Wheelock College

We conducted two studies using the concentration grid exercise to assess the effects of practice in silence (Study 1) and practice with loud music on the background (Study 2) on performance, attention, core affective states (arousal and pleasantness), and alpha, beta, and theta brain waves. In Study 1, we recruited 12 participants, 6 males and 6 females ( M = 27.50, SD = 8.27). In Study 2, we recruited 12 participants, 6 males and 6 females ( M = 26.36, SD = 6.67). For both Study 1 and Study 2, no significant effects were observed for performance, attention, and core affect. Marginal significant effects were observed for attention and arousal, suggesting loud music was a distraction to at least some participants. Across both studies, the electroencephalogram data revealed significant differences in alpha, beta, and theta power across pre-test and post-test trials. Collectively, these findings support the neural efficiency hypothesis; in that practice leads to a more quiescent brain state in both silent-practice and music distraction conditions. These findings also suggest that the concentration grid exercise can be an appropriate tool for research and practice.

Most previous research on social learning has focused on informants' epistemic states (e.g., knowledge, expertise), but less is known about informants' motivations for sharing information. For instance, an informant can be knowledgeable but might yield personal benefits from sharing this information. Gossip is a special kind of testimony in which the relationship between the gossiper and the target of gossip is critical when determining the trustworthiness of testimony. We investigated whether 7- and 9-year-old children from the United States (N = 96) assessed the reliability of gossipers' claims by considering conflicting intent that arose based on the gossipers' group membership and the valence of gossip. Nine-year-olds, but not 7-year-olds, were less likely to endorse negative gossip ("I heard she often lies") than positive gossip ("I heard she tells the truth") by outgroup members. Overall, these findings indicate a developmental shift in children's recognition of potential conflicting intent in testimony and their trust in testimony. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

This study aims to describe the implementation of a green innovation strategy (GIS) to enhance university performance. A qualitative case study approach was employed. The research was conducted at a private higher education institution in Indonesia over a period of 91 days. 9 participants selected through purposive sampling took part in the study. Triangulation was adopted to compile holistic data on contextual phenomena. Thematic analysis was conducted using NVivo. The findings show that the GIS was implemented through: (1) the formulation of a GIS aligned with the university’s vision and characteristics; (2) the implementation of the GIS; and (3) a strong environment-based managerial focus. Taken together, these three components have been shown to improve three green higher education performance indicators: Academic-Tridharma Indicators, Operational-Campus Environment Indicators, and Campus Governance and Participation Indicators. These results are highly valuable because they capture the successful enhancement of Higher Education Green Performance amid the widespread lag in performance improvements among universities, and are also highly relevant to the targets of developing sustainable campuses. This opens up the possibility for the study to be adapted by other higher education institutions in various developing countries around the world.

Eye-tracking corpora have advanced our understanding of reading processes by providing large-scale datasets of naturalistic reading behavior. However, existing corpora have almost exclusively sampled from typically hearing readers of spoken languages. Here, we present the Signers’ Eye-movements in English Reading (SEER) Corpus, a dataset of eye-movement behaviors from 41 skilled deaf adult readers who are early signers of American Sign Language (ASL), as well as a comparative group of 101 typically hearing monolingual English readers. Participants read 200 English sentences presented one at a time. In addition to eye-tracking data, the corpus includes detailed participant information: a standardized measure of reading proficiency, spelling recognition, and nonverbal intelligence for all participants. Information for the deaf participants include ASL comprehension scores, age of ASL acquisition, and phonological awareness scores (for a subset of participants). We report comparative analyses of reading behaviors at both the word level and sentence level. We also examine group differences in the effects of word length, frequency, and surprisal on local measures. The results indicate stronger effects of length and surprisal, but equivalent frequency effects (on content words) for deaf compared to hearing readers. The SEER Corpus offers researchers the opportunity to test hypotheses about reading development and efficiency in bimodal bilinguals who are first language users of ASL and skilled readers of English, supporting broader investigations of visual language processing. The corpus is preregistered and publicly available (https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/7P4F2) to facilitate replication, cross-study comparisons, and exploration of preliminary hypotheses in this understudied population.

