Table
of Contents
A Biography of the
President-Elect of APA Division 3
David (Dave) Balota
Dave Balota was born and raised in St. Louis,
Missouri. He did his undergraduate work at the University of Missouri at
St. Louis, where he worked with Ed Howe on the perception and memory of
Garner dot patterns. It was there where he met his wife, Division 3 member,
Janet Duchek (the rumor is that they met behind a t-scope). He then went
south to the University of South Carolina where he was fortunate to work
with Randy Engle on echoic memory studies and Jim Neely on issues related
to recall and recognition memory performance. His dissertation addressed
threshold semantic priming effects. After his graduate work, he spent two
years on a postdoc at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where
he developed an interest in models of word recognition and reading through
the excellent guidance of Jim Chumbley and Keith Rayner.
He spent his first two faculty years at the
University of Kentucky at Lexington and at Iowa State University, and eventually
returned home to St. Louis, when he accepted a position at Washington University.
He also was an invited fellow for one year at the Netherlands Institute
for Advanced Study and was an Erskine fellow for two months at the University
of Canterberry. Balota is beginning his 16th year at Washington University.
He is a fellow of Division 3 and of the American Psychological Society.
He has published over 80 articles and chapters, given over 40 invited lectures,
and co-edited a book in collaboration with Keith Rayner and Giovanni Flores
D'Arcais, entitled Comprehension Processes in Reading. He has served
on the editorial boards of Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition, Journal of Memory
and Language, Journal of Gerontology, and Neuropsychology. He served
as an Associate Editor at the Journal of Memory and Language and
is currently editor-elect at the Psychonomic Bulletin and Review.
Balota is currently on the governing board of the Psychonomics Society.
This past year he won a Master Mentor award at Washington University, and
in the spring will be given an award for distinguished psychology graduate
alumni from the University of South Carolina.
Balota's research program focuses on aspects
of mental chronometry (e.g., reaction time distribution analyses, general
slowing functions, force measures), and changes in attentional control systems
across healthy young and older adults and in individuals with early stage
Alzheimer's disease. His work has been continuously funded through NIH for
the past 16 years. One general feature of this work is the use of converging
operations across different experimental approaches (e.g., between group
comparisons, individual case studies, neuroimaging, computational modeling)
to provide constraints on cognitive models. Although Balota works in the
area of mental chronometry and aging, he is probably best described as a
card-carrying word nerd. This is evidenced by his recent multi-center NSF
grant that will accumulate 10 million naming and lexical decision latencies
for nearly 40,000 words, which will be available, via the web.
When they aren't working, Balota and Duchek
enjoy attempting to nurture their children, Angela, 19, and Joseph, 13,
who insure there will be little atrophy of either limbic or frontal systems
due to lack of stimulation. Dave's address is Department of Psychology,
Washington University, Campus Box 1125, One Brookings Drive, St. Louis,
MO 63130-4899, phone: 314-935-6549, Fax: 314-935-7588, and E-mail: dbalota@
artsci.wustl.edu.
New Investigator Award
Winners
The Division 3 Awards Committee annually selects
Young Investigator Award winners from nominations received from the editors
of the Journals of Experimental Psychology. The 2001 award winners were
invited to submit descriptions about themselves and their research. We are
pleased to include descriptions from 5 winners in this issue.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal
Behavior Processes
Co-Winners:
Justin
A. Harris, University of Sydney
Harris, J. A., Jones, M. L, Bailey, G. K, &
Westbrook, F. R (2000). Contextual control over conditioned responding in
an extinction paradigm. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior
Processes, 26, 174-185.
An aspect of conditioning that has intrigued
contemporary researchers of animal behaviour is that responding to a stimulus
can become conditionalised to other cues or contexts. For example, animals
can learn that, in one physical context a tone stimulus signals the availability
of food and a light signals nothing, whereas in a different context the
light signals food and the tone nothing. Moreover, such conditional control
over responding can emerge spontaneously. Consider the following example.
An animal first learns that a stimulus serves as a signal for reinforcement,
then, in a second context, it learns that the stimulus no longer signals
reinforcement. If the stimulus is presented in the second context, the animal
will respond little, but responding recovers if the stimulus is presented
in a third "neutral" context. This difference is observed even though both
contexts have equal histories of reinforcement (or absence of reinforcement).
These findings have led to proposals that
responding reflects differential retrieval of associative memories depending
on contextual information (e.g., Bouton, 1993). However, different details
have been offered to explain how these memories become conditionalised.
