Directions of Goldberg's five-factor approach across the sexes

Digitized from print original stored in HDR. Due to the character of the original source materials and the nature of batch digitization, quality control issues may be present in this document. Please report any quality issues you encounter to [email protected], referencing the URI of the item.Includes bibliographical references: leaves 18-21.Program year: 1997/1998In recent research, validity of Big Five personality measures has been questioned. Specifically, the question of social comparison targets needs research. When persons evaluate themselves on personality dimensions, implicit comparisons are made. Introductory psychology volunteers (N = 646) participated in a study that varied instruction-related social comparison targets. We hypothesized that explicit manipulation of the social comparison targets in instructions to participants would influence patterns of self-ratings on the Big Five factors. We found significant main effects for instruction across all five factors of the Big Five, but not in the precise form predicted. There was no evidence that varying comparison targets systematically influenced self-ratings. Findings indicated, however, that men and women rated themselves differently on all of the Big Five factors. Moreover, ideal ratings of males and females were significantly higher than self-ratings on all five factors of personality. Further research should examine personality comparison processes as they apply to various forms of ideal persons

Functional Resting State Connectivity in Individuals At-Risk for Alzheimer\u27s Disease

Resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging studies have examined the connectivity between the hippocampus (HIPP) and the posterior cingulate (PC) in individuals with Alzheimer\u27s disease (AD), mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and younger individuals at risk for AD. The present study aimed to examine the functional connectivity between these two memory structures and targets of AD neurodegeneration in cognitively intact elders at risk for AD (positive for ApolipoE protein (ε4) and family history of dementia), MCI, and healthy controls. Seeds and regions of interest were defined in the bilateral hippocampus and posterior cingulate, and the time courses were cross-correlated to generate a value of functional connectivity between two structures for comparisons across groups. Results indicate the presence of greater functional connectivity between the left HIPP and PC in healthy elders at risk compared to patients with MCI and healthy controls and a general reduction in functional connectivity between bilateral HIPP and PC in patients with MCI. This marker of increased functional connectivity, during the resting state of the brain, found in cognitively intact elders at risk compared to cognitively intact controls and symptomatic patients with MCI might be an important diagnostic tool to identify those most vulnerable for the development of AD

Directions of Goldberg's five-factor approach across the sexes

Due to the character of the original source materials and the nature of batch digitization, quality control issues may be present in this document. Please report any quality issues you encounter to [email protected], referencing the URI of the item.Includes bibliographical references: leaves 18-21.In recent research, validity of Big Five personality measures has been questioned. Specifically, the question of social comparison targets needs research. When persons evaluate themselves on personality dimensions, implicit comparisons are made. Introductory psychology volunteers (N = 646) participated in a study that varied instruction-related social comparison targets. We hypothesized that explicit manipulation of the social comparison targets in instructions to participants would influence patterns of self-ratings on the Big Five factors. We found significant main effects for instruction across all five factors of the Big Five, but not in the precise form predicted. There was no evidence that varying comparison targets systematically influenced self-ratings. Findings indicated, however, that men and women rated themselves differently on all of the Big Five factors. Moreover, ideal ratings of males and females were significantly higher than self-ratings on all five factors of personality. Further research should examine personality comparison processes as they apply to various forms of ideal persons

Examining College Satisfaction in Students with and without Disabilities

With the increase of students with disabilities attending post secondary education, it is important to have an understanding of how satisfied a student with a disability is with college. At present, the research on college satisfaction focuses on specific variables and how the specific variables moderate or mediate college satisfaction; however, there is limited research in the area of college satisfaction and students with disabilities. To address the current gap in research, the purpose of the current study was to address if there was a difference in overall satisfaction in students with a disability compared to students without a disability. Further, analysis of group differences in relation to domain scores was conducted, and how variables such as entrance status, gender, ethnicity, ACT scores, and grade point average mediate college satisfaction for students with disabilities. Additionally, it was important to examine the relationship between disability status and overall satisfaction, as well as examine the relationship of the 4 domains (e.g. Instruction and Life Skills, Quality of Student Services, and Quality of Undergraduate Experience) and overall satisfaction. Survey data were collected from 2009-2014 Undergraduate Survey from the Office of Institutional Research and Effectiveness at a university in the southeastern United States. The results indicated a statistically significant difference between students with disabilities and students without disabilities in regards to perceptions of services provided, and undergraduate experience. Specifically, individual with disabilities are more satisfied in the area of services provided compared to students without disabilities, while students without disabilities are more satisfied with their undergraduate experience compared to students with disabilities. Further, numerous relationships were found between variables such as gender, ethnicity, entrance status, academic proficiency, and overall satisfaction. Lastly, instructional and life skills, quality of student services, quality of academic advising, and quality of undergraduate experience scores load onto the latent variable of overall satisfaction as hypothesized

