Analysis of Progressive Muscle Relaxation on Psychophysiological Variables in Basketball Athletes.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of a progressive muscle relaxation program on psychological (stress levels, anxiety, and mood states) and physiological (blood pressure and heart rate) variables in basketball athletes. Fifty-nine basketball players, aged 14 to 19 years, and members of Bauru Basket team, were recruited for this study and grouped into control group (CG, n = 30) and intervention group (IG, n = 29). The participants were evaluated, before and after the intervention, by the following means: Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 (CSAI-2), to measure the pre-competitive anxiety state, i.e., how anxious each athlete felt just before the competition; Brunel Mood Scale (BRUMS), an instrument for early detection of overtraining syndrome; Recovery-Stress Questionnaire for Athletes (RESTQ-Sport), to identify the extent to which each athlete was physically or mentally stressed and the athlete's current capability for recovery; Athlete Burnout Questionnaire (ABQ), specifically developed for athletes. The IG athletes participated in 12 progressive muscle relaxation sessions, a practice for tensing or tightening a specific muscle until an ideal state of relaxation is reached. Each participant had blood pressure and heart rate measured before and after every session. The CG athletes were evaluated similarly to those in the IG but without relaxation. The results showed statistically significant differences in cognitive anxiety (p = 0.039) and specific stress (p = 0.016) between CG and IG before the intervention; in addition, a significant heart rate decrease (p < 0.01) between IG and CG was noted.

Desempenho de seleção e nomeação de figuras em crianças com deficiência auditiva com implante coclear / Performance of selection and naming in children with hearing loss and cochlear implants

O objetivo deste estudo foi verificar se a nomeação de figuras ocorreria após o ensino de relações condicionais entre palavra ditada e figura em quatro crianças com deficiência auditiva pré-lingual que receberam o implante coclear. As tarefas foram conduzidas com um microcomputador que exibia tentativas de emparelhamento de acordo com o modelo, e o procedimento de ensino foi baseado no responder por exclusão, que se supõe ser uma das rotas utilizadas por crianças para estabelecem relações inéditas entre nome-objeto. Todos os participantes aprenderam as relações entre palavra ditada e figura, porém as vocalizações emitidas não tinham correspondência pontual com a palavra ditada, demonstrando a independência funcional entre ouvir e falar. A análise por bigramas das vocalizações demonstra que os erros ocorreram com mais frequência nas porções intermediárias e iniciais das palavras do que nas finais, sugerindo que as contingências envolvidas na nomeação de figuras ainda devem ser melhor exploradas.(AU)

The aim of this work was to verify if figure naming would occur after conditional relation teaching between dictated word and figure in four children with prelingual hearing loss who received cochlear implant. The tasks were conducted with a microcomputer that showed matching to sample attempts and the teaching procedure was based on exclusion performance, which is supposed to be one of the routes adopted by children to establish novel relationships between naming-object. All participants learned the relationships between word and figure dictated, but the uttered vocalizations did not accurately match the word dictated, thus demonstrating the functional independence between listening and speaking. The bigrams analysis of vocalizations shows that errors occur more frequently in the initial and intermediate portions of the word than at the end, suggesting that the contingencies involved in picture naming still remain to be better explored.(AU)