For example, according to one account, "inhibitory" memories (that a stimulus
signals nothing) are automatically conditionalised, whereas retrieval of
"excitatory" memories (that a stimulus signals a reinforcer) is independent
of context. Alternatively, it has been suggested that memories about the
associative value of a stimulus are conditionalised if the animal has previously
learned a different associative value for the same stimulus. Both versions
can account for experimental data such as those described above (ie, it
was the second or inhibitory memory that was conditionalised to the second
context). However, neither version predicts that an excitatory association
can be conditionalised to the training context if that association is acquired
first. But, this is exactly what we have found in the JEP: ABP paper - rats
respond more to a stimulus in its original training context than in a different
context, even if the two contexts have matched histories of reinforcement.
However, this is only observed if the stimulus has undergone extinction,
rats do not show such contextual control over responding to a stimulus that
has only ever served as a signal for reinforcement.
Thus, it appears that responding can be conditionalised
to a context irrespective of the nature of the association (excitatory or
inhibitory) or the time at which the association was acquired. Nonetheless,
such contextual control does depend on the stimulus having both excitatory
and inhibitory value (i.e., that the stimulus is ambiguous, having served
as both a signal of reinforcement and a signal of nothing). Such findings
help to uncover the hierarchical structure of associative learning, in which
"higher order" cues such as contexts can regulate responding to (or remembering
the significance of) other stimuli with a mixed history of reinforcement.
This contemporary understanding of associative learning lends itself to
"cognitive" explanatory models, and thus differs greatly from classic descriptions
of conditioning as simple "reflexive" responses developed as a consequence
of the direct association between events that occur close together.
Reference
Bouton, M. E. (1993). Psychological Bulletin,
114, 80-99.
(Editor's note: Justin had not yet arrived
at U of Sydney at the time of publication, so his email address was unavailable.
His mailing address is Dept of Psychology, University of Sydney, Syndey,
NSW 2006, Australia.)
Jeffrey S. Katz,
Auburn University
Katz, J. S., & Cook, R. G. (2000). Stimulus
repetition effects on texture-based visual search by pigeons. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 26, 220-236.
I joined the faculty in the Department of Psychology
at Auburn University in 2000. Before coming to Auburn I spent two years
as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston,
working with Tony Wright. I earned my Ph.D. from Tufts University, working
with Bob Cook. The paper honored by Division 3 was part of my doctoral dissertation.
My research program focuses on the comparative mechanism of learning, cognition,
and perception. Current research involves avian visual search, concept learning,
and the processes and conditions by which pigeons learn matching to sample
and same/different discriminations. My interests also include the neural
and behavioral mechanisms of auditory and visual list memory in human and
nonhuman primates, which examines how the underlying memory processes change
with retention interval and is influenced by proactive and retroactive interference.
One of the central themes of animal learning
and cognition has been determining how animals solve problems. Two categories
of strategies or rules can be used to describe an animal's recurrent pattern
of behavior to solve problems. These categories are item-specific and relational.
Item-specific strategies involve rote memorization of specific stimuli and
the outcomes associated to a particular response in regard to the stimulus.
Relational strategies (also known as abstract concepts) are not bound to
the specific stimuli allowing them to be applied to novel stimuli and hence,
generalize to novel problems.
In the paper honored by Division 3, Bob Cook
and I were interested in the strategies used by pigeons when searching for
visual items in an odd-item texture discrimination task (Katz & Cook 2000,
2002). In the task the pigeons searched for and pecked at an odd texture
region randomly embedded in a distractor surround (e.g., Cook 2000). To
address how pigeons solved the search task, items used to construct the
texture stimuli were repeated from trial to trial. The effect of stimulus
repetition was compared to a steady-state condition in which the identity
of the target and distractor items was unknown from trial to trial. The
summary finding was that pigeons used both item-specific and relational
strategies to find the target. Item-specific strategies involved memorizing
the identity of the target, distractor, or both items, as evidenced by improved
search during each of these separate repetition conditions. Relational strategies
were used when the identity of the items within the displays were unknown.
Specifically, an odd-item strategy was used when the target popped out and
a distractor-avoidance strategy was used when the target was conspicuous.
The current direction of this research is in
further understanding when and why these strategies are utilized to solve
different search problems. Factors for future research that are or may be
important are experience, set size, frequency of repetitions (encounters),
perceptual discriminability, and stimulus mapping to target and distractor
sets. If you have any questions or comments, please contact me at katzjef@auburn.edu
References
Cook, R. G. (2000). The comparative psychology
of avian visual cognition. Current Directions in Psychological Science,
9, 83-89.
Katz, J. S., & Cook, R. G. (2000). Stimulus
repetition effects on texture-based visual search by pigeons. Journal
of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 26, 220-236.
Katz, J. S., & Cook, R. G. (2002). The multiplicity
of visual search strategies in pigeons. In S. Soraci (Ed) Visual Information
Processing and Intellectual Functioning, Volume 2.
Journal of Experimental Psychology:
General
Kevin N. Ochsner,
Stanford University
Ochsner, K. N. (2001). Are affective events
richly recollected or simply familiar? The experience and process of recognizing
feelings past. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 129,
242-261.
