Jerry R Thomas

University of North Texas | UNT · College of Education

In today’s challenging economic climate at most universities, kinesiology administrators are becoming increasingly aware of the need to participate in activities that will generate alternative revenue sources related to their academic mission. The ways deans and development officers communicate with alumni, potential donors, upper administrative le...

This commentary provides a review of changes in data reporting in Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport from Volumes 49 and 59 to 84. Improvements were noted in that all articles reported means, standard deviations, and sample sizes, while most (87%) articles reported an estimate of effect size (ES). Additional reporting recommendations were ma...

Recent enrollment growth in kinesiology places it second among academic areas of study in higher education. This article addresses issues that have prompted that growth, will allow it to continue, and examines other likely changes in the field. A major factor in growth has been the value of kinesiology as a major for allied health professional prog...

Peer review of scholarship is essential to journal quality, evidence, knowledge advancement, and application of that knowledge in any field. This commentary summarizes recent literature on issues related to peer-review quality and current review practice in kinesiology and provides recommendations to improve peer review in kinesiology journals. We...

In motor skill performance and retention the complexity of knowledge of results should interact with the child's processing rate. This rate has been demonstrated to increase with age. Two experiments were designed to assess this hypothesis. In Experiment 1, 30 7-year-old and 30 10-year-old boys were randomly assigned within age level to three knowl...

This study evaluated the influence of biological and environmental variables on the differences between the throwing performance of 5-year-old girls and boys. A total of 100 children (48 girls, 52 boys) were tested on throwing for distance and rated on two components of throwing form—trunk rotation, and foot action. Children were evaluated on eight...

In order to investigate how children remember distance (route) and location (landmark) information, two experiments were conducted in a large scale environment using jogging as the means of locomotion. In Experiment 1, thirty 4-year-old and thirty 9-year-old children were randomly assigned within age to three groups which were cued prior to the jog...

In celebration of the 75th anniversary of The Research Quarterly/Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport (RQ/RQES) an analysis was conducted comparing RQ/RQES to numerous other journals in the field with regard to impact factors and citation rates. A series of analyses was conducted from the first publication of RQ/RQES in 1930 through this 75th...

This paper is a meta-analysis of the role of nutritional supplements in strength training focusing on the effects of placebo treatments. We address specifically the results from meta-analysis of 334 fi.ndings from 37 studies of the effect of nutritional supplements and physical fitness interventions on strength, stamina, and endurance outcomes, con...

The purpose of this study was to determine if a general motor program controlled some or all aspects of overhand throwing. Using a 12 camera Vicon motion analysis system to record data from body markers, a group of 30 Australian Aboriginal children 6-10 years of age threw with maximal effort into a large target area. Data were reduced and analyzed...

In a review of 46 meta-analyses of gender differences, overhand throwing had the largest gender difference favoring boys (ES > 3.0). Expectations for gender-specific performances may be less pronounced in female Australian Aborigines, because historical accounts state they threw for defense and hunting. Overhand throwing velocities and kinematics w...

The American Academy of Kinesiology and Physical Education (AAKPE) and The American Kinesiology Association (AKA) should work together to help kinesiology thrive. Data are provided about kinesiology that reflects its visibility in PubMed and Google. Survey data from AKA show the rapid growth of the undergraduate major and graduate programs. In part...

In aligning the curriculum for the preparation of future teachers, it is essential to teach knowledge and application of the interactions among content knowledge (about motor skills and fitness principles), procedural knowledge (how to teach skills and promote fitness), and the teaching of physical activity (how to execute a lesson). This article o...

Four principles are drawn from approximately 100 years of research in the area of motor development. The principles are (1) children are not miniature adults, (2) boys and girls (children) are more alike than different, (3) good things are earned, and (4) no body (nobody) is perfect. Five sections of this article introduce some of the major asserti...

This paper provides a description and documentation of two significant events in the history of our field: (1) the development of our field and the doctoral program review process and outcome by the American Academy of Kinesiology and Physical Education; and (2) the process by which the Academy successfully had "kinesiology" included as a disciplin...

