Nearly 40% of mortality in the United States is linked to social and behavioral factors such as smoking, diet and sedentary lifestyle. Autonomous self-regulation of health-related behaviors is thus an important aspect of human behavior to assess. In 1997, the Behavior Change Consortium (BCC) was formed. Within the BCC, seven health behaviors, 18 theoretical models, five intervention settings an...

A great deal has been written about the motivation of young people in physical activity, and the determinants of activity for this age group have been identified as a research priority. Despite this, there are few large-scale studies identifying "types" or "clusters" of young people based on their scores on validated motivation inventories. This study reports the results of a cluster analysis o...

Amotivation in schizophrenia is a central predictor of poor functioning, and is thought to occur due to deficits in anticipating future rewards, suggesting that impairments in anticipating pleasure can contribute to functional disability in schizophrenia. In healthy comparison (HC) participants, reward anticipation is associated with activity in frontal-striatal networks. By contrast, schizophr...

Studies examining student motivation levels suggest that this is a significant factor in students' engagement in physical education and may be positively affected when teachers employ alternative pedagogical models such as game-centered approaches (GCAs). The aim of this study was to investigate changes in self-determined motivation of students as they participated in a GCA-basketball unit taug...

The neural substrates of MDD (major depressive disorder) are complex and not yet fully understood. In the present review, I provide a short overview of the findings supporting the hypothesis of a dysfunctional dopamine system in the pathophysiology of depression. Because the mesocorticolimbic dopamine system is involved in reward processing, it has been hypothesized that a reduced function of t...

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between students’ perceived autonomy support, behavioural regulations and their intentions to be physically active outside of school. Method: Participants were 701 secondary school students aged between 13 and 17 years from Singapore. Questionnaires were used to assess perceived autonomy support, behavioural regulation, and ...

Research suggests a two factor structure for negative symptoms in patients with psychotic disorders: social amotivation (SA) and expressive deficits (ED). Applying this two-factor structure in clinical settings may provide valuable information with regard to outcomes and to target treatments. We aimed to investigate 1) whether the factor structure is also supported in chronically ill patients w...