An enduring question about the influence of
emotion upon memory concerns the way in which positive and negative events
are recollected differently (Ochsner & Schacter, in press). Although older
work asked whether positive events are recalled more accurately (Matlin
& Stang, 1978), more recent research has focused on the question of whether
memories for traumatic events are indelible or are subject to memory distortion
(Conway, 1997). By focusing solely on issues of accuracy, however, these
studies have ignored the experiential aspect of recollection, which might
be subject to strong influence by emotion.
Tulving (1985) distinguished between two forms
of experience that can accompany recollection for an event: "Remembering,"
which is characterized by a detailed re-experiencing of the prior occurrence,
and "Knowing," which is characterized by a non-specific sense of familiarity.
Remembering increases as a function of stimulus distinctiveness and the
degree of elaboration at encoding. Given that emotional stimuli may have
distinctive semantic and arousal properties, either of which might promote
elaboration, I hypothesized that affective stimuli would be more likely
to be Remembered. I also hypothesized that this effect would be more robust
for negative than positive stimuli, which have been shown to have greater
attention-grabbing power.
In a series of three experiments this is exactly
what I found: regardless of the degree of elaboration at encoding both positive
and negative stimuli were more likely to be richly Remembered than neutral
stimuli. More strikingly, even though positive and negative stimuli were
recognized with equal accuracy overall, they differed in the kinds of experience
that accompanied correct recollection - whereas negative stimuli were Remembered
more often than positive stimuli, positive stimuli were Known more often
than the negative stimuli. In addition to examining the effect of emotion
on recollective experience, these studies sought to clarify affective influences
on underlying memory retrieval processes. Using the process dissociation
framework of Yonelinas et al (1998), I found that emotion significantly
influenced only effortful recollective processes that give rise to the sense
of remembering, but not the automatic processes that give rise to the sense
of knowing.
Taken as a whole, these studies support the
notion that positive and negative events are experienced differently in
memory because of differential effects of emotion on effortful retrieval
processes. Importantly, these findings held true even though different positive
and negative events were brought to mind with equal accuracy, which may
help clarify reasons for some past failures to observe differences in memory
accuracy as a function of valence (Bradley et al., 1992; Reisberg et al.,
1988).
Follow-up work has been examining the roles
of attention and emotion regulation in influencing the encoding of emotional
events. The main direction of my current work, however, has been to develop
a social cognitive neuroscience approach to studying self-regulatory processes
(Liberman et al., 2000; Ochsner & Lieberman, 2001). In principle, this approach
seeks to marry the theories and methods of social psychology and cognitive
neuroscience. In practice, in involves using neuroscience methods to ask
questions about the kinds of phenomena social psychologists care about.
Current studies have been using fMRI to examine the neural substrates of
emotion regulation (Ochsner et al., 2001), and to test hypotheses about
the ways in which cognitive and affective processes interact to give rise
to emotional responses (Ochsner & Feldmann Barrett, 2001).
References
Bradley, M. M., Greenwald, M. K., Petry, M.
C., & Lang, P. J. (1992). Remembering pictures: Pleasure and arousal in
memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition,
18, 379-390.
Conway, M. A. (1997). Recovered and false
memories. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gardiner, J. M., & Java, R. I. (1993). Recognising
and remembering. In A. F. Collins, S. E. Gathercole, M. A. Conway, & P.
E. Morris (Eds.), Theories of memory (pp. 163-188). Hove, United
Kingdom: Erlbaum.
Lieberman, M. D., Ochsner, K. N., Gilbert,
D. T., & Schacter, D. L. (2001). Do amnesics exhibit cognitive dissonance
reduction? The role of explicit memory and attention in attitude change.
Psychological Science, 12, 135-140.
Matlin, M. W. & Stang, (1978). The Pollyanna
Principle. Cambridge, MA: Schenkman.
Ochsner, K. N., Bunge, S. A., Gross, J. J.,
& Gabrieli, J. D. E. (2001, April). Rethinking feelings: exploring the neurocognitive
basses of emotion control. Paper presented at UCLA conference on social
cognitive neuroscience. Los Angeles, CA.
Ochsner, K. N. & Feldman Barrett, L. (2001).
A multiprocess perspective on the neuroscience of emotion. In T. J. Mayne
and G. Bonnano (Eds.), Emotion: Current Issues and Future Directions
(pp. 38-81). Guilford Press: New York.
Ochsner, K. N. & Lieberman, M. D. (2001). The
emergence of social cognitive neuroscience. American Psychologist, 56,
717-734.
Ochsner, K. N. & Schacter, D. L. (in press).
Remembering emotional events: A social cognitive neuroscience approach.
