Volume 44 - n. 5 - September-October 2013

 

A conceptual model of the athlete retirement decision-making process

Sunghee Park *, David Lavallee ** and David Tod ***

(*) College of Physical Education and Sport Science, Kookmin University, South Korea
(**) School of Sport, University of Stirling, UK
(***) Department of Psychology, Aberystwyth University, UK

The purpose of this article is to provide new ways of understanding athletes’ retirement decision-making process, and its influences on the quality of career transition. Existing literature from both within sport career transition study area and outside the sport domain informing the development of a conceptual model which focuses on explaining the final stages of athletes’ sporting careers and retirement decision-making process. The model helps predict changes in athletes’ behaviours and psychological reactions through the process by providing explanation of: (a) what steps athletes go through during the final stages of their sporting careers; (b) potential influential factors for athletes’ retirement decision; (c) how athletes change their psychological reactions and behaviours towards their retirement; and (d) potential intervention strategies to assist athletes’ career transition out of sport process.

Keywords: Athletes’ retirement, Decision-making, Stages of change, Transition


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Referee expertise and home-team bias in European football

Chris Goumas

School of Public Health, The University of Sydney, Australia

There is evidence to suggest that referees in association football (soccer) show bias towards the home team when making decisions, and that this is at least partly due to home crowd influence. Match data from the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) Europa League were used to investigate the association between referee expertise and the number of disciplinary sanctions issued to home and away teams. Poisson regression was used to estimate the mean number of yellow cards (cautions) received by home and away teams. Referee expertise was based on ranking categories used by UEFA. After controlling for potential confounders such as crowd density and stage of competition, the tendency for referees to issue more yellow cards to away teams than to home teams decreased with increasing expertise (p<0.05), suggesting that the more experienced and skilled referees are less susceptible to home-team effects such as crowd support when making decisions.

Keywords: Football, Home advantages, Referees, Soccer


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Locomotor pointing is independently affected by target size and intermittent vision

Adrian Popescu and Brian Maraj

Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation, University of Alberta, Canada

The purpose of this study was to investigate gait control and target pointing parameters during adaptive locomotion under externally controlled visual sampling while manipulating task difficulty. Ten undergraduate students, independent walkers with normal or corrected-to-normal vision, volunteered to participate. Participants walked five meters towards one square target flush to the ground. The task was to point with the forefoot at the center of the target. LCD visual occlusion goggles were used to create three visual conditions based on gait cycle events: full vision, stance vision (vision when the pointing foot was in stance), and swing vision (vision when the pointing foot was in swing). Two target sizes and three visual conditions were presented in a random fashion. Consistent with studies on more dynamic tasks (Lee et al., 1982; Maraj, 2002), our results revealed a robust footfall variability pattern during target approach, with the step adjustments spread out over the last steps regardless of experimental conditions which suggest the presence of feed-forward control. The target pointing outcome showed a larger absolute error magnitude as well as increased odds of target overshooting for the small target in the direction of locomotion progression regardless of the visual condition, consistent with our hypothesis. Conversely, the medio-lateral pointing accuracy and consistency decreased if vision was not available during the last swing before target pointing regardless of target size. These results may be used as a basis for quantifying adaptive locomotor tasks in terms of difficulty supporting the design of highly transferable rehabilitation protocols.

Keywords: Adaptive locomotion, task difficulty, and visual perception


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Athletic identity and sport performance in athletes with disabilities participating in the Paracanoeing World Championship

Tomasz Tasiemski, Piotr Urbański and Maciej Wilski

Department of Physical Culture of People with Disabilities, University School of Physical Education, Królowej Jadwigi str. 27/39, 61-871 Poznan, Poland

The main purpose of this study was to find out what is the level and structure of athletic identity (AI) in athletes with disabilities participating in the Paracanoeing World Championship. The other aim was to examine if level of AI is associated with sport performance achieved by these athletes. A group of 58 athletes with physical disabilities (female = 14, male = 44) representing 28 countries participated in this study. The Athletic Identity Measurement Scale (AIMS) was used to assess AI. The major finding were that analyzed athletes had high level of AI, and the AIMS has 3-factor structure for this population. The total AIMS scores were not significantly different for World Championship medalists and those who performed less well. However, there was significant difference between these groups with regard to AIMS subscale called negative affectivity. There was also significant positive correlation between training load i.e. number of hours of training per week and the total AIMS score. The training load significantly predicted sport performance during the World Championship in Paracanoeing. The results of this study demonstrate the need to investigate other factors that may contribute to sport performance in athletes with disabilities.

Keywords: Athletic identity, Paracanoeing, Physical disability, Sport


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Acute bouts of endurance exercise increase distractibility to emotional stimuli

Tad T. Brunyé */**, Jessica L. Howe *, Leila A. Walker *** and Caroline R. Mahoney */**

(*) U.S. Army Natick Soldier RDEC, Cognitive Science Team, Natick, MA, USA
(**) Tufts University, Department of Psychology, Medford, MA, USA
(***) U.S. Army Research Institute for Environmental Medicine, Natick, MA, USA

OBJECTIVES: Some current neurocognitive models suggest that physical exertion selectively impairs performance of cognitive tasks demanding engagement of the prefrontal cortex. The present study tested this hypothesis by examining the effects of an acute bout of physical exertion on a prefrontal-dependent task demanding the effortful control of attention and emotion. Design: In a repeated-measures design, participants pedaled a recumbent bicycle ergometer at either a low or high work rate corresponding to percentages (25-35% or 75-85%) of maximum heart rate achieved during a peak exercise test. METHOD: To challenge cognitive processes dependent on regions of the brain’s prefrontal cortex, participants performed a cognitive interference task that presented either neutral or emotionally distracting images embedded within a spatial working memory task. RESULTS:Working memory decrements on trials with embedded negative versus neutral images; importantly, this effect was exacerbated in the high versus low work rate. This exercise-induced decrement did not maintain during cool-down or rest, and was predicted by participant fitness levels. By comparison, a relatively lowlevel perceptuo-motor reaction time task showed faster performance during the high versus low work rate. CONCLUSIONS: Acute bouts of submaximal exercise induce transient states of reduced effortful control of attention, resulting in heightened distractability to emotional stimuli. Results are discussed with regard to theories detailing dynamic interactions between brain networks mediating physical exertion and higher-level cognitive function.

Keywords: Arousal, Emotion Exercise, Executive functions, Physical fitness, Prefrontal cortex


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