements of behavior, including speed, length, and allocentric position, and demonstrate MoSeq is able to discriminate between subtle pharmacological manipulations of behavior, while traditional methods are not. This work demonstrates that mouse body language is built from identifiable components and is organized in a predictable fashion; deciphering this language establishes a framework for characterizing the influence of environmental cues, genes, neural activity and pharmacology on behavior. / Medical Sciences

Abstract not available.

Abstract not available.