To appear in R.J. Davidson, H. Goldsmith, and K.R. Scherer (Eds.), Handbook
of the Affective Sciences. Oxford University Press: New York.
Reisberg, D., Heuer, F., MacLean, J., & O'Shaughnessy,
M. (1988). The quantity, not the quality, of affect predicts memory vividness.
Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 26, 100-103.
Tulving, E. (1985). Varieties of consciousness
and levels of awareness in memory. In A. Baddeley & L. Weiskrantz (Eds.),
Attention: Selection, awareness and control: A tribute to Donald Broadbent,
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Yonelinas, A. P., Kroll, N. E. A., Dobbins,
I., Lazzara, M., & Knight, R. T. (1998). Recollection and familiarity deficits
in amnesia: Convergence of remember-know, process dissociation, and receiver
operating characteristic data. Neuropsychology, 12, 323-339.
Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Human Perception and Performance
Derek M. Houston,
Indiana University School of Medicine
Houston, D. M., & Jusczyk, P. W. (2000). The
role of talker-specific information in word segmentation by infants. Journal
of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 26, 1570-1582.
My research focuses on the nature of infants'
representations of spoken words. During my graduate training at Johns Hopkins
University, my mentor, Peter Jusczyk, and I investigated infants' ability
to recognize words that were spoken by different talkers. We hypothesized
that if infants encode acoustic-phonetic details rather than just abstract
linguistic properties in their word representations, then their ability
to recognize the same word produced by two different talkers will depend
on the acoustic-phonetic similarity of the talkers. To test this, we first
familiarized 7.5-month-olds with two words (cup and dog or bike and feet)
spoken by one talker and then presented them with four passages spoken by
a different talker. Two of the passages contained the familiarized target
words and the other two passages contained the other target words. We found
that infants demonstrated recognition of the familiarized words in the passages
only when the talker used during word familiarization and the talker used
during the test phase were of the same sex. When a male-female talker pair
(either order) was used, 7.5-month-olds were unable to recognize the familiarized
words. However, a separate group of 10.5-month-olds were able to. Acoustic
analyses revealed that the mean pitch (measured as F0) of the same-sex talkers
was more similar than the opposite-sex talkers. We reported these findings
in the article that appeared in JEP: HPP and argued that, rather
than encoding only abstract linguistically relevant information into their
lexicons, infants also encode detailed talker-specific properties of speech
in their representations for spoken words.
That initial study raised several interesting
questions. In follow-up studies, Peter Jusczyk and I investigated infants'
memory for words and voices over a 1-day delay. We discovered that talker-specific
speech information plays an even larger role in infants' long-term memory
for spoken words. In my dissertation work, I investigated how talker variability
affects infants' word representations. I familiarized several groups of
7.5-month-olds with two words produced by four different talkers and then
tested them on passages produced by a fifth talker, whose voice was relatively
dissimilar to the familiarization talkers. Infants failed to demonstrate
recognition of the familiarized words in the passages when the familiarization
talkers were relatively similar to each other, but they were able to recognize
the words when the familiarization talkers were relatively dissimilar. These
findings suggest that infants not only encode talker-specific information
in their word representations but that talker variability plays a role in
helping infants form more robust and generalizable lexical representations
of spoken words.
Currently, I am an NIH Postdoctoral Research
Fellow at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis. With my
colleagues, I have begun to apply the procedures and techniques that have
been developed for investigating the speech perception skills of healthy
normal-hearing infants to prelingually deaf infants who have received cochlear
implants. We are tracking their speech perception and language skills before
and at regular intervals following cochlear implantation and comparing them
to normal-hearing infants. This research will provide important new information
to clinicians who must develop speech and language therapy programs. Furthermore,
by investigating the speech perception and language development of infants
who are born deaf and then begin receiving auditory information several
months later, we will be able to address several theoretical issues surrounding
the effects of early experience and the role of "critical periods" in language
development and neural plasticity in a new and unique way. If you have any
questions or comments, please contact me at dmhousto@indiana.edu
Back to Table
of Contents
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory,
and Cognition
Todd A. Kahan, University of
Southern Mississippi
Kahan, T. A. (2000). Negative priming from masked words: Retrospective
prime clarification or center-surround inhibition? Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 26, 1392-1410.
People must attend to, perceive, and store into memory an enormous amount
of visual input on a daily basis. However, the way in which these seemingly
simple tasks are accomplished remains somewhat of a mystery. Part of this
mystery arises because perception, attention, memory and language are so
highly interconnected they are often hard to disentangle. My research focuses
on the interplay between these cognitive functions.
Currently I am researching: scene/object recognition, attentional capture,
the attentional blink phenomenon, repetition blindness, both semantic and
repetition priming, negative priming, Stroop interference, and other visual
paradigms which help to disentangle the roles these processes play. I believe
that by using paradigms of this sort researchers will gain a better understanding
of how these important cognitive functions work together to help us make
sense of our complicated visual environment.
