The Relationship between Goal Proximity and Specificity in Bowling: A Field Experiment

1990 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven H. Frierman ◽  
Robert S. Weinberg ◽  
Allen Jackson

The purpose of this investigation was twofold: to determine if individuals who were assigned specific, difficult goals perform better than those assigned “do your best” goals, and to examine the importance of goal proximity (longterm vs. short-term) on bowling performance. Subjects were 72 students enrolled in two beginning bowling courses at a 4-year university. They were matched according to baseline bowling averages and then randomly assigned to one of four goal-setting conditions. A 4 × 5 (Goal Condition × Trials) ANOVA with repeated measures on the last factor revealed a significant goal condition main effect, with the long-term goal group improving more than the do-your-best group. No other performance comparisons reached significance. Questionnaire data revealed that subjects in all three numerical goal conditions rated their level of confidence significantly higher than the do-your-best goal group in Week 1, but the long-term goal group displayed a significantly higher level of confidence than the other three goal groups in Week 4. All other questions indicated that all groups tried hard and were committed to and accepted their goals.

1985 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 296-305 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Weinberg ◽  
Lawrence Bruya ◽  
Allen Jackson

The purpose of the present investigation was twofold: to determine if subjects who set specific difficult goals perform significantly better than those who set "do your best" goals, and to examine the importance of goal proximity on the performance of the 3-minute sit-up test. Two experiments were conducted, and subjects (N = 96) in both were matched on ability and then randomly assigned to one of the following conditions: (a) short-term goals, (b) long-term goals, (c) short-term plus long-term goals, and (d) "do your best" goals. They were tested once a week for either 5 weeks (Experiment 1) or 3 weeks (Experiment 2). Subjects in the short-term goal condition had weekly sit-up goals, whereas those in the long-term goal condition had only an end goal Performance results from both experiments revealed no significant between-group difference. Questionnaire data indicated that all subjects tried hard, were committed to their goals, and were ego-involved. Manipulation checks revealed, however, that subjects from all conditions were setting their own goals in addition to their experimenter-set goal. Other possible explanations for the lack of differences are couched in the nature of the subject population and the nature of the task.


1997 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 312-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Ann Boyce ◽  
Sarah M. Bingham

The present study investigated the effect of three goal-setting groups (self-set, assigned, and control) and three levels of self-efficacy (low, medium, and high) on bowling performance of college students (N = 288). The performance/retention trials were analyzed in a 3 × 2 × 10 (Goal Conditions × Self-Efficacy Levels × Trials) ANCOVA design, with repeated measures on the last factor and baseline performance as the covariate. Results of the data analysis revealed a significant main effect for self-efficacy (SE) levels for males and females. Individuals at high and medium SE levels performed significantly better than those at a low SE level. The nonsignificant main effect for goal groups was attributed to the spontaneous goal-setting behavior of the control group. Finally, there was a main effect for trials and planned comparisons indicated that as trials progressed female students improved. Evidence of a performance plateau was present for male students, as they showed marginal improvement across trials.


1988 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Weinberg ◽  
Lawrence Bruya ◽  
Janice Longino ◽  
Allen Jackson

The purpose of this investigation was to test the effects of goal proximity and goal specificity on endurance performance of young children. Subjects were 130 boys and 125 girls from the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. Children were matched on baseline performance of the 2-min sit-up test and then randomly assigned to one of the following goal setting conditions: (a) short-term goal improvement of 4% each test trial, (b) long-term goal of 20% improvement over the course of the 10-week study, (c) short-term plus long-term goal, and (d) do your best. Subjects practiced sit-ups in class every day with practice tests once a week and actual scored tests once every other week. No significant differences between goal-setting conditions were found on baseline performance and thus a 4 × 3 × 2 × 5 (Goal × Grade × Gender × Trials) ANOVA was conducted. Results produced significant gender and grade main effects, with boys and sixth graders exhibiting the best performance. More important, a significant goal-condition-by-trials interaction revealed there were no differences on Trials 1 and 2, but on Trials 3, 4, and 5 the specific goal groups performed significantly better than the do-your-best group. A postexperimental questionnaire revealed that children were highly committed to their goals and tried extremely hard to reach their goals. Results are discussed in terms of Locke's goal-setting theory as well as recent empirical goal-setting studies conducted in physical activity settings.


1988 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 184-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard K. Hall ◽  
Anthony T.J. Byrne

Recent empirical evidence (Weinberg, Bruya, & Jackson, 1985) has brought into question whether the positive beneficial effects of goal setting found in organizational settings are directly generalizable to the domain of sport. This investigation attempted to determine whether increased control over powerful extraneous variables influencing motivation would enable goal-setting effects to be observed in sport settings, and second, it examined the utility of either flexible subject-set subgoals or rigid experimenter subgoals as adjuncts to long-term goals. Forty-three males and 11 females were randomly assigned by class to one of four experimental conditions. Following baseline trial under do best instructions, subjects performed three trials on an endurance task under their assigned experimental conditions. A 4 × 3 (Goal Group × Trials) ANCOVA with repeated measures on the last factor and baseline performance as the covariate indicated that groups holding subgoals performed significantly better than those with do best instructions, whereas performance for those with only long-term goals approached significance. These findings clearly demonstrate a need to further understand the process of goal setting if it is to be successfully applied as an intervention technique to enhance motivation and sport performance.


