Darryl and SIG members,

What an excellent summary of recent and past work of some of the pioneers of
behavioral sport psychology! Thank you. I wonder if we could get some
presentations from these folks, perhaps even yourself again, at ABA 2003?
Session attendance, which has been a problem at time, was very good last
year.

I am very interested to hear of CDC's interest in behavioral
self-management. I recently attended a presentation by Larry Silfer, CEO of
Health Management Resources. He presented impressive data on program
compliance and weight loss among (quite) obesefolks on very low and low
calorie diets. His analyses really converged to show how important an
unwavering structure of planning, recording, reporting, was. I didn't hear
of any explicit aversive contingencies, except perhaps the negative
reinforcement we all feel when we have to report that we failed to
accomplish something. I don't know much more about his program, but intend
to follow up and take a look.

By the way, sorry I've been out of touch with the group. I recently joined
the faculty at the University of Massachusetts Medical School / Eunice
Kennedy Shriver Center as Director of Instructional Technology. I'll be
working with some great colleagues, including an IT department, to develop
web-based education, training and contingency management programs. Our
particular emphasis needs to be on persons with development disabilities and
their caregivers, as we proceed to conduct research, but I'm hoping to
continue to do some work in the area of sports and health.

Nice to read the recent dialogue!

Rick

Richard K. Fleming, Ph.D.
Director of Instructional Technology
Eunice Kennedy Shriver Center
University of Massachusetts Medical School
200 Trapelo Road
Waltham, MA 02452
(781) 642-0023
Richard.Fleming@...




>From: Daryl Siedentop <siedentop.1@...>
>Reply-To: B-fit@yahoogroups.com
>To: B-fit@yahoogroups.com
>Subject: [B-fit] B-Fit
>Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2001 10:18:31 -0500
>
>Re: Gordon Henry's suggestion and some others too.
>
>Brent Rushall, at San Diego State U., has done more behavioral work
>with elite sport teams than anybody in the world. He worked for
>years with several Canadian olympic teams as well as teams and sport
>organizations in Autralia and other countries. He has a long history
>of publications regarding these activities.
>
>Thom McKenzie, also at SDSU, was Brent's MA student and my doctoral
>student. He was a "performance enhancement specialist" for years
>with the USA Women's Volleyball Team. Martin Gipson of U. of
>Pacific, another ABAer, also worked with Thom in that project. The
>coach of the team for all that time was Terry Liskeyvych, another of
>my students, who has used behavioral principles consistently with his
>teams -- and, I might add, with himself. Thom created an
>intervention for Terry one year that required him to give only that
>feedback in post game analysis that was related to team and
>individual goals for that game -- keep him from wandering.
>
>Thom has also been the co-principal investigator on CATCH and SPARK
>to federally funded projects to enhance physical activity among kids,
>funded over the years at about $34M. Behavioral self management has
>become a standard part of those interventions/programs. CATCH (Child
>and Adolsecent Trial for Cardiovascular Health) was the largest
>funded project of its kind in federal funding history. The current
>new effort that Thom is a part of (the acronym escapes me at the
>moment) is a physical activity intervention for adolescent girls,
>particularly african-american girls, one of the most at-risk for
>health populations in the nation.
>
>You might also be interested to know that CDC now is very enamored of
>behavioral self management as it seeks to promote programs that work
>for increased physical activity. I just served on their Expert Panel
>to develop criteria for filtering programs that would gain CDC
>approval and behavioral self management appears to be central to most
>of the programs that will or have applied.
>
>The problem CDC faces is that their previous work with smoking
>cessation and STD/AIDS education programs are that (1) they are
>cognitively oriented and (2) they rely primarily on aversive
>consequences for programmatic efforts. In efforts to develop
>programs that aim to increase physical activity and reduce obesity,
>neither of those approaches has any efficacy.
>
>
>Daryl Siedentop
>--
>Daryl Siedentop
>Director, OSU P-12 Project
>153 Arps Hall
>The Ohio State University
>Columbus, OH 43210
>
>Phone: (614) 247-6398
>Fax: (614) 688-3942
>e-mail: Siedentop.1@...