Feature
APA congratulates this year's most illustrious researchers, practitioners and educators who will be recognized in a variety of awards to be presented at APA's Annual Convention, Aug. 48, 2000, in Washington, D.C.
The awards fall into five categories: Science, Practice, Public Interest, Education and Training and International Affairs. At Monitor press time, dates and locations of the award presentations were not available. They will be listed in the 2000 Convention Program catalog, available in July and on the APA Convention Web site.
Science awards
Distinguished Scientific Contribution Awards:
Richard J. Davidson, PhD
Davidson, the Vilas Research Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry, University of WisconsinMadison, is being honored for his empirical, theoretical and methodological contributions to the biological basis of emotion and emotional disorders.
He is known for two primary types of studies. One type assesses brain changes induced by affective manipulations in the laboratory. These manipulations have shown that facial expressions of happiness are associated with brain activity in the left hemisphere prefrontal cortex, while facial expressions of disgust are associated with brain activity in the right hemisphere prefrontal cortex.
The other type of study assesses individual differences in resting brain activation and its relation to temperament and vulnerability to psychopathology. This study has shown that a pattern of brain activation that has been termed "relative left frontal hypo-activation" appears to be a marker of a risk for depression. These findings are consistent with the notion that frontal asymmetry is linked to tendencies for approach versus withdrawal behavior.
E. Tory Higgins, PhD
Higgins is professor of psychology and chair of the department of psychology, Columbia University. He is being honored for his contributions in the domain of social cognition, affect, motivation and interpersonal phenomena.
Early in his career, Higgins helped revolutionize social psychology by focusing attention on the cognitive processes that underlie social judgment and behavior. His work in social cognition has focused primarily on knowledge activation. He has made outstanding theoretical and empirical contributions to our understanding of the relationships among knowledge accessibility, applicability and salience.
In his recent work on self-discrepancy and regulatory focus theory Higgins developed a widely applicable model that links cognition, emotion and motivation. His 1997 American Psychologist article, "Beyond pleasure and pain," represents a fundamental breakthrough in psychological theorizing about the operation of the hedonic principle and suggests a number of exciting avenues for future research.
Elizabeth S. Spelke, PhD
Spelke, a professor in the department of brain and cognitive sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is being honored for her research contributions in the area of perceptual and cognitive development in human infants and young children.
Spelke has studied the development of abilities to coordinate information from different sensory systems so as to perceive unitary objects and events. Her work has revealed that capacities to coordinate vision and audition are present at an early age. For example, young infants perceive relationships between the face and voice of a speaking person and between the motions and sounds of colliding, inanimate objects.
Award for Distinguished Scientific Applications of Psychology:
David H. Barlow, PhD
Barlow is being honored for his wide-ranging contributions to clinical psychology--including his clinical research in anxiety disorders, his training of scientist-practitioners, and his work on ensuring that scientific psychology maintains its viability.
He is professor and director of clinical training programs, department of psychology; director, Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders, Boston University; and research professor of psychiatry, Boston University School of Medicine. Barlow is widely known for his important early work, which focused on developing single-case experimental designs. This work provided tools for the intensive and controlled study of psychotherapy at the individual level.
Barlow then became one of the pioneers in bringing scientific research methodology to the study of erectile disorder. He demonstrated the importance of cognitive and emotional factors such as attentional focus and anxiety in the failure of erection in men. This has led to the development of one of the more influential models of male erectile disorder.
Barlow is also recognized for his work on anxiety disorders.
Award for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contribution to Psychology (Developmental Psychology):
Jeffrey G. Parker, PhD, and Karen Wynn, PhD
Parker is recognized for his research on children's friendships both for the development of a widely used assessment instrument and for demonstrating the processes, correlates and consequences of friendship for children's social and emotional adaptation. His focus on the temporal course of friendship formation and dissolution underscores the dynamic nature of children's social relationships. His recent work on triadic friendships illustrates processes that occur at different levels of analysis.
Wynn is recognized for her work on the origins of mathematical competence; focusing on the representation of number by infants and toddlers. She has also questioned what entities infants can count. She showed that infants not only count objects but also actions and collections of objects. She showed that infants habituated to sets of two jumps of a puppet but recovered interest when shown three jumps, and vice versa. This finding led to a new line of research concerning how infants parse ongoing events into discrete, individual actions.
