Enhancing Active Engagement for Dementia Caregivers: A Synthesis of Interventions

In a recent meta-analysis of interventions for dementia caregivers, psychoeducational interventions were found to be effective only if they required caregivers to apply knowledge and skills through active engagement. This emphasizes the importance of understanding which intervention components enhance application in order to improve caregiving interventions and the mechanisms by which they work. The purpose of this presentation is to identify and assess elements of active engagement within dementia caregiving interventions. Articles included in this review were published between 2009 and 2018 and identified as psychoeducational dementia caregiving interventions. Each intervention was assessed to describe: 1) how active engagement was defined, 2) the logistics for implementing the active engagement techniques, 3) and the process for evaluating active engagement components. Of 36 articles meeting inclusion criteria, 25 mentioned active engagement components of the intervention. Active components included discussion, problem-solving, practice, role-play, action plans, and homework. Only five articles provided partial descriptions of the active components, five mentioned assessing active engagement, and only one study examined the efficacy of an engagement technique. This demonstrates a significant gap in our understanding of interventions for dementia caregivers. Active engagement enhances outcomes, yet to our knowledge, the specific steps taken to engage caregivers actively and the mechanisms by which these work are unclear. This is a barrier to optimizing active engagement within intervention delivery. Clarifying processes and methods for testing mechanisms of action can further enhance caregiver engagement with interventions.

The role of the extra-man play actions in elite water polo matches: which elements lead to a good shot?

In water polo, two teams comprised of six outfield players and a goalkeeper compete for four quarters of 8 minutes’ real play in a playing area of 30x20m. Each team has 30 seconds to complete an action. A frequent situation thought to be very significant to the final result of a match is the extra-man play action. After a major foul a player is sent out of play for 20 seconds. The attacking team, with a series of passes and player movements must quickly try to disrupt the defence and enable a shot. And defence has to work on coordination of movement between players so that the attack finds it difficult to score too easily. Coaches dedicate a lot of time to training their team to attack and defend in an extra-man situation. This paper investigates the issue of extra-man play actions in detail. A study is performed into data from the 2020 European men’s water polo championships, whose aim is to identify whether man-up play actions have any elements that lead to a good shot, meaning a ball in the goal even if it is saved. Several characteristics were recorded on each extra-man play action, but only few of them seem to influence its outcome. This may be explained by the fact that the outcome of a play action is not only linked to the execution of a strategy, but it is influenced by factors which may not all be measured.

Gender Differences in Video Game Play: Practices of Teenaged Players from Pakistan

The present research study aimed to examining gender differences in gaming patterns and preferences of teenage gamers in Pakistan. The gaming patterns involve frequency of game play and time spent on game play. The video game preferences were measured by exploring game genres and style(mode) in which game players mostly play. The study was quantitative and survey is conducted by using purposive research method as only game player were selected as sample from schools of Islamabad, Pakistan. The close ended questionnaire adapted from ‘Media Self Report Questionnaire’ used by Elliot (2006), Bajovic (2012) and Hodge (2019) was filled by 576 respondents. The study found that teenage girls and boys significantly differ in terms of frequency of game play and time spent on video gaming. It was found that boys mostly play in multiplayer mode and prefer to play action, role playing game and sports game genres. On the other hand girls’ prefer single player mode and adventure, action and horror game genres. The present research can be used as baseline exploratory study for future studies in the domain of video gaming.

Violent Video Games and Their Relation to Aggressive Behaviour in Late Childhood in Pakistan

Most of the European and American literature suggests that playing violent video games can increase aggression in real-life situations in children, but the extent to which this is true in Pakistan is largely unknown. This is a correlational study that explored whether the amount of time spent playing violent themed video games was associated with aggressive behaviour and whether playing different kinds of violent themed video games could predict aggressive behaviour in late childhood. The sample of 100 children (mean age 13.37) was taken, and children were asked to fill in a diary when they played videogames for a week. The results revealed the time spent playing violent video games (role play, action and fighting, and first-person shooter) was positively correlated with aggression; however, only role play and first-person shooter video games were positive predictors of aggressive behaviour. Current research suggests that if children spend more than 30 minutes a day playing violent video games, their chances of learning aggressive behaviour may increase.