In the 2000 paper that was published in JEP:LMC, I investigated
the role of an attentional mechanism purported to help individuals retrieve
words from memory. This research used a "subliminal" priming technique.
Priming is the finding that responses to a target word are faster and more
accurate when preceded by a related word (semantic priming) or identical
word (repetition priming) compared to when preceded by an unrelated word.
In "subliminal" priming, the prime is preceded and followed by a visual
noise mask (X#X) making it difficult to identify. Results indicate that
when people expect the prime and target will be semantically related they
are faster to respond to targets that are repeated ("dog" preceded by "X#X"
"dog" "#X#") but are slower to respond to semantically related targets ("dog"
preceded by "X#X" "cat" "#X#"), relative to an unrelated prime condition
("dog" preceded by "X#X" "pan" "#X#"). This result has previously been found
and interpreted by Carr and Dagenbach (1990) as supporting a center-surround
attentional mechanism that operates to help extract weakly activated codes
from semantic memory. This attentional mechanism facilitates the sought
after word's code (the center) while at the same time inhibiting surrounding
related codes which may interfere with retrieval (the surround). However,
in the series of experiments I conducted I manipulated participant expectations.
I found that when people expected the prime and target would be repeated
they were slower to respond to repeated targets but faster to respond to
semantically related targets, relative to the unrelated control condition.
This result is the opposite of Carr and Dagenbach's replicable findings
and runs counter to the center-surround attentional mechanism.
To explain all of these results, I proposed a memory retrieval interpretation
in which negative priming is caused by retrospective memory retrieval, not
persisting inhibition from a center-surround attentional mechanism. Accordingly,
people use the target and expectations regarding the prime-target relationship
to clarify the masked prime word. The slowdown occurs as a result of an
analytic comparison of the target and prime's weak memory.
If you have any questions or comments, please contact me at todd.kahan@usm.edu
You may also visit my web site at this url: http://ocean.otr.usm.edu/~tkahan
Reference
Carr, T. H., & Dagenbach, D. (1990). Semantic priming and repetition priming
from masked words: Evidence for a center-surround attentional mechanism
in perceptual recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning,
Memory, and Cognition, 16, 341-350.
Back to Table of Contents
A Note
from the President
Morton Ann Gernsbacher
Dear Colleagues,
Did you know that if you ordered one hard copy APA journal that for $99
more you can get access to ALL APA journals online (full-text articles)
published from 1999 to current, and for $139 more you can get access to
ALL APA journals online (full-text articles) published from 1985? $99 is
$26 *cheaper* than subscribing to the paper copy of either JEP:HPP or
JEP:LMC.
I know, however, that there's something to be said about having an archival
volume. No, I've not been hired by APA publications to do advertising for
them, but I was just honestly curious how many of my colleagues knew about
this ($99 a year gets you electronic access to ALL APA journal's full-text
articles from 1999 to current, and $139 a year gets you the same going back
to 1985). The features are listed on the Member Journal Order Form as "PsycARTICLES
Lite" (1999-current)" and "PsycARTICLES" (1985 to current) in the "Electronic
Database Packages" box. Or contact: subscriptions@apa.org.
All the best - Morton
magernsb@facstaff.wisc.edu
Back to Table
of Contents
Division
3 APA 2002 Program: A Preview
Wendy M. Williams, Program Chair
The 2002 APA annual convention will be held in Chicago
on August 22-25. APA is experimenting with a shortened convention (Thursday
through Sunday) with three types of programming: general APA programming,
cluster programming, and divisional programming. There will be no other
programming during the general APA slots. Clusters are comprised of groups
of divisions. Cluster programming will be along themes crossing the divisions.
No division programming will be scheduled during the Cluster times. The
hope is that this will lead to larger audiences because there will be
fewer conflicts. Division 3 is in Cluster A along with Divisions 1, 6,
7, 8, and 15. Cluster A will have 10 hours of programming revolving around
the two themes of (a) change and constancy and (b) consciousness and unconsciousness.
Division 3 will also have 10 hours of programming. Details about the Cluster
A and Division 3 programs will be in the June newsletter. See you in Chicago,
August 22-25. When marking the convention dates in your calendar, why
not mark a REGISTER FOR APA date in early April? Such a reminder is useful
because APA does not send out registration packets for the convention.
Instead, information will appear in spring issues of the American Psychologist.
Division 3 and the other science divisions typically are housed in a single
hotel, so the hotel fills up quickly. By marking an early registration
reminder date on your calendar, you will be more likely to get into the
science hotel!