Award for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contribution to Psychology (Health Psychology):
Alan J. Christensen, PhD
Christensen, of the University of Iowa department of psychology, is recognized for his contributions in the area of the psychological aspects of chronic medical illness, specifically end-stage renal disease (ESRD). This condition provides a valuable opportunity to study basic issues of psychological aspects of chronic physical illness, given the variety of medical approaches to management, the impact on many aspects of patients' lives, and the necessity of their participation in their own care. Christensen pursued the hypothesis that personality traits and individual differences would interact with the treatment context to predict emotional adjustment and patient adherence. This work identifies relevant information about potential matches and mismatches between patients and available treatments.
Award for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contribution to Psychology (Cognition and Human Learning):
Robert L. Goldstone, PhD
Goldstone, of the Indiana University department of psychology, is recognized for his empirical contributions on the nature of similarity-comparison processes and concept-precept interactions Goldstone has shown that perception itself is strongly affected by higher level cognitive processes of category formation. He has also crafted mathematical and computer simulation models to represent the ways in which perception and cognition interact. The implications of this work are far-reaching, telling us that our expertise and learning profoundly affect the way in which we perceive the world around us.
Award for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contribution to Psychology (Psychopathology):
Thomas E. Joiner Jr., PhD
Joiner, of the Florida State University department of psychology, is recognized for his contributions to our understanding of the interpersonal aspects of depression. In an era when the primary emphasis is on neurobiological determinants of depression, Joiner has focused on the psychological determinants of this disorder. He is known for his research on the paradox of reassurance seeking and solicitation of criticism by depressed individuals. In the area of suicidality, he has demonstrated the critical role played by interpersonal disruptions and negative attributional style in predicting episodes of acute suicide risk.
Award for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contribution to Psychology (Animal Learning and Behavior, Comparative):
Dario Maestripieri, PhD
Maestripieri of the University of Chicago, is recognized for his contributions in the area of the psychobiology of primate infant development and maternal behavior.
He has been able to elucidate the role hormones play in maternal interest in infants in rhesus monkeys. Understanding the mechanism of this hormonal influence will be valuable in understanding the complexity of mother-infant attachment. An offshoot from his studies of mother-infant interactions, Maestripieri noted that some mothers neglected or abused their infants.
Using the Yerkes Primate Center's historical records he was able to investigate the consistency of this abuse and demonstrated in two primate species that this abuse ran in families and was not randomly distributed across the social groups. He further found that neglect and abuse were not the same thing, as neglect occurred with first babies, where abuse occurred repeatedly across many births. This research promises to have important implications for understand ing the complexity of human infant abuse.
Practice awards
Award for Distinguished Contributions to Knowledge:
Simon H. Budman, PhD
Budman, a leading authority on brief psychotherapies, has pioneered many scientifically based tools designed to help clinicians work with difficult problems such as marital disruption, stress in medical populations, low back pain, personality disorders and substance abuse.
Between 1976 and 1996, Budman worked at the Harvard Community Health Plan and the Harvard Medical School, serving as the director of mental health research and then as the director of mental health training. His projects addressed the use of scientific knowledge for clinical intervention, and many looked at models for training clinicians so they would be most effective and efficient. He is the founder and president of Innovative Training Systems in Newton, Mass. Budman has written or co-authored more than 100 publications as well as scripts for award-winning videos and CD-ROMs.
Award for Distinguished Contributions to Applied Psychology as a Professional Practice:
Mathilda B. Canter, PhD
Canter has a lifelong record of achievement as a leader, advocate, mentor and teacher, working tirelessly to promote the public's access to the highest quality psychological services. A committed independent practitioner, she now limits her work to psychotherapy with adults. For APA she has served as a member of the Board of Directors and the Council of Representatives and as president of Div. 29 (Psychotherapy). As chair of the Ethics Committee she shepherded the current APA Ethical Principles and Code of Conduct through the revision, compromise, and adoption process. Canter is chair of APA's Policy and Planning Board.
Award for Distinguished Contributions to Public Service:
Allan G. Barclay, PhD
Barclay's dedication to serving people with mental retardation has long been recognized. In the Kennedy administration he was a special advisor to the President's Committee on Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities. He also served as a member of the Expert Consulting Panel, Social Security Administration, Childhood Disability Regulations Revision.
In 1979, he became charter associate dean for academic affairs of the new School of Professional Psychology of Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. In 1990 he returned to St. Louis University as professor emeritus. He has been president of the Missouri Psychological Association and was awarded its Lifetime Achievement Award for Distinguished Service in 1998.
He has served on many APA governance groups including the Board of Professional Affairs and the Board of Policy and Planning, as well as the Finance and Continuing Education Committees, and has been editor of the APA Journal of Professional Psychology.
