2009 APA Program Retrospective

Emily Elliot

Division 3 Program Chair, 2009

The APA Convention in Toronto brought together many of our committed and dedicated scientists, who share the goals of helping to maintain the presence of Division 3 in APA, and to communicate to others the importance of science within the APA. This year’s convention served to reinforce these goals.

From the standpoint of the program chair, working with Division 3 President Nelson Cowan was a pleasure, and his vision of sharing and connecting with others in Psychology took the program in a new direction. Several of the sessions at the 2009 meeting offered Continuing Education credits (or CEs). Although we are waiting on the final numbers, it is our belief that this practice helped to increase attendance at the sessions that offered CEs. Having said that, attendance at the non-CE sessions was still strong, which helped to make the Toronto meeting a success.

The main themes of the sessions were: Advances in Research using the Stroop Task, Experimental Aging Research, Developmental and Comparative Metacognition, and Animal Learning. In addition, two symposia were organized for the New Fellows and the JEP Award Winners. These sessions were excellent, and showcased some of the exciting research that is currently being conducted in the many different domains that represent our division. The other new element to the meeting was the Convention within the Convention (CwC). Division 3 donated two hours of our programming to the CwC for a Methodology track. This was done in coordination with Division 5, and two sessions were organized: John Wixted’s on ROC curves and recognition memory, and the Methods in Functional Neuroimaging session.

One element of the convention that was a bit difficult was navigating the array of available sessions, and locating the scientifically-relevant programming. I worked in close contact with Division 6 and 7, Division 5 for the CwC, and also had contact with Divisions 20 and 25. This form of a grass-roots network enabled us to identify some of the sessions of interest that were shared between our potential audiences, but there were the inevitable conflicts. Hopefully, improvements can be made to the APA website for the convention that will facilitate the process of selecting which sessions the convention goers choose to attend.

I would like to thank those of you that agreed to present, to chair, and/or to judge the graduate student entries in the poster session. I would also like to thank those who attended our sessions. This year’s meeting was full of stimulating scientific presentations that drew a solid audience. With sufficient communication between the division’s officers from one year to the next, perhaps we can continue to build upon our experiences to enhance our APA presence.

Best wishes for San Diego in 2010!