The role of physical education in the development of active lifestyles.

If elementary physical education existed just to achieve "present" goals, especially regular exercise, the nature of the program would be clearer and the need for trained teachers less. It is the "future" goal that complicates the debate over the elementary program. It is the "future" goal that requires a broader range of experiences and a developmental approach. Because we are preparing students to implement an active lifestyle in adulthood, the development of sport and dance skills through age/ability-appropriate and sequential lessons is an important as the "present" opportunity for physical activity. Teachers must be knowledgeable in the subdisciplines of physical education and well versed in those teaching methods that promote vigorous activity and maximum participation. The lifetime public health goal dictates we help students develop a knowledge base about exercise and health. This goal requires us to learn more than we presently know about promoting positive attitudes toward and fostering appreciations for healthful living. The hope for improved adult health also requires a K-12 curricular model in which every year continues previous experiences and moves students closer to the goal as those students are changing physically, mentally, and socially. The next debate should focus on the role of secondary school physical education in linking health-related elementary programs to healthy adult lifestyles. Even though we do not fully understand the relationship between school physical education and active adult lifestyles, our best bet is developing a continuous, developmental K-12 curriculum.

The optical characteristics of aiming scopes in archery.

Technical advancements in target archery have been extended to widespread use of "scopes" which magnify the target. In fact, these optical devices are simple converging lenses used at an arm's length from the eye. They produce a magnified image, but it is an image that suffers from significant dioptric blur, diminished somewhat by use of a peep sight in the bowstring which functions as an aperture stop. Visual acuities were taken with these scopes and, as might be expected, it was found that subjects saw no better with them. With the highest power scopes, acuity actually decreased. Experienced archers did slightly better with these aids than those with no archery experience.

Altered pattern evoked retinal and cortical potentials associated with human senescence.

Physiologically healthy elderly individuals often exhibit visual deficits which result from age-related changes in both the transmission characteristics of the ocular media and the functional properties of the neural elements in the visual pathway. Many of the age-related changes in the optical quality of the ocular media have been identified, but the age-dependent variations in visual neurophysiology have not been clearly delineated. This investigation examined age-related alterations in pattern-specific biopotentials generated in the human retina and visual cortex. Counterphasing (2.0 and 7.5 rps) patterns (7.5', 15', 30' and 60' checks) were used to simultaneously monitor pattern-reversal visual evoked potentials (PRVEPs). Young visual normals (20-30 years of age) and healthy elderly observers (70-80 years of age) with visual acuity of 20/30 or better were studied. All data were corrected for the effects of senile miosis on retinal illumination. Significant variations in the waveform characteristics of both biopotentials were noted for the elderly individuals. PRRP amplitude was uniformly reduced for all stimulus conditions. PRVEP amplitude reductions were also noted but were more stimulus specific than the PRRP amplitude reductions. No significant PRVEP or PRRP latency changes were observed. These results suggest that alterations in the physiological properties of neural elements in both the retina and visual cortex are associated with normal aging.

Effect of age on horizontal eye movement latency.

Reaction time to initiate an eye movement to a target which suddenly appeared 2.8 degrees from fixation was measured for older and younger adults. Healthy men and women were tested in a series of trials; on one-half of these trials prior knowledge of the target's location was given (simple reaction time), whereas on the remaining trials the target could appear to left or right of fixation with equal probability (choice reaction time). For both simple and choice trials, the mean reaction times for younger adults were significantly faster than for older adults. Simple reaction time trials were no faster than choice trials for either age group. In addition to mean reaction times, the distribution of the response times were examined for each age group. The shapes of the two distributions were symmetric; however, the SD of the older adults' scores was greater than that of the younger adults.

Eye movement pattern and accuracy during perceptual-motor performance in young and old adults.