Motor behavior is a significant area of scholarship with 64 Fellows from the American Academy of Kinesiology and Physical Education engaged in that work since 1930. This paper provides a brief overview of the history of research in motor development and motor control/learning, particularly noting the contributions to scholarship of Academy Fellows....

The results from a U.S. national survey of doctoral programs in kinesiology and physical education covering the years 2000-2004 are presented. The survey was conducted by the American Academy of Kinesiology and Physical Education with all 61 institutions with doctoral programs (32 institutions provided complete data, 52%) invited to participate. Re...

In celebration of the 75th anniversary of The Research Quarterly/Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport (RQ/ RQES) an analysis was conducted comparing RQ/RQES to numerous other journals in the field with regard to impact factors and citation rates. A series of analyses was conducted from the first publication of RQ/RQES in 1930 through this 75th...

This chapter, which focuses on the socialization process for new chairs, offers suggestions and recommendations for practice.

This paper summarizes recent events concerning the evaluation of doctoral programs in kinesiology and physical education. An overview is provided of issues related to the evaluation process used by the National Research Council (NRC). The American Academy of Kinesiology and Physical Education (AAKPE) has developed a proposal to have our field inclu...

An experiment was conducted to examine the change in the relation between programming and "on-line" correction as a developmental explanation of children's arm movement performance. Each of 54 children in three age groups (5, 8, and 10 yr.) completed two types of rapid aiming arm movements in the longitudinal plane on the surface of a digitizer. Pe...

As universities and colleges have changed, so has the role of faculty. Greater accountability is expected for faculty time and effort. This paper considers faculty roles by the institution preparing new faculty, the institution hiring new faculty, and the new faculty member themselves. All institutions are seeking faculty who are triple threats: in...

The purpose of this study was to examine performance differences in arm movement control (programmingvs. "on-line" control) between children with and without attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Twenty children (10 with ADHD and 10 without ADHD) from the ages of 8 to 13 years participated in the study. On the surface of a digitizer, eac...

Using a lifespan approach, the authors investigated developmental features of the control of ballistic aiming arm movements by manipulating movement complexity, response uncertainty, and the use of precues. Four different age groups of participants (6- and 9-year-old boys and girls and 24- and 73-year-old men and women, 20 participants in each age...

This study was designed to examine the developmental differences in the speed and smoothness of arm movement during overarm throwing. The second purpose of this investigation was to evaluate whether jerk is a useful measure in understanding children's overarm throwing. Fifty-one girls, aged 3 to 6 years, voluntarily participated in the study. Each...

An experiment is reported in which participants at 6 (n = 20), 9 (n = 20), and 24 years (n = 20) of age either received or did not receive practice on a rapid aiming task using the arm and hand. The purpose of the experiment was to document the changes in movement substructures (in addition to movement time) as a function of practice. After receivi...

Diedrich and Warren (1995) and Whitall and Getchell (1995) found that intralimb coordination during walking was different than intralimb coordination during running. In contrast, Li et al. (1998) found that intralimb coordination during walking and running were similar. The discrepancy between these findings could have been the result of (1) the us...

Frequent violations of the assumption that data are normally distributed occur in exercise science and other life and behavioral sciences. When this assumption is violated, parametric statistical analyses may be inappropriate for data analysis. We provide a rationale for using a generalized form of nonparametric analyses based on the Puri and Sen (...

Two expert elementary physical education teachers were interviewed about former students who became expert athletes. One expert athlete was a professional basketball player and the other was a college soccer player. The content of the interviews was analyzed using manifest and latent techniques. The results indicated that these teachers identified...

This meta-analysis quantitatively summarized the developmental influence and the effects of locomotor experience as well as the benefits of locomotor practice, locomotor assistance, and active searching patterns on children's search performance. Based on specific criteria, a search of a database and reference lists identified 19 studies, including...

Meta-analysis was conducted to determine whether patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) are differentially affected when confronted with choice reaction time (RT) tasks as compared to simple RT tasks (1548 PD patients compared to 1648 age-matched controls). While medicated PD patients were slower than controls in all RT conditions, their simple, ch...