Back to Table
of Contents
APA: The Association
for Science and Scientists
Kurt Salzinger APA Executive Director
for Science
Kurt Salzinger succeeded Richard McCarty as Executive Director for Science
in August. Kurt is a member of several divisions and is a fellow of Division
3. Prior to joining the Science Directorate, he was a Professor at Hofstra
University in Hempstead, NY. (Welcome to Division 3, Kurt, and thank you
for submitting a column. Column-submitting behavior is rare among members
and fellows of Division 3; it is my hope that your column will inspire
high levels of imitative behavior. J --VJD)
By this time you have all learned that Robert Sternberg has been elected
president-elect of the American Psychological Association. Once again,
the APA has a series of outstanding scientists heading the largest psychological
group in the world. In years past, when psychologists questioned why they
should join the Association, or remain its members, I always answered
that it is the largest association and therefore has the most resources
to represent psychologists, including especially scientific psychologists.
Now, we can boast sustained scientific leadership as well.
- If, therefore, you are interested in influencing the legislative process,
no matter how good others are at representing us before Congress, you
should remember that the APA has the largest number of Science and Public
Policy personnel working with government
- If you are concerned about the amount of research support the various
parts of government are making available, let us know because we are the
ones who make it possible for scientist psychologists to obtain such support.
- If you are concerned about what young people learn about psychology
in high school, you must appreciate what we do for high school teachers
and how we educate them, inspire them to teach science, and support them
in their efforts (see TOPSS on the APA web site).
- If you are concerned about how graduate students are supported for
dissertation and travel money, you should know that it is the APA that
supplies such funds.
- If you are concerned about how well undergraduate students learn the
science of psychology, you must encourage them to apply for our Science
Student Institutes where they are exposed to science in all its glory.
- If you are interested in setting up a scientific conference and do
not have enough money to do that, you can apply to the APA Science Directorate
to get financial support to hold the conference, and then publish a book
based on the meeting.
- If you wish to publish your research, it is still true that APA's journals
provide the largest number, and the best, journals for that purpose.
- If you are interested in doing a literature search on any subject in
psychology, you can, for a very low price, go to PsycINFO and find the
most relevant studies in existence.
- If you are on sabbatical and are finding it hard to get to our large
numbers of excellent journals because you are far from a library, you
can successfully find the complete articles for the last 13 years on your
computer at home through PsycArticles at APA. Look up the different ways
in which you can obtain that service on our web site.
- If you wish to find the address, including the email address, of some
obscure psychologist or a famous one, you can find them both in the APA
Directory. If all you wish is to find the email address, you can get it
on the APA members' section of the web.
- If you wish to write an op ed piece for a newspaper because you believe
that the American public must be educated about psychological science,
you can get help by going to our web site and by asking Rhea Farberman,
our Executive Director of Public and Member Communications to review your
piece and suggest to which newspaper you might submit it.
- If you wish to influence practitioners of psychology, you will find
them in the APA, and you will find that most are eager to interact with
scientists because most are still scientist practitioners.
- If you are looking for a job, or wish to find someone for a position,
the employment market is still there in largest numbers in the Monitor
on Psychology. You can also post your CV on the APA Career Resource Center
at PsycCareers.com to find a job on the web.
- And if you wish to influence the course that the APA takes, you can
do it by being a member, a Council member, a Member of the Board, or President
of the Association. We now have scientists in all of these positions!
- And if you want to be a member of organizations other than the APA,
such APS, SRCD or some 17 others, you can be a member of both the APA
plus these other scientific organizations, and receive a reduction of
25% of your APA dues
. Now, all of this being true, I know why you are a member of the APA.
But if you wish to increase your influence over what the APA does, why
would you not try to influence other psychologists to join you by joining
the APA? I have not discussed everything that membership in the APA provides
simply because there is not enough space here but you can find much more
on the web. I challenge you to go to www.apa.org/science and discover
all of these advantages yourself. After you've done that, go out and become
more active in the APA. Then make it your business to bring in more scientist
members. We are on a roll.
Kurt Salzinger, Executive Director for Science
Phone: (202) 336-5938
E-mail: KSalzinger@apa.org
Fax: (202) 336-5953
Back to Table of Contents
Success at Giving Away Psychology
Ed Wasserman
University of Iowa
The Science Directorate of the American Psychological Association
has been vigorously involved in bringing psychology to the public. One means
that the APA has used in this quest to "give away" our science is to post
weekly press releases for use by the media. How effective is this practice?
Very effective, indeed, if the attention given to a recent paper that Joël
Fagot, Mike Young, and I published on human and baboon cognition in the
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes is
any indication.
In one frantic week, my colleagues and I were interviewed
by the print and internet media, including: the Associated Press, United
Press International, the Washington Post, and the London Daily Telegraph.
