Eminent scientists to speak at convention

Five lecturers to lead APA 1998 slate in San Francisco.

By Mel Waters
Monitor staff

APA?s Board of Scientific Affairs has selected leaders in the field to give this year?s Master Lectures at the APA Annual Convention in San Francisco, Aug. 14?18. They are Anthony C. Catania, PhD, Hazel R. Markus, PhD, Susan Mineka, PhD, Ken Nakayama, PhD and Peter A. Ornstein, PhD. This year?s topics include learning, cross cultural psychology, anxiety and mood disorders, psychological studies of visual perception and memory development.

Reinforcement v. extinction

Catania?s lecture, 'Reinforcement isn?t everything, but extinction isn?t anything,' focuses on animal learning stressing its relevance to human learning and behavior. In addition, Catania will demonstrate how reinforcement and extinction affects teaching and learning in education and its importance to behavioral analysis.

Catania is a professor of psychology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and the associate editor of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Most recently, he won the 1998 Don F. Hake/Basic Applied Research Award, APA?s Div. 25 (Experimental Analysis of Behavior).

Catania received his PhD in psychology from Harvard University in 1961.

Cross cultural psychology

In her lecture, 'Our culture, our selves,' Markus will discuss how cultures and selves affect one another. The research is based on her study of the correlation between the processes and structures of the self (self-concepts and self-esteem), collective practices (parenting, schooling, media) and public meanings (core cultural ideas, tacit theories of personhood).

Markus? recent work centers on cultural psychology and explores the mutual constitution between psychological structures and process, and sociocultural practices and institutions. Other interests include the self and personality, agency and motivation, adult socialization and life span development, and cultural, historical and sociostructural variation in self, emotion and cognition.

Markus is a psychology professor at Stanford University, which awarded her the Davis-Brack Professorship in the Behavioral Sciences in 1996. Markus has been a member of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Midlife Development since 1992. She received her PhD in psychology from the University of Michigan in 1975.

Anxiety and mood disorder

Mineka will address the psychopathology of fear, anxiety and depression in her talk, 'Evolutionary, experimental, and cognitive foundations of anxiety and mood disorders.'

Mineka?s current research interests focus on understanding cognitive and behavioral factors that contribute to the etiology, maintenance and treatment of anxiety and depressive disorders.

Mineka is a psychology professor at Northwestern University, and co-director of the Panic Treatment Clinic at Evanston Hospital. She serves as consulting editor for the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Psychological Review and Psychological Science. During 1997?98, she is a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto.

Mineka received her PhD in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1974.

Visual perception

Nakayama?s lecture, 'Psychological studies of visual perception,' examines the problems of visual attention and visual surface representation.

Nakayama is a professor of psychology at Harvard University. He serves on the advisory board of Perception and the editorial board of Neural Networks. Nakayama is also a member of the National Advisory Eye Council. Nakayama received his PhD in physiological psychology from the University of California?Los Angeles in 1967.

Memory development

In his lecture, 'Memory development: remembering the past and preparing the future,' Ornstein will discuss cognition and memory in the developing child. This lecture reflects Ornstein?s recent focus on young children?s long-term retention of personally experienced events. His study may help the field better understand cognitive development in the preschool and early elementary-school years and is also relevant for assessing the abilities of young children to provide accurate testimony in legal situations.

Ornstein is a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He serves on the editorial boards of Applied Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Development.

Ornstein received his PhD in experimental psychology from the University of Wisconsin in 1968.