Differences between young and old adults in matching a motor response to arrival of a moving stimulus may be partially attributable to age group differences in eye movements. In Experiment 1 the eye movement patterns used by young and old adults during performance of a coincidence-anticipation task were recorded. Age group differences in preferred pattern were noted but did not appear to be linked to task performance level. In Experiment 2, eye tracking error was recorded for young adults and many of the old adults tested in Experiment 1. Age group differences were attributable to task performance rather than eye tracking error. Further, the preferred eye movement pattern did not appear to be stable over time among the subjects retested. The eye-movement reaction time of the old adults was significantly longer than that of the young adults, but this did not appear to hamper the ability of the old adults to distinguish the stimulus speeds. Little evidence was found for linking visual search to task performance error.

Strength and flexibility in gymnasts before and after menarche.

simple anthropometric measures, flexibility, and strength performance tests were conducted on 30 young gymnasts and repeated one year later. During the intervening year, 13 gymnasts, average age 14.5 at the second year, reached menarche, while the remaining 17, average age 14.1 years, did not. Multivariate analyses of covariance were calculated to test for differences between the groups at Year 2, using the Year 1 scores as covariates. No significant differences between the groups were found. Tendencies to linearity of physique and late maturation, noted in the literature among very skilled gymnasts, seemed to be confirmed among this group of local competitors.

Coincidence-anticipation accuracy across the life span.

Improvement in response speed through young adulthood and decline in older adulthood has been consistently demonstrated. There is indication of a similar trend in coincidence-anticipation accuracy, wherein the performer predicts the arrival of a moving stimulus at a target point, although performance appears to plateau earlier and performance by older adults has not been studied. Four age groups, 7-9, 11-13, 18-32, and 60-75 years, were observed on a coincidence-anticipation task requiring a thumb-press response and on a maximal response-time task. Speeds of the sequential-light stimulus of the former were 2 through 5 MPH. While findings confirmed age trend in response speed, only the youngest children performed significantly poorer than the others in coincidence-anticipation accuracy. More variable or less accurate performance at extreme stimulus speeds characterized this youngest group. A more sedentary group of adults, 64 to 86 years, was tested in a follow-up experiment. The analysis indicated that older adults showed little directional bias but performed less accurately and more variably than young adults.

Skill performance on biorhythm theory's physically critical day.

The hypothesis of a critical day in biorhythm theory predicts that skill performance would be lower than normal on a physically critical day. Participants in an archery league were observed in 346 events. Indoor archery performance provided scores identical to the goal of the task and unaffected by environmental conditions or other competitors. Above-average performances on 34 physically critical days did not differ significantly from the population proportion of above-average performances. No support for the hypothesis was provided by this observation of archery performance.

Age differences in movement time over distances proportional to size.

Investigations of the differences in movement speed over the age span, childhood to early adulthood, have typically confounded age with size differences which bring about mechanical differences in the task. The present study investigated the effect on arm movement time of confounding age and limb length. Young adults and children 7 to 9 yr. of age were tested over a distance proportional to their arm length. Despite moving over a proportionally shorter distance, the children were significantly slower than the adults, suggesting that age differences in performance are not solely attributable to size differences among subjects.

Eye movements during coincidence-anticipation performance.

The present study related visual processing, as indicated by eye movements, to performance accuracy on coincidence-anticipation tasks. Three age groups were tested on a coincidence-anticipation task and their eye movements recorded. Three levels of response were administered under three levels of stimulus speed. A MANOVA indicated that both eye tracking and coincidence-anticipation varied among the age groups and with stimulus speed, although in different directions. Eye tracking error decreased with increasing age but only the coincidence-anticipation response accuracy of the youngest group appeared to be less accurate than that of the adults. Eye tracking error also decreased with decreasing stimulus speed but coincidence-anticipation performance was least accurate at the slow speed. Coincidence-anticipation error was the major contributor to performance differences with changes in the type of response.

Relative effects of three knowledge of results treatments on coincidence-anticipation performance.

The relative effects of three knowledge of results (KR) treatments on performance of a complex coincidence-anticipation task requiring speed and accuracy were studied. Male volunteers (n=75) were assigned to one of three treatments: no KR, quantitative KR, or qualitative KR. No significant differences in the performance of treatment groups were found. It was suggested that the task itself may have provided enough information for fairly accurate performance.