BACKGROUND Movement skill competence (e.g. the ability to throw, run and kick) is a potentially important physical activity determinant. However, little is known about the long-term impact of interventions to improve movement skills in early childhood. This study aimed to determine whether intervention preschool children were still more skill proficient than controls three years after a 10 mont...

As children transition from early to middle childhood, the relationship between motor skill proficiency and perceptions of physical competence should strengthen as skills improve and inflated early childhood perceptions decrease. This study examined change in motor skills and perceptions of physical competence and the relationship between those variables from kindergarten to grade 2. Participan...

Two experiments investigated the relationship between masked form priming and individual differences in reading and spelling proficiency among university students. Experiment 1 assessed neighbor priming for 4-letter word targets from high- and low-density neighborhoods in 97 university students. The overall results replicated previous evidence of facilitatory neighborhood priming only for low-n...

The present study investigated how learners’ knowledge of a second language (L2) can influence the processing of their first language (L1). The study recorded the eye movements of 47 L1 Chinese participants with different L2 English proficiency levels as they read and judged the grammaticality of 240 Chinese sentences (60 anglicized ungrammatical relative clauses, 90 non-anglicized ungrammatica...

Occupational therapists consider in-hand manipulation (IHM) to be an important component of fine motor skills and to be related to handwriting and self-care proficiency. These relationships have not been well explored nor has the impact of intervention including IHM skill enhancement on proficiency in motor tasks. We propose that the existing conceptualisation of IHM may contribute to a dearth ...

INTRODUCTION We compared the impact of two-dimensional (2D) versus three-dimensional (3D) visualization on both objective and subjective measures of laparoscopic performance using the validated Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery (FLS) skill set. SUBJECTS AND METHODS Thirty-three individuals with varying laparoscopic experience completed three essential drills from the FLS skill set (peg tra...

OBJECTIVE To identify current entry requirements set by international medical licensing bodies for immigrating physicians, focusing on postgraduate level communication skills, clinical and technical skill assessments. METHODS A standardised, author developed survey was administered to a selection of national, state and provincial licensing institutions across 6 continents. Representative inst...

Responding to the concern from our faculty that undergraduate students do not have robust laboratory skills, we designed and implemented a strategy to individually teach and assess the manipulative skills of students in first-year laboratories. Five core laboratory skills were selected for the course entitled Human Biology, a large, first-year class of students, most of whom were enrolled in Ba...

BACKGROUND The ability of medical students to recognize heart murmurs is poor (20%), and does not improve with subsequent years of training. A teaching method to improve this skill would be useful. STUDY OBJECTIVES To determine whether intensive repetition of four basic cardiac murmurs improves auscultatory proficiency in medical students. DESIGN Controlled intervention study. SUBJECTS Fi...

Changing work practices and the evolution of more complex interventions in cardiovascular medicine are forcing a paradigm shift in the way doctors are trained. Implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD), transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI), carotid artery stenting (CAS), and acute stroke intervention procedures are forcing these changes at a faster pace than in other disciplines. A...