The story ran in the United States, England, France, Germany, Italy, and
Colombia. We were also interviewed on British Broadcasting World Radio and
on an award-winning television show on the Canadian Discovery Channel. Brief
television and radio segments aired on the Cable News Network, French National
Television, and Radio France. Our work was even spoofed on the popular Comedy
Central Daily Show! So, watch out what you wish for, APA. The public truly
is interested in our giveaway product. Researchers should be alert to the
prospects of their science finding its way into the public domain. If it
does, then enjoy your "15 minutes" of fame; and, make the most out of its
educational potential. It is an opportunity not to be squandered.
Edward A. Wasserman, Stuit Professor of Experimental Psychology,
The University of Iowa
E-mail: ed-wasserman@uiowa.edu
http://www.psychology.uiowa.edu/people/details.asp?id=28
Back to Table of Contents
New Division 3 Fellows
|
New fellows selected in 2001:
|
Robert G. Cook
Judith F. Kroll
Ken Paap |
Mary A. Peterson
Peter J. Urcuioli
Rolf Zwaan |
|
The following Fellows in other divisions
were selected for Fellow status in Division 3:
|
Mahzarin Banaji
Douglas K. Candland
Leslie B. Cohen
James W. Grau
Arthur F. Kramer |
Cathy McEvoy
Dennis Molfese
Jane Stewart
Roger Thompson
James Townsend |
Congratulations to all!!!
Division 3, Experimental
Psychology
If you're reading this, it's likely that you're a member
of Division 3, but if not, you might want to know a bit more about us.
There is an application for
membership on our website. Hint, hint!
"The Division of Experimental Psychology of the American
Psychological Association was formed many years ago to represent the interests
and concerns of psychologists whose principal area of study or research
lies within the field of general experimental psychology. Several specific
goals of the Division have been established, including the promotion of
basic experimental research, the transmission of this research and its theoretical
bases to students, the facilitation of information exchange among the division
members, the enhancement of interdisciplinary relationships, and the support
and development of the scientific core of psychology. "
If you're not a member, why not join today? .--VJD
(DÉJÀ VU)? Are you experiencing
déjà vu?
Do you think that you've read the above paragraph before? Well, I'm impressed.
That means last January's issue was actually read by someone and it had
a lasting impact!
Heck, why not write a letter to the editor to complain about the republication
of old material? I guarantee it'll get published and it might even mean
that I come up with more new and less old material! J -- VJD)
Back to Table of Contents
Letters to the Editor
YES! (big smile, fist clenched with quick upthrust of the
arm above the head--hey, even academics can have excessive display of emotion!)
I actually received letters that did not say please don't publish.
August 17, 2001
Dear Dr Dark:
In the last few newsletters, you have gently suggested that members of
Division 3 send you some material. Would you be at all interested in looking
at some History of Experimental Psychology limericks?
Here's a sample, "That old Harvard gadfly Fred Skinner said 'Theory books
should be thinner! Learning's occurred when you teach a poor bird to peck
5000 times for its dinner'."
Enjoy the rest of your summer, Greg Burton Seton Hall University
Later
August 17, 2001
Veronica:
Thanks for the encouragement. I am indeed the author of that limerick and
others I'll send you. Here are a few more I remember off the top of my head.
Have a nice weekend,
Greg
P. S. I know that Bishop Berkeley's Berkeley is not really pronounced like
the city - that's poetic license.
"That sly ex-behaviorist Gibson, said 'Hey, let the world get its dibs
in! Perception is solved 'cause the beast has evolved to perceive the damned
world that it lives in!"
"Said old-school empiricist Locke (whom modern empiricists mocke): 'each
animal has a nice tabula rasa' Garcia would come as a schocke!"
"That Anglican bishop named Berkeley used epistemology querkeley Empirically
mystical, half-solipstistical, Man knows environment merkeley"
Did you enjoy these as much as I did?
Why not share your own psychology humor with colleagues?--VJD
Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2001
18:26:40 -0700
From: Jeffery Mio, CSU-Pomona Subject: early vs. late response
Dear Veronica,
I read your column on "Early vs. Late Selection: Still NO Critical Experiment"
in the last newsletter. …I was wondering if Division 3 members can be categorized
as "Early vs. Late Responders." Perhaps your non-IRB approved study only
resonates to late responders, so your study is still "in process" rather
than being publishable. Just a thought,
Jeff
So, what do you think? Is Jeff on to something? I'd love to have your comments.--VJD
Here's a vowels only puzzle. Can you solve it?
_ O _ O U _ _ A _ _:
_ _ I _ E A _ E _ _ E _
_ O _ _ E E _ I _ O _
O _ A _ Y _ O _ I _
_ F _ O U _ _ _ O I _ E.
Back to Table of Contents
Because many Division 3 members teach courses involving undergraduate research,
I thought the members might find the following information of interest.
--VJD
For more information, please contact Mandy Morgan, Editor, at mpsedit@cecasun.utc.edu
|
CALL FOR PAPERS
Modern Psychological Studies Journal of Undergraduate Research Modern
Psychological Studies is a biannual journal of Undergraduate Research.
