Minutes, APA Division
3 Executive Committee
6:30 am, Friday,
November 20, 2009
Café Apropos, Boston
Sheraton Hotel
Present: Ralph Miller
(President), Nelson Cowan (Past President),
I. Approval
of Minutes
The meeting was called to order at 6:30
a.m. The Minutes of the August 2009
meeting of the Division 3 Executive Committee in
II. President’s Announcements (Ralph Miller)
New Appointments
Emily Klein, Research
Associate at the
Anne Cleary,
Associate Professor of Psychology at
Recognition of
Service
Kristi Multhaup was
presented a plaque in Recognition of Six Years of Service as the Newsletter
Editor.
Mark Faust was
presented a plaque in Recognition of Six
Years of Service as the Newsletter Editor and Webmaster.
Membership/Fellows
Recruiting
The President sent
letters to 84 Fellows in other Divisions, inviting them to join Division
3. Of the 84 contacted, 28 applied and
were accepted. Their names will be
forwarded to next year's Fellows Committee.
III. Reports
Secretary-Treasurer's
Report (Veronica Dark)
Update on finances:
Expenses for the year are $6405. That
includes $300 for today's breakfast and $260 to enable the President's
recruiting efforts. Only 6 speakers
asked for their $100. The expenses are
above last year's expenses of $5312 but below income of $7327.
Update on membership:
Since the August report, 1 additional member, 1 student affiliate, and the 28
members recruited by the President have been added.
2009 Program Chair's
Report
(Emily Elliott)
Attendance was higher
than expected averaging 35 attendees (range 13-59) for the 9 substantive
symposia and addresses. Attendance was
especially good for the presentations with a Development or Aging theme. Attendance was not good at the symposia for
the New Investigators and New Fellows.
Very few people signed up for CE credit.
2010 Program Chair's
Report
(written report submitted by John Wixted)
Program Chair Report
November 16, 2009
My initial plan for the program was to
showcase young experimental psychologists who are already becoming influential
players in the field, and I started with 3 recent recruits at UCSD (who were to
be the focal points for the 3 separate symposia). All 3 readily agreed, and
they started contacting influential junior and senior colleagues to participate
as well. However, it soon became clear that they agreed because they wanted to
please me, not because they had any interest in speaking at APA (despite the
fact that the convention would be held right here in
This was a disillusioning start for me as
program chair, and it called to mind the surprising information I heard at that
board meeting that I attended in
On top of all this, I was alerted to a recent
paper in Psychological Science in the
Public Interest and the corresponding editorial in Nature, which said:
Clinical psychology at least has its roots in
experimentation, but it is drifting away from science. Concerns about
cost–benefit issues are growing, especially in the
As best I can tell, by "science"
these people mainly mean empirically testing the efficacy of proposed
therapeutic interventions. It occurred to me that this view of science must be
broadened to at least include basic science with direct relevance to clinical
applications. As such, when I went back to the drawing board, I thought it
might be worth having a Division 3 program at APA next year that goes out of
its way to reach out to clinicians. Most (but not all) of the presentations I
am working on will involve basic science with a more-obvious-than-usual
connection to issues that interest clinicians.
Ideally, the fact that Division 3 is making
an effort to do this would be advertised. Clinicians, who should still be
smarting over the negative attention they have received because of their
non-scientific attitude, would then face an interesting choice: (1) ignore
Division 3 like they always do despite the effort to reach out to them, or (2)
come listen to some talks that involve basic science. To me, this is an
experiment worth performing. If attendance is noticeably improved, it might
indicate that the future of basic science at the APA convention will largely
involve basic science with apparent clinical implications. Having said all
that, I have no idea if this experiment has been tried before (perhaps it has)
or if there is another division that exists for this very purpose (perhaps
there is).
Graduate Student
Report
(Angela AuBuchon)
The graduate student
affiliate list has been updated. There
are 42 active members. The main problem
from a student view is finding ways to contact members during the APA
Convention. There are two science
related student groups, but it is unclear how they differ. There is a recently formed science
subcommittee in APAGS and a Science Student Council, which is affiliated with
the Science Directorate. Student
affiliates will be informed about both opportunities.
Fellows Committee
Report
(summary of written report by Lisa Savage)
The
names of 4 scientists as recommended by the Fellows Committee and approved by
the Executive Committee were sent to APA for approval as Fellows in Division 3.
Two of the 4 have not been elected as Fellows in any other Division.
IV. Name
Change and other Bylaws changes
Several bylaws changes were approved. The major change is a recommendation to
change the name of the Division from Division of Experimental Psychology to
Division of Cognition and Behavior.
Other procedural changes were recommended to bring the bylaws in line
with current practice.
Editors Note – For more information please see separate column detailing
the proposed bylaw changes (including the proposed name change).
Members will be notified by mail of the
proposed changes. The changes will be
voted on at the August 2010 business meeting in
The meeting was adjourned at 7:45 a.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Veronica J. Dark
Secretary-Treasurer, Division 3