ABSTRACT Background Increasingly, the co-design of AI tools has attended to relationality and ethics. Building on scholarship on speculative dreaming and the interactional construction of ideological stances, this article examines the possibilities and challenges of how new, expansive, AI-supported worlds are constructed within co-design spaces. Methodology Using the framework of figured worlds, we analyze two social design-based workshops with high-school aged youth participants. The workshops sought to surface participants’ expansive visions for ideal collaboration in schools and to understand the affordances and constraints of AI in making those visions a reality. Findings The pedagogical structures of a co-design activity made salient key relationships in youth participant’s lives, which they then sought to re-envision. While assembling these speculative worlds, participants appropriated existing relationships from well-established worlds, which most commonly pulled them toward reproducing the status quo. Co-design activities that made salient familiar but alternative worlds helped to resist that pull. Contributions In the process of constructing expansive worlds, lived relationships from existing social worlds—both dominant and expansive—are pulled in. We introduce a world-building framework that highlights key mechanisms in this process and connects them to pedagogical structures that may support co-design participants in envisioning AI possibilities beyond the status quo.

We report on a case study of an elite international-level dart thrower who reached out to the first author with hopes of decreasing his somatic anxiety symptoms and increasing his chances of experiencing flow during high-stakes competitions. Specifically, we describe the intake, need analysis, case formulation, and intervention delivery process and evaluation. The intervention program helped the client improve his performance (i.e., average points per game), experience more microflows, and decrease his somatic anxiety (i.e., hand shaking) symptoms. Proactive interventions and ongoing psychological skills training are recommended for professional athletes immersed in highly competitive settings.

Elite golf performance hinges on physiological and psychological precision, with success often defined by razor-thin margins. Sleep and cardiac autonomic function, reflected by resting heart rate (RHR) and heart-rate variability (HRV), are indicators of recovery and readiness, yet their role in golf remains understudied. We analyzed wearable-derived data from 389 male professional golfers across 521 events, totaling 35,140 nights of monitoring. Key metrics included sleep duration (7.2 [0.7]h), sleep consistency (regularity of sleep/wake times; 69.1% [6.9%]), RHR (55.9 [7.9] beats·min-1), HRV (root mean square of successive differences; 64.2 [28.1]milliseconds), and a composite recovery score (integrating sleep and biometric data; 59.1% [9.9%]). Objective golf performance (total score, great/poor shots, strokes gained) was extracted from a subscription-based database. Models assessed between-persons differences and within-person changes across seasons (using seasonal averages), adjusting for age (34.1 [9.1]y), height (1.81 [0.07]m), and weight (83.2 [10.6]kg). Golfers with longer and more consistent sleep, lower RHR, and higher HRV performed better (P < .05). Between athletes, each additional hour of sleep was associated with a lower score (b = -0.522), as was a 10-percentage-point increase in sleep consistency (b = -0.382), a 1-beat-per-minute lower RHR (b = -0.038), and a 10-percentage-point increase in recovery (b = -0.476). Within athletes, improvements in sleep consistency (b = -0.193 per 10 percentage points), HRV (b = -0.016 per 1millisecond), and recovery (b = -0.238 per 10 percentage points) were also associated with lower scores (P < .05). Sleep and cardiac autonomic function were associated with elite golf performance. Both individual differences and within-athlete improvements were linked to better play, highlighting the potential role of sleep, RHR, and HRV in optimizing performance at the highest level of golf.

Psychophysiology pertains to the study of the reciprocal and “many to many” relations between the mind and the body. Accordingly, this special issue includes a collection of articles examining psychophysiological mechanisms implicated in the performance and well-being of athletes and exercisers. More specifically, this issue contains a literature review on the effects of heart rate variability biofeedback and athletic performance, as well as two empirical articles on the effects of neurofeedback on myriad psychological variables, such as attentional focus, anxiety, stress, and depression. There is also a paper on the effects of a self-talk intervention on free-throw performance in basketball and somatic reactions and a novel study on the effects of repeated transcranial direct current stimulation on decision making among soccer players. Collectively, the articles included in this issue advance our understanding of how psychophysiological theories and methodologies can inform the development of applied interventions in sport, exercise, and performance psychology.