MPS is among very, very few research journals in the world completely
written, edited, reviewed, designed and published by undergraduates.
The Editorial Staff operates out of the Univ. of Tennessee at Chattanooga,
but we accept manuscripts internationally for review and publication.
MPS will consider manuscripts in any area of psychology. Although
we are primarily interested in results from experimental research,
we are also interested in theoretical papers, literature reviews and
book reviews. We encourage submission of all exceptionally written
undergraduate papers.
For MPS submission guidelines visit our website at www.utc.edu/mps
or email us at mpsedit@cecasun.utc.edu.
If internet connection is unavailable, contact us by phone at (423)785-2238.
Submission deadlines are September and February. Notification of
acceptance/rejection is during the next month. Publication of accepted
papers is a couple of months later in the Fall/Winter or Spring/Summer
issue.
Manuscripts should have an undergraduate as a primary or sole author.
Works by graduates will be accepted if the work was completed as an
undergraduate and no further work along the same lines has been completed
at a graduate level. The work must be original work that has not been
accepted for publication or has been published elsewhere.
For more information, please contact Mandy Morgan, Editor, at mpsedit@cecasun.utc.edu
|
Minutes Division 3
of APA,
Executive Committee Meeting
San Francisco, CA
Garden Terrace Restaurant (2nd Floor) in
The San Francisco Marriott
7:30 - 9:30 AM August 24, 2001
Present were Douglas Nelson, President; Roddy Roediger, Past-President;
Morton Ann Gernsbacher, President-Elect; Frank Bellezza, Secretary-Treasurer;
Members at large of the Executive Committee, Ed Wasserman, Tom Zentall;
Representatives to APA Council, Manny Donchin, Harry Bahrick; Barbara Basden
and David Basden, Co-chairs of the Program Committee
Not Present were David Balota, Randall Engle, Veronica Dark, Bruce Overmier
President Nelson called the meeting to order at 7:30 AM.
The minutes of the November, 2000, Executive Committee meeting were approved
as circulated.
President Nelson reported on the election results President-Elect: David
Balota Executive Committee Members-at-Large: Alice Healy, Norman Spear
Representative to APA Council: Lewis Lipsitt
Barbara Basden presented the Program Committee report and reviewed the
program as listed in the June, 2001 Experimental Psychology Bulletin.
There were social hours on Friday (as part of the Division 3 paper session),
Saturday, and Sunday. Some of these social hours were sponsored in conjunction
with Divisions 1, 3, 6, 7, and 20.
Frank Bellezza reported that the financial status of Division 3 was good,
although most expenses occur late in the year as a result of the August
meeting. There appears to be no reason to raise the Division dues at this
time.
Statistics obtained from the APA membership office indicate that Division
3 membership is currently 967 of whom 196 are fellows. A number of comments
were made regarding the reasons for declining membership. It was decided
to send all Executive Committee members a copy of the Division 3 membership
application to distribute to their colleagues and graduate students. Also,
the possibility was discussed of contacting APA to send a note to members
of those divisions affiliated Division 3 asking them to join Division 3.
Morton Gernsbacher, Chair of the Fellowship Committee, reported that materials
were submitted in February, 2001, for six "Initial" fellow nominations:
Robert G. Cook, Judith F. Kroll, Ken Paap, Mary A. Peterson, Peter J. Urcuioli,
Rolf Zwaan. The selection committee conveyed extraordinary enthusiasm for
all six nominees. In addition, Division 3 nominated the following ten "Current"
fellows for fellow status in Division 3. Each is currently a fellow in the
division(s) indicated in parentheses: James Townsend (41), Roger Thompson
(6), Mahzarin Banaji (8,9), Douglas K. Candland (1,2,6,26), James W. Grau
(6,28), Arthur F. Kramer (20), Leslie B. Cohen (7), Dennis Molfese (7),
Jane Stewart (6), Cathy McEvoy (20)
Morton Gernsbacher also outlined the new APA Convention plans. Division
3 has been placed in Cluster A along with Divisions 1, 6, 7, 8, and 15.
In addition to a Division 3 program chair, there is now a Division 3 representative
who will hold office for 2 years. In 2002 the convention will last only
4 days. There will be 10 hours of programming divided into division, cluster,
and plenary programming. Cluster A will have 10 hours of programming revolving
around the two themes of (a) change and constancy and (b) consciousness
and unconsciousness.
Doug Nelson announced the New Investigator Award winners for 2001.
They were
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior
Processes
Co-Winner: Justin A. Harris, "Contextual control over conditioned responding
in an extinction paradigm"
Co-Winner: Jeffrey S. Katz "Stimulus repetition effects on texture-based
visual search by pigeons"