Neural Networks for Predicting Human Interactions in Repeated Games

We consider the problem of predicting human players' actions in repeated strategic interactions. Our goal is to predict the dynamic step-by-step behavior of individual players in previously unseen games. We study the ability of neural networks to perform such predictions and the information that they require. We show on a dataset of normal-form games from experiments with human participants that standard neural networks are able to learn functions that provide more accurate predictions of the players' actions than established models from behavioral economics. The networks outperform the other models in terms of prediction accuracy and cross-entropy, and yield higher economic value. We show that if the available input is only of a short sequence of play, economic information about the game is important for predicting behavior of human agents. However, interestingly, we find that when the networks are trained with long enough sequences of history of play, action-based networks do well and additional economic details about the game do not improve their performance, indicating that the sequence of actions encode sufficient information for the success in the prediction task.

Productive Action

The key issue of the paper is the question of the means of Existence of human action and, therefore, of the actor himself/herself. The concept of ‘action’ refers to different types of action performance: effective action, play action, learning action and, finally, productive action. The paper focuses on the configuration of the Productive Action since it is the production that is considered a complete form of action performance. The Productive Action is represented as a binding of two Occurrences: the occurrence of overcoming the resistance of the past experience and the occurrence of affirmation of new opportunities — the new field of action — by other people. Only in this affirmation can the productive action be performed and completed. The Productive Action, understood as the binding of the Occurrences, appears as the Act of Development. In its essence, the Productive Action is a try-out: though it the meanings of action are tested, constructed and affirmed. Affirmation of meanings is the affirmation of the author’s journey. This is how action becomes Activity.

The Impact of Nonlinear Pedagogy on Decision-Making and Execution in Youth Soccer Players According to Game Actions

The aim of this study was to analyze the effect of a teaching program, based on Non-Linear Pedagogy, on decision-making and performance in youth soccer players as a function of the type of play action. Our participants were 19 players from the U12 age category. The teaching program, which was based on the application of modified games characterized by a numerical superiority in attack, was used for 14 training sessions. This program was conducted in two phases (preparation-for-intervention and intervention). Decision-making and execution for pass and dribbling actions were evaluated through the Game Performance Evaluation Tool. The results showed significant differences in favour of the experimental group in decision-making (p < .000) and the execution of passes (p = .003) after the intervention. However, such differences were not found for dribbling (decision-making, p = .402 and execution, p = .143). These findings demonstrate the effectiveness of this type of program for teaching actions with a high tactical component, such as the pass, and a different approach must be considered in actions with a high technical component, such as dribbling. It is necessary to continue developing studies in this line to clarify these issues.

Effects of Unmanaged Sports-Related Conflicts among Colleges of Education Students in Ghana.

The purpose of the study was to unravel and analyze effects of sports-related-conflicts in the Central-Western Zone of Colleges of Education in Ghana. Quantitative descriptive survey was used to unravel the effects of sports-related-conflicts among students in the Colleges of Education in the Central Western zone. A questionnaire was administered to 369 respondents. Data collected was analyzed using descriptive statistics. It was revealed that the effects of sports-related-conflicts assumed different forms including; creation of state of chaos, destruction of property, retaliation, sowing seeds of bitterness, rough play action, suspicion, unnecessary tensions, blackmailing among others. It was recommended that conflicts in sports at the Colleges of Education in Ghana should be properly managed by the organizers of the sporting activities

Improvement of interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence through traditional games

This study aims to: (1) improve interpersonal intelligence through traditional games for Kindergarten A students of RumahKu Tumbuh, (2) increase intrapersonal intelligence through traditional game on Kindergarten A students of RumahKu Tumbuh, and (3) describe the process of improving interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence through these traditional games. This study is a classroom action research, referring a modified version of the Kemmis and Taggart model. Data were collected using observation and interviews. The findings show that there is an increase in interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence through traditional game on kindergarten. Improved interpersonal intelligence of children overall in the pre-cycle obtained an average score of 22.59 (very low category), increased to 27.06 in cycle 1 (low category), and increased again to 34.65 with category in cycle 2. As for the increase in child intrapersonal intelligence overall score obtained in the pre-cycle average of 16.82 with a very low category, increasing to 21.35 with a low category in cycle 1 and increased again to 25.88 with category in cycle 2. The process of improving interpersonal intelligence through play action includes child benefit interact in-game, effective communication when asked and answered during play, and pursuing a strategy to win in the game, while at the intrapersonal include children express their emotions in the game, and children know their feelings by doing a question and answer session with the teachers at the end of the game.