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Background: Young athletes who specialize early in a single sport may subsequently be at increased risk of injury. While heightened injury risk has been theorized to be related to volume or length of exposure to a single sport, the development of unhealthy, homogenous movement patterns, and rigid neuromuscular control strategies may also be indicted. Unfortunately, traditional laboratory assessments have limited capability to expose such deficits due to the simplistic and constrained nature of laboratory measurement techniques and analyses. Methods: To overcome limitations of prior studies, the authors proposed a soccer-specific virtual reality header assessment to characterize the generalized movement regularity of 44 young female athletes relative to their degree of sport specialization (high vs low). Participants also completed a traditional drop vertical jump assessment. Results: During the virtual reality header assessment, significant differences in center of gravity sample entropy (a measure of movement regularity) were present between specialized (center of gravity sample entropy: mean = 0.08, SD = 0.02) and nonspecialized center of gravity sample entropy: mean = 0.10, SD = 0.03) groups. Specifically, specialized athletes exhibited more regular movement patterns during the soccer header than the nonspecialized athletes. However, no significant between-group differences were observed when comparing participants' center of gravity time series data from the drop vertical jump assessment. Conclusions: This pattern of altered movement strategy indicates that realistic, sport-specific virtual reality assessments may be uniquely beneficial in exposing overly rigid movement patterns of individuals who engage in repeated sport specialized practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dynamic and transitory nature of outdoor education (OE) employment may make the cultivation of traditional dyadic mentoring relationships challenging. This study used the developmental network perspective, which positions mentoring as a multirelationship phenomenon, to better understand how OE instructors working for NOLS access mentoring support, help ascertain the types of mentoring support instructors find meaningful, and delineate the attributes of effective mentoring relationships. Twenty-one instructors with differing levels of experience were interviewed for this study. Data indicated that interviewees found meaningful mentoring support from a variety of sources, namely, senior instructors and near peers. The provision of career-related support, specifically support that helped mentees navigate organizational culture and gain more work opportunities, was highly regarded by participants and positively impacted career outcomes. Challenges facing instructors seeking mentoring support and the implications of these results for instructors and OE providers are discussed.

This systematic review assesses the state of the literature regarding the impacts of outdoor education instructors' behaviors and traits on participant outcomes. Twenty-seven articles are reviewed in detail, and student outcomes in relation to instructor behaviors and traits and to programmatic elements are identified. A range of participant outcomes including social and emotional skills development, group cohesion, and identity development are discussed. Twelve distinct outdoor education instructor behaviors are identified, and the five most salient are discussed. Instructor traits such as interpersonal qualities are emphasized. Programmatic elements employed by instructors that impact participant outcomes include (1) incorporating elements of experiential learning, (2) debriefing and feedback, and (3) participant reflection. Suggestions for future research are provided including conducting quasi-experimental studies that segment groups based on instructor behaviors, traits, and leadership theories; work that identifies participant and instructor demographics; and scholarship using diverse methodological approaches.

The current study sought to investigate the relationshipbetween attention, perception and memory in the perceptionand recall of attended and unattended properties of objects.Two experiments tested whether the intention to perceivemaximum overhead reaching height with the use of handheldrods with different mass and rotational inertia yieldedinformation for participants to remember the rods’ heavinessafter they were removed from view. Participants rememberedthe difference in heaviness of rods but only when hapticinformation was solely available during the earlier perceptionof overhead reaching height and vision was occluded. Theresults support an ecological approach to perception, attentionand memory, and suggest that information detected forperception can be later used to remember other objectproperties that have a correlated informational basis.

The human perceptual-motor system is tightly coupled to thephysical and informational dynamics of a task environment andthese dynamics operate to constrain the high-dimensional order ofthe human movement system into low-dimensional, task-specificsynergies. The aim of the current study was to determine whethersynergistic processes constrain and organize the behavior of coactingindividuals. Participants sat next to each other and each usedone arm to complete a pointer-to-target task. Using theuncontrolled manifold, the structure of joint-angle variance wasexamined to determine whether there was synergistic organizationat the interpersonal or intrapersonal levels. The results revealed themotor actions performed were synergistically organized at both theinterpersonal and intrapersonal levels. More importantly, theinterpersonal synergy was found to be significantly stronger thanthe intrapersonal synergies. Accordingly, the results provide clearevidence that the action dynamics of co-acting individuals canbecome temporarily organized to form single synergistic twopersonsystems.

This project explored how iPads were being used in a range of K-12 schools to support the learning of students with a range of learning support needs. Groups of teachers (and other professionals) from the USA, Canada, Australia and the UK were invited to complete an online survey focused on the use of iPads in their classrooms, perspectives of their skill level, and how their school and school districts support the use of iPads. The survey focused on iPad use in classrooms (curriculum and skills); teachers' skill levels; whether iPads are addressed in the Individualised Education Program (IEP); the systemic support for the iPads; and the perceived benefits and barriers. The results reveal that respondents are using iPads across many areas of the curriculum, which affirms the research in the emerging literature base. However, there are teacher-reported differences in the manner and scope of iPad use in the classrooms and also the integration of the iPad in the IEP. The research also highlights variability in reported skill level for the iPad and an increased need for enhanced systemic support, such as training, funding, technical support and administrative support for the use of the iPad as a pedagogical tool.

The uncontrolled manifold (UCM) approach quantifies the presence of compensatory variability between musculoskeletal elements involved in a motor task. This approach has proved useful for identifying synergistic control strategies for a variety of everyday motor tasks and for investigating how control strategies are affected by motor pathology. However, the UCM approach is limited in its ability to relate compensatory motor variance directly to task performance because variability along the UCM is mathematically agnostic to performance. We present a new approach to UCM analysis that quantifies patterns of irregularity in the compensatory variability between motor elements over time. In a bimanual isometric force stabilization task, irregular patterns of compensation between index fingers predicted greater performance error associated with difficult task conditions, in particular for individuals who exploited a larger set of compensatory strategies (i.e., a larger subspace of the UCM). This relationship between the amount and structure of compensatory motor variance might be an expression of underlying processes supporting performance resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]