Differences Among Community Service Volunteers, Extracurricular Volunteers, and Nonvolunteers on the College Campus

Students involved in volunteer community service activities display different demographic characteristics and inte1personal values than do other students

Differences in Interpersonal Values Among Students Involved in Volunteer Service

A study of college students involved m. community service volunteer activities found that students\u27 interpersonal values differed relative to whether they were involved through religious, Social Greek, or service organizations

Social Cognition and the Evolution of Language: Constructing Cognitive Phylogenies

Human language and social cognition are closely linked: advanced social cognition is necessary for children to acquire language, and language allows forms of social understanding (and, more broadly, culture) that would otherwise be impossible. Both “language” and “social cognition” are complex constructs, involving many independent cognitive mechanisms, and the comparative approach provides a powerful route to understanding the evolution of such mechanisms. We provide a broad comparative review of mechanisms underlying social intelligence in vertebrates, with the goal of determining which human mechanisms are broadly shared, which have evolved in parallel in other clades, and which, potentially, are uniquely developed in our species. We emphasize the importance of convergent evolution for testing hypotheses about neural mechanisms and their evolution

Handedness and test anxiety: An examination of mixed-handed and consistent-handed students

Test anxiety refers to maladaptive cognitive and physiological reactions that interfere with optimal performance. Self-regulatory models suggest test anxiety occurs when there is a perceived discrepancy between current functioning and mental representations of desired academic goals. Interestingly, prior investigations have demonstrated those with greater interhemispheric communication are better able to detect discrepancies between current functioning and preexisting mental representations. Thus, the current study was designed to investigate the relationship between test anxiety and handedness—a commonly used proxy variable for interhemispheric communication. Undergraduate and graduate students (N = 277, 85.20% female, 68.19% Caucasian, age = 29.88) (SD = 9.53) completed the FRIEDBEN Test Anxiety Scale and Edinburgh Handedness Inventory – Short Form. A series of Mann–Whitney U tests were used to test for differences in the cognitive, physiological, and social components of test anxiety between mixed- and consistent-handers. The results indicated that mixed-handers had significantly higher levels of cognitive test anxiety than consistent-handers. We believe this information has important implications for our understanding of the role of discrepancy detection and interhemispheric communication in eliciting and maintaining test-anxious responses

Test of a gasolene motor car

Thesis (BS)--University of Illinois, 1903Typescrip

Brain weight differences associated with induced focal microgyria

BACKGROUND: Disrupting neural migration with bilateral focal freezing necrosis on postnatal day 1 (P1) results in the formation of 4-layered microgyria. This developmental injury triggers a pervasive neural reorganization, which is evident at the electrophysiological, behavioral, and anatomical levels. In this experiment, we investigated changes in brain weight as an index of global disruption of neural systems caused by focal damage to the developing cortical plate. RESULTS: We found a dramatic reduction in overall brain weight in microgyric subjects. This reduction in brain weight among animals with microgyria is reflected in decreased total brain volume, with a disproportionate decrease in neocortical volume. This effect is so robust that it is seen across varied environments, at variable ages, and across the sexes. CONCLUSIONS: This finding supports previous work suggesting that substantial reorganization of the brain is triggered by the induction of bilateral freezing damage. These results have critical implications for the profound re-organizational effects of relatively small focal injuries early in development to distributed systems throughout the brain, and particularly in the cerebral cortex