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Minimal research has examined psychological processes underpinning ultra-marathon runners' performance. This study examined the relationships between mental toughness and self-efficacy with performance in an elite sample of ultra-marathon runners competing in the 2019 Hawaiian Ultra Running Team's Trail 100-mile endurance run (HURT100). The Mental Toughness Questionnaire (SMTQ) and the Endurance Sport Self-Efficacy Scale (ESSES) were completed by 56 elite ultra-marathon runners in the HURT100 (38 males, 18 females; Mage = 38.86 years, SDage = 9.23). Findings revealed mental toughness and self-efficacy are highly related constructs (r(54) = 0.72, p < 0.001). Mental toughness and self-efficacy did not significantly relate to ultra-marathon performance (mental toughness and self-efficacy with Ultra-Trail World Tour (UTWT) rank F(2, 53) = 0.738, p = 0.483; mental toughness and self-efficacy with likelihood would finish the HURT100 χ2 = 0.56, p = 0.756; mental toughness and self-efficacy with HURT100 placing and time F(2, 53) = 1.738, p = 0.186 and F(2, 30) = 2.046, p = 0.147, respectively). However, participants had significantly and meaningfully higher mental toughness (M = 45.42, SD = 4.26, medium and large effect sizes) than athletes from other sports previously published. Our interpretation is that these results taken in conjunction, suggest a threshold of mental toughness that performers require to be of the standard needed to be able to prepare for and compete in elite ultra-marathon events such as the HURT100; once this mental toughness threshold is met, other factors are likely to be more influential in determining elite level ultra-marathon performance.

Background Physical and emotional parent-infant closeness activate important neurobiological mechanisms involved in parenting. In a neonatal care context, most research focuses on physical (parental presence, skin-to-skin contact) aspects; insights into emotional closeness can be masked by findings that overemphasise the barriers or challenges to parenting an infant during neonatal care. Aim To explore existing qualitative research to identify what facilitates and enables parents' experiences of emotional closeness to their infants while cared for in a neonatal unit. Study design A systematic review using meta-ethnographic methods. Search strategy involved searches on six databases, author runs, and backward and forward chaining. Reciprocal translation was used to identify and compare key concepts of parent-infant emotional closeness. Results Searches identified 6992 hits, and 34 studies from 17 countries that involved 670 parents were included. Three overarching themes and associated sub-themes were developed. ‘Embodied connections’ describes how emotional closeness was facilitated by reciprocal parent-infant interactions, spending time as a family, and methods for parents to feel connected while physically separated. ‘Inner knowing’ concerns how knowledge about infant and maternal health and understanding the norms of neonatal care facilitated emotional closeness. ‘Evolving parental role’ relates to how emotional closeness was intertwined with parental identities of contributing to infant health, providing direct care, and being acknowledged as a parent. Conclusion Parent-infant closeness evolves and is facilitated by multifaceted biopsychosocial factors. Practice implications include creating private and uninterrupted family time, strategies for parents to maintain an emotional connection to their infant when separated, and neurobiology education for staff.

Bibliography: pages 124-132., This study explores the symptoms of alienation witnessed in Indian characters and the healing they achieve through myth in three contemporary American Indian novels. In James Welch's historical novel, Fools Crow, I explore the methods through which Welch tells the story of Fools Crow. I draw comparisons between oppositions such as oral and written language, oral and written history, and history and narrative. I examine the ideas of many theorists, including Walter J. Ong's Orality and Literacy and Hayden White's inquiry into historiography in Tropics of DiscouT'Se. My conclusions suggest that myth is the foundation of history and that Welch effectively uses myth to rehabilitate Fools Crow. Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony presents its main character, Tayo, as alienated. He operates in a confusing world of dualities whereby the hegemonic culture brutalizes a feminine universe, and the counter-culture embraces a feminine universe. This study of Ceremony necessitates exploring the differences between Indian and Euro-American perceptions of landscape. Greta Gaard's studies on ecofeminism and Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality help to focus the theories v presented in this chapter. In addition, I consider the opposition between European patriarchal and American Indian matriarchal cultures, a difference that may affect the way the two cultures perceive the landscape. Finally I look at the Laguna captivity narrative that heals Tayo and compare the Laguna captivity genre to Euro-American captivity tales. The juxtaposition of cultural captivity narrative types reveals further differences in Laguna and Euro-American perceptions of the land. Annette Kolodny's theories on landscape and feminism prove useful in focusing my conclusions. N. Scott Momaday's The Ancient Child explores the parameters of representation and struggles with the question of how an Indian author can effectively describe the condition of an alienated American Indian to an audience who is, for the most part, Euro-American. This novel ties together many of the themes explored in Fools Crow and Ceremony. Momaday shows myth as originating in oral language and oral language as invented by vision: The story's main character, Set, has to overcome his alienation by understanding the origin of a myth which exists in his 'racial memory.' As an Indian, Set must discover the importance of non-textual spatiality and not the spaces contained within and influenced by written texts such as the very one Momaday creates to depict this character. The term non-textual spatiality refers to the imaginative space created by oral language and myth and the notion of non-textual spatiality opens a path for Set's healing. W.J.T. Mitchell's Picture Theory and Nelson Goodman's Languages of A rt are the main critical studies I use to amplify theories that grow out of The Ancient Child.