The Relationship between Competitive Class Climate and Cyberloafing among Chinese Adolescents: A Curvilinear Moderated Mediation Model.

Since COVID-19 was officially listed as a pandemic, online schooling has become a more pervasive form of learning, and cyberloafing has become a widespread behavior, even among adolescents. However, less research has explored the influencing mechanism of adolescents' cyberloafing. Based on relevant studies and the real lives of adolescents, this study aimed to examine the association between a competitive class climate and cyberloafing among adolescents, its underlying mechanism, the mediating role of perceived stress and the moderating role of self-esteem. A total of 686 adolescents were recruited to complete a set of questionnaires assessing cyberloafing, perceived stress, self-esteem, and perceived competitive class climate. The results showed that a competitive class climate was positively associated with perceived stress, and the U-shaped relationship between perceived stress and cyberloafing was significant. Perceived stress mediated the relationship between a competitive class climate and cyberloafing. Meanwhile, self-esteem moderated the U-shaped relationship between perceived stress and cyberloafing and the linear relationship between a competitive class climate and perceived stress. The results of this study indicate that the influence of a competitive class climate on individual learning behavior may be nonlinear, and proper competition can contribute to reducing individual cyberloafing.

Relationship between Sports and Personal Variables and the Competitive Anxiety of Colombian Elite Athletes of Olympic and Paralympic Sports.

BACKGROUND: Anxiety is one of the most complex and the most studied constructs in psychology, and it is extremely frequent in high-level sportsmen and women. The main goal was to study the influence of sex, age, type of sport, sport modality, other professional occupation, and competitive level on the competitive anxiety symptoms and self-confidence of elite athletes. METHODS: A descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out with Colombian elite athletes who were members of the "Support to the Excellence Coldeportes Athlete" program. The total population studied included 334 Colombian elite athletes: mean age 27.10 ± 6.57 years old with 13.66 ± 6.37 years practicing his/her sports modality. The precompetitive anxiety symptoms of the participants were assessed using the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2R (CSAI-2R). RESULTS: Men showed higher levels of self-confidence than women. Younger athletes had a higher cognitive and somatic anxiety. The athletes of individual sports had a higher mean somatic anxiety than those of collective sports. The higher-level athletes had lower values of cognitive and somatic anxiety and higher levels of self-confidence. Finally, the values of anxiety symptoms positively correlated with each other, and negatively correlated with self-confidence. CONCLUSION: Individualised psychological intervention programs adapted to elite athletes are needed, considering the divergent results found in various variables of scientific interest.

Home advantage mediated (HAM) by referee bias and team performance during covid.

The fans' importance in sports is acknowledged by the term 'the 12th man', a figurative extra player for the home team. Sport teams are indeed more successful when they play in front of their fans than when they play away. The supposed mechanism behind this phenomenon, termed Home Advantage (HA), is that fans' support spurs home players to better performance and biases referees, which in turn determines the outcome. The inference about the importance of fans' support is, however, indirect as there is normally a 12th man of this kind, even if it is an opponent's. The current pandemic, which forced sporting activities to take place behind closed doors, provides the necessary control condition. Here we employ a novel conceptual HA model on a sample of over 4000 soccer matches from 12 European leagues, some played in front of spectators and some in empty stadia, to demonstrate that fans are indeed responsible for the HA. However, the absence of fans reduces the HA by a third, as the home team's performance suffers and the officials' bias disappears. The current pandemic reveals that the figurative 12th man is no mere fan hyperbole, but is in fact the most important player in the home team.

SARS-CoV-2 transmission during rugby league matches: do players become infected after participating with SARS-CoV-2 positive players?