The authors explored the motor control of target-oriented arm movements across 3 age groups: 20 20- to 30-year-olds, 2 groups (n = 38) of older adults (54 to 64, and 65 to 80). Each individual completed 2 arm movement tasks that had the same movement difficulty but different movement directions. A mixed design was used to examine the differences am...

We question whether Plamondon & Alimi's model is useful in accounting for the nonsymmetrical and multiple-peaked velocity profiles observed in young and elderly subjects for ballistic aiming tasks. For these subjects, both data and observation suggest that a central representation initiates the movement in an appropriate direction but that mul...

Exercise science researchers are familiar with the use of parametric tests to detect significant differences among treatment groups. However, in planning research a question asked with increasing frequency is, "How many participants are needed to detect real and meaningful differences among groups?" In this paper, we provide an overview of the use...

Studies examining the effects of diet (D) and diet-plus-exercise (DE) programs on resting metabolic rate (RMR) report equivocal results. The purpose of this study was to use meta-analysis to determine if exercise prevents the decrease in RMR observed with dieting. Results from the 22 studies included in this analysis revealed that the majority of s...

Two experiments were conducted to determine if spatial location of movement was automatically encoded in memory. In Experiment 1, two of Hasher and Zacks' (1979) automaticity criteria (age and intention) were examined. Adults (age = 20 years) and 7- and 11-year-old children (n at each age = 60) moved to four locations on a 20 x 20 m field. Within a...

Literature analysis compared training gains in elementary girls' and boys' throwing performance to evaluate whether catchup effects were present. There was a lack of significant interaction between gender and training, supporting the hypothesis that training produces significant improvements in performance for both sexes. There was no catchup effec...

Using two experiments, we investigated the influence of age and intention to remember on the retention of spatial information about movement. In the first experiment, 86 subjects-6-year-olds, 10-year-olds, and adults-were asked to recall four positions that were presented on the linear slide. Age groups were randomly divided into intentional (IT) a...

focus on whether cognitive function benefits from exercise (defined very broadly to mean physical activity) / use a more narrow definition of exercise to evaluate whether moderate to high levels of physical activity (either chronic or acute) improve cognitive function, particularly intelligence / take a broader view of exercise that includes engagi...

provides a brief overview of the existing state of knowledge on motor expertise through discussion of the historical origins of motor expertise research, identification of contemporary areas of research focus, description of the prototypic motor expertise studies, and assessment of the degrees of generalizability possible from the existing knowledg...

Landers, D. M., Hird, J. S., Thomas, J. R., & Horan, J. J. (1992). Response to Goginsky. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 14, 281-293.

Previous studies that have examined self-efficacy-performance relationships have used novice performers. It is unclear if these findings would generalize to "experienced" performers. Based on Bandura's self-efficacy theory, this study was designed to investigate (a) the effects of false information feedback on self-efficacy beliefs and subsequent w...

24 children in Grades 2 and 5 performed a systematically ordered sequence of simple, choice, and precued RT tasks. The younger children's interpretation of instructions differed from that of older children and must be considered in interpreting their RTs.

Compared varying ratios of physical to mental practice on cognitive (pegboard) and motor (pursuit rotor) task performance among 36 male and 36 female undergraduates assigned to conditions experiencing different amounts of combined mental and physical practice in 7 practice sessions. All treatment conditions, except the pegboard control group, showe...

Attainable and unattainable goals' effect on mirror tracing a six-pointed star was investigated. Three groups of male college students were randomly assigned to groups: control, attainable goals, or unattainable goals. Subjects were evaluated for time and error in 28 trials. Goals were individualized on the basis of each subject's performance on th...

Data for the analysis were the health related fitness scores, anthropometric measures, and physical activity information from the National Children and Youth Fitness Study. The subjects were 6,800 boys and 6,523 girls, ages 6 through 18. Multiple regression produced linear composites that were used as covariates to evaluate physical and environment...

Four questions are presented: What are the historical roots of motor development; How can motor development be characterized; How should motor development be conceptualized; and How should motor development be organized? A brief history presents the psychological roots of motor development and emphasizes the individual researchers who have created...

