No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Recognising the importance of sport as a major political and economic tool as well as a lucrative avenue for boosting its international sporting image, the government of Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) has increased its interest in elite sport over the past 20 years. This has ranged from the enactment of policies at the parliamentary level to the establishment of state agencies geared towards promoting and enhancing the delivery of sport. While this has positively impacted the performance of athletes at the Olympics and other international events there exists considerable room for improvement so as to maintain and improve the country’s competitiveness. This would prove a challenge in the long run given T&T’s limited available resources. Current research has suggested that investment into state–run elite sporting structures (NTIDs) can help maximise state resources and reduce costly errors by effectively identifying and developing talent. Considering the above, the aim of this thesis was to construct an NTID system capable of being successfully introduced in T&T. To achieve this, a multipronged approach involving a mixture of empirical research and secondary data analysis was used. Firstly, a novel anthropometric and physiological testing battery was used to develop reference data and discriminate between junior male cricketers of differing playing abilities. This was followed by a retrospective analysis of the career histories of successful athletes in an effort to identify a suitable development pathway for nurturing future players. Considering that research has suggested that culture has a major impact on the structure of NTIDs, the last study compared the architecture of NTIDs in cultural context. The results of the above tests were successfully used to generate a hypothetical NTIDs for T&T. It is important to note that this thesis only represented the initial stages of the construction of the NTIDs and further research is required to test its efficacy.

Prohibited performance enhancing drugs (PPD) are nutritional supplements which are prohibited from use during competition and training. UK anti-doping projects ensures that UK professional and recreational athletes do not accidently, or intentionally, use PPD's, thus gaining an unfair advantage over their competitors. A study by Winard, (2015) utilised interviews to idetify problems with current UK anti-doping strategies. Allocation of funds, relevant information, efficacy of programmes and quantifiable measures, were all areas that required attention. This thesis conducted five studies in order to inform anti-doping programs. Study 1 compared two indirect prevalence methods which offer protection beyond anonymity. This study highlighted the skewing effect that strategic responding causes when utilising the 'Unrelated Question Model'. Study 2 utilised the search engine 'Google' to identify key areas where anti-doping education would most be useful. The study showed 'Google' efficacy in finding key areas where anti-doping programmes could be effective. Study 3 looked to profile individuals that were thinking about using (TU) PPD's and compared said profiles to current/past users and non-users. After twelve months, TU were contacted to see if they had initiated PPU use. The number of users in the respondents gym social group, and the belief that they couldn't achieve performance goals without using PPD's were both predictors of future use. Study 4 assessed the order of supplements prior to PPD use in an attempt to map key stages of supplementation. Creatine and prohormones were identified as key supplements in the process towards PPD use. Study 5 looked at positional and social circle influences on PPD use. Positions which involve explosive power were identified as high risk, and social circles within a team, were shown to have varying attitudes towards other social circles within a team.

acase@tulane.edu / It has been observed that Spanish L2 speakers produce mistakes for gender more frequently than for number agreement. This asymmetry has also been observed in their processing of the same features. This study’s purpose was to determine whether there are recognizable electrophysiological differences in the processing of these agreement features and to explore possible neurocognitive underpinnings for such differences in bilingual speakers. In order to investigate this, the study used ERP method to observe the responses of Spanish L2 bilinguals to gender and number agreement violations between quantifiers and nouns in Spanish. The canonical ERP observed for both grammatical gender and number agreement violations in Spanish monolinguals is a biphasic LAN-P600 effect. This has also been found in some studies examining bilinguals, though a P600 effect alone is the most common result. In the present study, gender violations elicited a broad distributed early anterior negativity (eLAN) at the 100-200 ms window, a left-central anterior negativity (LAN) in the 250-400ms, and no P600 effect. Number violations, on the other hand, showed the broadly distributed anterior negativity (eLAN), and both LAN and P600 effects. The results confirm differences in the processing of the features. Moreover, the data show that gender demonstrates less saliency to English speakers than does number, whose violations showed a native-like processing pattern. These results support bilingualism models that propose that features that are not equal between L1 and L2 can be developed by learners who started learning their second language after childhood. From a linguistic perspective, the results for gender show a cue-based first check process (eLAN) and cue-based morphosyntactic processing (LAN), without the lexical access to check and repair processes, as evidenced by the lack of P600. This supports the model of a dual-route for gender agreement. The cue-based route (proposed for morphological features) seems to be used by bilinguals in this study, even though grammatical gender is a lexical feature. Possible explanations include a lack of sufficient cognitive resources to continue to the repair stage, or possibly an inability to do so caused by the incomplete stage in the development of the feature in the participants. / 1 / Shayra Helena Burgos García

acase@tulane.edu / 1 / Xzania W Lee