Is choking under pressure a consequence of skill-focus or increased distractibility? Results from a tennis serve task

It has been repeatedly demonstrated that athletes often choke in high pressure situations because anxiety can affect attention regulation and in turn performance. There are two competing theoretical approaches to explain the negative anxiety-performance relationship. According to skillfocus theories, anxious athletes’ attention is directed at how to execute the sport-specific movements which interrupts execution of already automatized movements in expert performers. According to distraction theories, anxious athletes are distractible and focus less on the relevant stimuli. We tested these competing assumptions in a between-subject design, as semi-professional tennis players were either assigned to an anxiety group (n = 25) or a neutral group (n = 28), and performed a series of second tennis serves into predefined target areas. As expected, anxiety was negatively related to serve accuracy. However, mediation analyses with the bootstrapping method revealed that this relationship was fully mediated by self-reported distraction and not by skill-focus.

Determinants and Effects of Maturity Mismatches in Emerging Markets: Evidence from Bank Level Data

Despite the extensive work on currency mismatches, research on the determinants and effects of maturity mismatches is scarce. In this paper I show that emerging market maturity mismatches are negatively affected by capital inflows and price volatilities. Furthermore, I find that banks with low maturity mismatches are more profitable during crisis periods but less profitable otherwise. The later result implies that banks face a tradeoff between higher returns and risk, hence channeling short term capital into long term loans is caused by cronyism and implicit guarantees rather than the depth of the financial market. The positive relationship between maturity mismatches and price volatility, on the other hand, shows that the banks of countries with high exchange rate and interest rate volatilities can not, or choose not to hedge themselves. These results follow from a panel regression on a data set I constructed by merging bank level data with aggregate data. This is advantageous over traditional studies which focus only on aggregate data.

A focused ethnographic study of women in recovery from alcohol abuse

Alcohol abuse and its related problems are among the most pervasive health and social concerns in the United States (U.S.) today. Women are especially vulnerable to the physical and social devastation of alcohol abuse. Yet, although there is extensive research about alcohol drinking patterns, treatment strategies, and early recovery, there is little information about the factors that facilitate successfully sustained abstinence in women. The purpose of this study was to examine and describe the common factors to successful recovery from alcohol abuse among women and to place these factors within both the context of their social networks and the larger social environment. This study draws from the population of New Mexico, where alcohol-related deaths are the highest of any state in the U.S. and the leading cause of death for individuals under the age of 65 years. The study was a focused ethnography of women who had successfully maintained long-term recovery from alcohol abuse. As an ethnographic study, data collection included participant observation, in-depth interviews with 21 women, and the collection of historical and current culturally relevant data. A purposive sampling plan was used to maximize the selection of participants who had used traditional and non-traditional approaches to recovery. As such, the analysis of the success narratives revealed two distinct findings: the first that women used several different trajectories to achieve long-term recovery. Three trajectory typologies were identified from the success narratives and labeled, A.A. as ceremony, A.A. as grounding, and Recovery as self-management. ^ However, within each of these trajectories, variations in successful recovery were seen. The second major finding was that all women articulated an overarching theme of connections as an indispensable aspect of sustained recovery. The success narratives demonstrated the powerful role that connections played in their long-term recovery and the analysis distinguished two unifying concepts of connections—those that focused beyond self (spirituality, social support, and pets) and those that focused toward self (self-nurturance, agency, and identity). This discussion will focus on the implications for clinical practice related to both women who are still actively abusing alcohol and for those who are successfully maintaining long-term recovery. ^