This research examined boys' development of knowledge structure and sport performance in tennis. To assess decision-making and performance, expert and novice tennis players (10-11 and 12-13 years old) were compared on tennis performance (control, decision, and execution), tennis knowledge, serve skill, and groundstroke skill. Experts regardless of...

The development of gender differences in physical activity was reviewed using the categories of motor performance, motor activity, physical activity, and health related physical fitness. Gender differences in motor performance were related to age in 12 of 20 tasks, resulting in three types of developmental curves. Most differences are suggested as...

This book provides the motor development knowledge base and program planning procedures for developing the elementary physical education program. Part one is an overview of the motor development knowledge base and includes chapters on growth, how exercise affects children, motor skill development, how children learn motor skills, and psychosocial f...

Is the degree of specdimtion and fragmentation in physical education threatening its future? Does specialization necessarily lead to fragmentation? Data are presented to define the degree of speckhation that is occurring in graduate preparation. These data are used to infer how fragmentation may be happening. The thematic nature of sport science is...

Miller's magical number for memory span (7 ± 2) is humorously brought to task because of its inability to predict the everyday performance of teenagers, graduate students, and full professors. Explanations are provided for the deficits in memory performance of these subgroups during lifespan development.

In 1985 we published a meta-analysis of gender differences across age in motor performance in Psychological Bulletin, but it did not include an indexing of each motor task to the references from which it was obtained. This paper provides a table listing the 20 motor tasks and the references from which data for each task were taken. The range of tas...

Conducted 2 experiments to examine the relationship between sport-specific knowledge and sport skills. Exp I, with 56 Ss, compared child expert and novice basketball players in 2 age leagues (8–10 yrs and 11–12 yrs) on the individual components of basketball performance and on measures of basketball knowledge, dribbling skill, and shooting skill. C...

In this paper we propose that research in motor behavior has failed to meet the obligation of studying how children learn important sport skills. In particular, understanding the specific sport knowledge base is essential to studying skilled sport behavior. To support this view we review the research in the cognitive area relative to the developmen...

Meta-analysis is a set of procedures used to quantify, integrate, and analyze the findings of a large number of research studies. It offers the advantage of quantifying effects from individual studies in addition to specifying the procedures the authors followed when reviewing the literature. Although meta-analysis has been demonstrated as a useful...

This paper proposes an alternative format for reporting thesis/dissertation research that should lead to more rapid publication of quality research. The purposes of the thesis/dissertation and characteristics and limitations of the traditional thesis/dissertation format are reviewed. This is followed by a discussion of the advantages of the alterna...

Organization of information is a strategy used in verbal learning to improve task performance. Developmental trends exist for the use of an organization strategy; young children generally fail to use organizational cues when responding. With age, children use inherent organization followed by an increased ability to restructure input. This study fo...

Conducted a meta-analysis of 64 studies that reported gender differences on motor performance during childhood and adolescence. Findings yielded 702 effect sizes based on data from 15,518 female and 15,926 male 3–20 yr olds. Age was regressed on effect size, and the relation was significant for 12 of 20 tasks (e.g., balance, catching, grip strength...

A meta-analysis was conducted to examine gender differences in motor performance during childhood and adolescence. Data were 64 studies yielding 702 effect sizes based on 31,444 subjects. Age was regressed on effect size, and the relation was significant for 12 of 20 tasks. Several types of age-related curves were found; the curve for a throwing ta...

When learning verbal information, an important aspect of practice is the method of rehearsal, which has been demonstrated to vary developmentally. A young child practices on an instance-by-instance basis (passive rehearsal), whereas older children and adults practice several items together (active rehearsal). This study investigated the effects of...

The developmental nature of reaction time (RT) and anticipation timing (AT) performance, as well as the relationship between them, was investigated using 15 male and 15 female subjects at each of five age levels—7, 9, 11, 13, and 20 yrs. Each subject was given 40 trials for both RT and AT performance with task order counterbalanced. Results indicat...

Children's encoding of information, specifically, the correct use and application of labels, is one factor frequently used to account for developmental differences in verbal learning. Labels may also be used in connection with remembering positional movements. The purpose of this study was to evaluate developmental differences in the effects of lab...