OBJECTIVES: To examine the interactions between SARS-CoV-2 positive players and other players during rugby league matches and determine within-match SARS-CoV-2 transmission risk. METHODS: Four Super League matches in which SARS-CoV-2 positive players were subsequently found to have participated were analysed. Players were identified as increased-risk contacts, and player interactions and proximities were analysed by video footage and global positioning system (GPS) data. The primary outcome was new positive cases of SARS-CoV-2 within 14 days of the match in increased-risk contacts and other players participating in the matches. RESULTS: Out of 136 total players, there were 8 SARS-CoV-2 positive players, 28 players identified as increased-risk contacts and 100 other players in the matches. Increased-risk contacts and other players were involved in 11.4±9.0 (maximum 32) and 4.0±5.2 (maximum 23) tackles, respectively. From GPS data, increased-risk contacts and other players were within 2 m of SARS-CoV-2 positive players on 10.4±18.0 (maximum 88) and 12.5±20.7 (maximum 121) occasions, totalling 65.7±137.7 (maximum 689) and 89.5±169.4 (maximum 1003) s, respectively. Within 14 days of the match, one increased-risk contact and five players returned positive SARS-CoV-2 reverse transcriptase PCR (RT-PCR) tests, and 27 increased-risk contacts and 95 other participants returned negative SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR tests. Positive cases were most likely traced to social interactions, car sharing and wider community transmission and not linked to in-match transmission. CONCLUSION: Despite tackle involvements and close proximity interactions with SARS-CoV-2 positive players, in-match SARS-CoV-2 transmission was not confirmed. While larger datasets are needed, these findings suggest rugby presents a lower risk of viral transmission than previously predicted.

Being vulnerable.

Early-career researchers feel discouraged from exposing vulnerability even during a global crisis.

The absence of fans removes the home advantage associated with penalties called by National Hockey League referees.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on professional sports, notably, forcing the National Hockey League to hold its 2020 playoffs in empty arenas. This provided an unprecedented opportunity to study how crowds may influence penalties awarded by referees in an ecological context. Using data from playoff games played during the COVID-19 pandemic and the previous 5 years (n = 547), we estimate the number of penalties called by referees depending on whether or not spectators were present. The results show an interaction between a team's status (home; away) and the presence or absence of crowds. Post-hoc analyses reveal that referees awarded significantly more penalties to the away team compared to the home team when there is a crowd present. However, when there are no spectators, the number of penalties awarded to the away and home teams are not significantly different. In order to generalize these results, we took advantage of the extension of the pandemic and the unusual game setting it provided to observe the behavior of referees during the 2020-2021 regular season. Again, using data from the National Hockey League (n = 1639), but also expanding our sample to include Canadian Hockey League games (n = 1709), we also find that the advantage given to the home team by referees when in front of a crowd fades in the absence of spectators. These findings provide new evidence suggesting that social pressure does have an impact on referees' decision-making, thus contributing to explain the phenomenon of home advantage in professional ice hockey.

Agency rescues competition for credit assignment among predictive cues from adverse learning conditions.

A fundamental assumption of learning theories is that the credit assigned to predictive cues is not simply determined by their probability of reinforcement, but by their ability to compete with other cues present during learning. This assumption has guided behavioral and neural science research for decades, and tremendous empirical and theoretical advances have been made identifying the mechanisms of cue competition. However, when learning conditions are not optimal (e.g., when training is massed), cue competition is attenuated. This failure of the learning system exposes the individual's vulnerability to form spurious associations in the real world. Here, we uncover that cue competition in rats can be rescued when conditions are suboptimal provided that the individual has agency over the learning experience. Our findings reveal a new effect of agency over learning on credit assignment among predictive cues, and open new avenues of investigation into the underlying mechanisms.

Labour market competition for public health graduates in the United States: A comparison of workforce taxonomies with job postings before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A strong public health workforce (PHW) is needed to respond to COVID-19 and public health (PH) issues worldwide. However, classifying, enumerating, and planning the PHW is challenging. Existing PHW taxonomies and enumerations focus on the existing workforce, and largely ignore workforce competition for public health graduates (PHGs). Such efforts also do not utilize real time data to assess rapid changes to the employment landscape, like those caused by COVID-19. A job postings analysis can inform workforce planning and educational program design alike. To identify occupations and industries currently seeking PHGs and contrast them with existing taxonomies, authors matched existing PHW taxonomies to standardized occupational classification codes, then compared this with 38,533 coded, US job postings from employers seeking Master's level PHGs from 1 July 2019 to 30 June 2020. Authors also analysed 24,516 postings from March 2019 to October 2019 and compared them with 24,845 postings from March 2020 to October 2020 to assess changing employer demands associated with COVID-19. We also performed schema matching to align various occupational classification systems. Job postings pre-COVID and during COVID show considerable but changing demand for PHGs in the US, with 16%-28% of postings outside existing PHW taxonomies, suggesting labour market competition which may compound PHW recruitment and retention challenges.