1992 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 298-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Ann Boyce

This study investigated the effect of goal proximity on skill acquisition and retention of a selected shooting task. Twelve classes (n=181) were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: (a) short-term goals, (b) a long-term goal, (c) short-term plus long-term goals, and (d) do-your-best goals. The pretest and six skill acquisition/retention trials were analyzed in a 4×2×6 (Goal Groups × Gender × Trials) MANCOVA design with repeated measures on the last factor and with the pretest as the covariate. Results of a multivariate F test revealed significant main effects for goal groups, gender, and trials. Post hoc tests indicated that the three specific goal-setting groups were superior to the do-your-best group. Males were statistically superior to females in the shooting task. The follow-up tests on trials revealed that as trials progressed, shooting performance improved significantly.


2021 ◽  
pp. 073563312110107
Author(s):  
Cixiao Wang ◽  
Huixiao Le

In collaborative learning, the intuition “the more device, the merrier” is somehow widely acknowledged, but little research has investigated the relationship between device-student ratio and the learning outcome. This study aims to investigate not only the main effect of different device-student ratio, also to identify the moderators in the learning context including task complexity, external script availability and students’ familiarity to the collaboration settings. A three-round quasi-experiment was conducted in a primary school in mainland China, 130 fifth-grade students from four classes participated. Group worksheet including conceptual understanding and problem-solving tasks were used to collect participants’ inquiry performance. Repeated measures ANOVA was employed in data analysis. Findings indicate that 1:m device-student ratio could be beneficial, and external scripts, and prior collaboration experience could moderate such effect. The different effect of 1:m device-student ratio to 1:1 is only significant in the situation when students are faced with relatively simple task, and the effect size is larger when external script is present. When the task is more complicated, such effect of device-student ratio would only emerge after a period of collaboration. This finding challenged the intuition that one-to-one device-student ratio could be better. Related discussions and recommendations to teaching were made.


Genome ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 272-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donal A. Hickey ◽  
Bernhard F. Benkel ◽  
Charalambos Magoulas

Multicellular eukaryotes have evolved complex homeostatic mechanisms that buffer the majority of their cells from direct interaction with the external environment. Thus, in these organisms long-term adaptations are generally achieved by modulating the developmental profile and tissue specificity of gene expression. Nevertheless, a subset of eukaryotic genes are still involved in direct responses to environmental fluctuations. It is the adaptative responses in the expression of these genes that buffers many other genes from direct environmental effects. Both microevolutionary and macroevolutionary patterns of change in the structure and regulation of such genes are illustrated by the sequences encoding α-amylases. The molecular biology and evolution of α-amylases in Drosophila and other higher eukaryotes are presented. The amylase system illustrates the effects of both long-term and short-term natural selection, acting on both the structural and regulatory components of a gene–enzyme system. This system offers an opportunity for linking evolutionary genetics to molecular biology, and it allows us to explore the relationship between short-term microevolutionary changes and long-term adaptations.Key words: gene regulation, molecular evolution, eukaryotes, Drosophila, amylase.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 164
Author(s):  
Chuyao Luo ◽  
Xutao Li ◽  
Yongliang Wen ◽  
Yunming Ye ◽  
Xiaofeng Zhang

The task of precipitation nowcasting is significant in the operational weather forecast. The radar echo map extrapolation plays a vital role in this task. Recently, deep learning techniques such as Convolutional Recurrent Neural Network (ConvRNN) models have been designed to solve the task. These models, albeit performing much better than conventional optical flow based approaches, suffer from a common problem of underestimating the high echo value parts. The drawback is fatal to precipitation nowcasting, as the parts often lead to heavy rains that may cause natural disasters. In this paper, we propose a novel interaction dual attention long short-term memory (IDA-LSTM) model to address the drawback. In the method, an interaction framework is developed for the ConvRNN unit to fully exploit the short-term context information by constructing a serial of coupled convolutions on the input and hidden states. Moreover, a dual attention mechanism on channels and positions is developed to recall the forgotten information in the long term. Comprehensive experiments have been conducted on CIKM AnalytiCup 2017 data sets, and the results show the effectiveness of the IDA-LSTM in addressing the underestimation drawback. The extrapolation performance of IDA-LSTM is superior to that of the state-of-the-art methods.


Author(s):  
Lora I. Dimitrova ◽  
Eline M. Vissia ◽  
Hanneke Geugies ◽  
Hedwig Hofstetter ◽  
Sima Chalavi ◽  
...  

AbstractIt is unknown how self-relevance is dependent on emotional salience. Emotional salience encompasses an individual's degree of attraction or aversion to emotionally-valenced information. The current study investigated the interconnection between self and salience through the evaluation of emotional valence and self-relevance. 56 native Dutch participants completed a questionnaire assessing valence, intensity, and self-relevance of 552 Dutch nouns and verbs. One-way repeated-measures ANCOVA investigated the relationship between valence and self, age and gender. Repeated-measures ANCOVA also tested the relationship between valence and self with intensity ratings and effects of gender and age. Results showed a significant main effect of valence for self-relevant words. Intensity analyses showed a main effect of valence but not of self-relevance. There were no significant effects of gender and age. The most important finding presents that self-relevance is dependent on valence. These findings concerning the relationship between self and salience opens avenues to study an individual's self-definition.


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