Are you going to the party: depends, who else is coming? [Learning hidden group dynamics via conditional latent tree models]

Scalable probabilistic modeling and prediction in high dimensional multivariate time-series is a challenging problem, particularly for systems with hidden sources of dependence and/or homogeneity. Examples of such problems include dynamic social networks with co-evolving nodes and edges and dynamic student learning in online courses. Here, we address these problems through the discovery of hierarchical latent groups. We introduce a family of Conditional Latent Tree Models (CLTM), in which tree-structured latent variables incorporate the unknown groups. The latent tree itself is conditioned on observed covariates such as seasonality, historical activity, and node attributes. We propose a statistically efficient framework for learning both the hierarchical tree structure and the parameters of the CLTM. We demonstrate competitive performance in multiple real world datasets from different domains. These include a dataset on students' attempts at answering questions in a psychology MOOC, Twitter users participating in an emergency management discussion and interacting with one another, and windsurfers interacting on a beach in Southern California. In addition, our modeling framework provides valuable and interpretable information about the hidden group structures and their effect on the evolution of the time series

Ex Vivo Culture of Chick Cerebellar Slices and Spatially Targeted Electroporation of Granule Cell Precursors

The cerebellar external granule layer (EGL) is the site of the largest transit amplification in the developing brain, and an excellent model for studying neuronal proliferation and differentiation. In addition, evolutionary modifications of its proliferative capability have been responsible for the dramatic expansion of cerebellar size in the amniotes, making the cerebellum an excellent model for evo-devo studies of the vertebrate brain. The constituent cells of the EGL, cerebellar granule progenitors, also represent a significant cell of origin for medulloblastoma, the most prevalent paediatric neuronal tumour. Following transit amplification, granule precursors migrate radially into the internal granular layer of the cerebellum where they represent the largest neuronal population in the mature mammalian brain. In chick, the peak of EGL proliferation occurs towards the end of the second week of gestation. In order to target genetic modification to this layer at the peak of proliferation, we have developed a method for genetic manipulation through ex vivo electroporation of cerebellum slices from embryonic Day 14 chick embryos. This method recapitulates several important aspects of in vivo granule neuron development and will be useful in generating a thorough understanding of cerebellar granule cell proliferation and differentiation, and thus of cerebellum development, evolution and disease

Gifted Students, Honors Students, and an Honors Education

The seeming lack of connection between honors and gifted education has puzzled us for some time. Both of us incorporated gifted education and higher education into our doctoral studies, and both of our dissertations used gifted education theories as lenses into the honors student experience. Our lives as researchers and higher education administrators have been spent in the shared space between gifted students and honors programs. We know that this combination strengthens our work with the University of Connecticut Honors Program, and we are excited at the possibility of greater collaboration between the two fields. In this essay, we will respond to Guzy’s central tenet that there is a difference between gifted and honors students, using the theoretical framework and structure of UConn Honors for examples. Our recent programmatic changes have led us to the conclusion that we should focus on an honors education designed for gifted students and honors students. One of the prompts for this special Forum of JNCHC invited us to “focus on one or more contrasting traits of gifted and honors students.” Not only does this prompt presuppose that the two labels refer to different groups of learners, but it also implies that there are set definitions for both terms that are agreed upon across the professions. One of us has taught a master’s seminar on the various conceptions of giftedness, using Sternberg and Davidson’s 2005 book of that title and supplementing it with ideas from the Columbus Group (Morelock) and others. An ambitious recent effort to orient the field around talent development and the pursuit of eminence (Subotnik, Olszewski- Kubilius, & Worrell) prompted significant criticism (e.g., Grantham; McBee, McCoach, Peters, & Matthews). On the honors side, variations in admissions and programming across institutions dictate that the only functional definition of an honors student is one who is enrolled in an honors program or honors college. For that matter, a similar approach is often found in gifted education research, where the operational definition of “gifted” is a student who has been identified as such by their school district