Competitive anxiety or Coronavirus anxiety? The psychophysiological responses of professional football players after returning to competition during the COVID-19 pandemic.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to examine the relationship between competitive anxiety, fear/anxiety of COVID-19, and autonomic and endocrine stress responses in professional football players after returning to competition during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: Ninety male professional football players (age: 26.33 ± 2.48 yr) volunteered to participate in this study, which included an official competition. Psychophysiological responses, including the Fear of COVID-19 Scale, the Coronavirus Anxiety Scale, and the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 Revised, were collected 30 min before the competition. In addition, salivary alpha-amylase (sAA) and salivary cortisol (sCort) were collected at 8 a.m. and 15 min before the competition. RESULTS: The main findings, based on the Pearson correlation, showed significant positive correlations between COVID-19 anxiety and somatic competitive anxiety (p = 0.01), cognitive competitive anxiety (p = 0.01), and competition response of sCort and sAA (p = 0.01). Moreover, fear of COVID-19 was positively correlated with COVID-19 anxiety (p = 0.01). On the contrary, the awakening response of sCort and sAA was not found to be correlated with psychological parameters (all p > 0.05). The analysis also indicated that there was no significant correlation between self-confidence with other psychological and physiological variables (all p > 0.05). The regression analysis showed that cognitive anxiety was a relevant predictor for the competition response of sCort and sAA (p < 0.05). Moreover, COVID-19 anxiety was the only predictor of somatic and cognitive anxiety (p < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: The present study provides the first preliminary evidence that COVID-19 anxiety and competitive anxiety might pose a negative impact on the athletic performance of professional football players during COVID-19 pandemic competitions. Thus, research is needed to build a strategy to reduce the psychophysiological stress related to COVID-19 and competition response.

Resumption of Sport at the United States Olympic and Paralympic Training Facilities During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

In this brief report, we describe the safety of reopening US Olympic and Paralympic Training facilities (USOPTFs) during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic from July 2020 through October 2020. We evaluated the prevalence of COVID-19 infection at the time of reentry and cardiopulmonary sequelae of COVID-19 in elite athletes. All athletes returning to a USOPTF were required to go through a reentry protocol consisting of an electronic health history, a 6-day quarantine including twice-daily symptom surveys, COVID-19 polymerase chain reaction and antibody testing, physical examination, 12-lead electrocardiogram, high-sensitivity cardiac troponin I, and pulmonary function testing. Athletes with current or prior COVID-19 infection also underwent an echocardiogram, cardiology consultation, and additional testing as indicated. All athletes followed rigorous infection prevention measures and minimized contact with the outside community following reentry. At the time of this report, 301 athletes completed the reentry protocol among which 14 (4.7%) tested positive for active (positive polymerase chain reaction test, n = 3) or prior (positive antibody test, n = 11) COVID-19 infection. During the study period, this cohort accrued 14,916 days living and training at USOPTFs. Only one (0.3%) athlete was subsequently diagnosed with a new COVID-19 infection. No cardiopulmonary pathology attributable to COVID-19 was detected. Our findings suggest that residential elite athlete training facilities can successfully resume activity during the COVID-19 pandemic when strict reentry and infection prevention measures are followed. Dissemination of our reentry quarantine and screening protocols with COVID-19 mitigation measures may assist the global sports and medical community develop best practices for reopening of similar training centers.

Screening of Potential Cardiac Involvement in Competitive Athletes Recovering From COVID-19: An Expert Consensus Statement.

As our understanding of the complications of coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) evolve, subclinical cardiac pathology such as myocarditis, pericarditis, and right ventricular dysfunction in the absence of significant clinical symptoms represents a concern. The potential implications of these findings in athletes are significant given the concern that exercise, during the acute phase of viral myocarditis, may exacerbate myocardial injury and precipitate malignant ventricular arrhythmias. Such concerns have led to the development and publication of expert consensus documents aimed at providing guidance for the evaluation of athletes after contracting COVID-19 in order to permit safe return to play. Cardiac imaging is at the center of these evaluations. This review seeks to evaluate the current evidence regarding COVID-19-associated cardiovascular disease and how multimodality imaging may be useful in the screening and clinical evaluation of athletes with suspected cardiovascular complications of infection. Guidance is provided with diagnostic "red flags" that raise the suspicion of pathology. Specific emphasis is placed on the unique challenges posed in distinguishing athletic cardiac remodeling from subclinical cardiac disease. The strengths and limitations of different imaging modalities are discussed and an approach to return to play decision making for athletes post-COVID-19, as informed by multimodality imaging, is provided.