Public Interest awards
Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest (Early Career):
Jeannette R. Ickovics, PhD
Ickovics, associate professor of epidemiology and public health and psychology at Yale University, focuses her research on women and HIV/AIDS as well as more general research on the interaction of biomedical and psychosocial factors that promote good health and recovery. She has more than a decade of experience in clinic- and community-based research in New Haven and statewide, focusing on individuals traditionally under-represented in AIDS research--women, minorities and injection drug users.
Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest (Senior Career):
Lillian Comas-Diaz, PhD
Comas-Diaz is recognized for her commitment to global social justice. She directs the Transcultural Mental Health Institute in Washington, D.C., maintains a private practice and is a clinical professor at the George Washington University Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.
From 1984 to 1986 Comas-Diaz served as director of APA's Office of Ethnic Minority Affairs. During this time, she crystallized her interest in psychology in the global public interest through her participation in a mental health delegation exploring human rights abuses in Chile.
In 1995, she became the founding editor of Cultural Diversity and Mental Health, an interdisciplinary journal later acquired by Div. 45 (Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues). Div. 45 renamed the journal Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, designating it its official journal. Comas-Diaz is the editor-in-chief.
Distinguished Contributions to Research in Public Policy:
Mary P. Koss, PhD
Koss's work as a professional psychologist for the past 27 years has shaped a field of research--violence against women--and made it a part of the mainstream of science and public policy. Koss is a professor of public health in the Child and Family Health Unit of the Arizona Prevention Center at the University of Arizona College of Medicine.
Koss worked with the Ms. Foundation for Research and Education on a project on date rape. The result was the 1987 publication of the first national survey on rape outside of federal crime statistics and until 1998 the only nationwide data on college students.
Koss led the APA Task Force on Male Violence Against Women, which resulted in the publication of the book No Safe Haven: Male Violence Against Women at Home, at Work, and in the Community (winner of the EdPress Award for the best book on a social concern). Koss testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, thereby contributing to the hearings that led to the passage of the Violence Against Women Act.
Education and Training awards
Distinguished Contributions to Applications of Psychology to Education and Training:
Roger Paul Weissberg, PhD
Weissberg is recognized for his leadership role in promoting the health and well-being of children and youth. A professor of psychology and education, and chair of community and prevention research in the psychology department at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Weissberg directs a multidisciplinary NIMH-funded prevention research training program in Urban Children's Mental Health and AIDS Prevention.
He is executive director of the Collaborative to Advance Social and Emotional Learning, a scientist-practitioner organization committed to establishing social and emotional learning as an essential part of education from preschool through grade twelve. He is co-author of numerous books, articles and chapters focusing on school-based prevention programs and the promotion of social competence of young people.
Weissberg has been the president of APA's Div. 27 (Society for Community Research and Action) and co-chaired the APA Task Force on Prevention: Promoting Strength, Resilience, and Health in Young People.
Distinguished Career Contribution to Education and Training in Psychology Award:
Sylvia Rosenfield, PhD
Rosenfield is recognized for her pioneering work in models of service delivery and training, especially the application of psychological principles to education. She is a professor and the former chair of the department of counseling and personnel services, University of MarylandCollege Park.
During her career, she improved the quality of training and practice in school psychology through the development of innovative training programs in bilingual, urban and preschool school psychology. In the scientist-practitioner tradition, she developed the instructional consultation model, enhancing the capacity of school psychologists, teachers and school teams to address school and classroom problems using research-based knowledge.
Her contributions have been invaluable in facilitating the APA's work in education, pre K12. Consistently, she has addressed issues in serving minority students and urban schools. Representing the Urban Initiative Task Force, she was an active partner in OERI's initiative on urban education. She served as conference organizer and proceedings co-editor of "Bringing to Scale Educational Innovation and School Reform: Partnerships in Urban Education," co-sponsored by APA and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
International Affairs
Award for Distinguished Contributions to the International Advancement of Psychology:
Florence Kaslow, PhD
Kaslow is in independent practice as a therapist, mediator and family business consultant in West Palm Beach, Fla. She is a past president of the International Family Therapy Association, of Div. 43 (Family) and Div. 46 (Media) and of the Florida Association of Professional Family Mediators.
She is a member of many journal editorial boards, and a prolific writer who has authored or edited 18 books and more than 150 articles and book chapters.
She is Board Certified in family, forensic, and clinical psychology by ABPP, and in clinical sexology by the American Board of Clinical Sexologists. Currently she is president of the International Academy of Family Psychologists and the American Board of Family Psychology.
