VOLUME 30 , NUMBER 5 May 1999

American Psychological Foundation honors five eminent psychologists

Awards to be presented during APA's Annual Convention

By Mel Waters
Monitor staff

APA's Committee on Scientific Affairs has selected Bruce M. Hood, PhD, to receive the American Psychological Foundation's (APF) 1999 Robert L. Fantz Award.

The Fantz Award encourages and supports careers of promising young investigators in psychology and related disciplines. Candidates must show evidence of scientific research and scholarly publication in perceptual-cognitive development and the development of selective attention, as well as research and writing on the development of individuality, creativity and free choice of behavior.

Hood, chair of the developmental psychology program at the University of Bristol, in England, is a developmental neuroscientist whose research focuses on the functional development of the human visual system, particularly as it relates to selective attention.

In recommending him for the Fantz award, the Committee of Scientific Affairs noted that his remarkable creativity and capacity for synthesis will lead him to make important contributions in the area of selective attention.

Hood earned his doctorate from Cambridge University. He spent three years as a research scientist with the prestigious MRC Visual Development Unit in Cambridge, where he worked with the distinguished scientists Janet Atkinson and Oliver Braddick. An MRC fellowship allowed Hood to spend the succeeding years at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the department of brain and cognitive science. Before coming to the University of Bristol, he spent three years as an associate professor at Harvard University.

Hood's research on infant visual attention has influenced the work of other researchers who study infant visual recognition memory and selective attention. His work has also stimulated research by a number of other senior professionals in the areas of attention, spatial cognition, and visual search.

He has published more than 50 articles and chapters in edited volumes and in such journals as Perception, Behavioral Brain Science, Psychological Science and Nature. Most recently, he won the prestigious Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in Neuroscience and received the Young Investigator Award of the International Society for Infant Studies.

New lecture series

Eminent French social psychologist Erika R. Apfelbaum, PhD, will deliver a talk entitled "And what now after such tribulations? The importance of legacy and the obligation of remembrance" as the 1999 Lynn Stuart Weiss lecturer at APA's 1999 Annual Convention in Boston, Aug. 2024.

Div. 9 (Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues-SPSSI) selected Apfelbaum as the first speaker in this recently established American Psychological Foundation lecture series.

Apfelbaum directs the primary interdisciplinary team on the Gender and Social Division of Labor, which studies male-female relations in their social context, at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris. From 1990 through 1994, she served as director of the Institut de Recherche sur les Sociétés Contemporaines (IRESCO), which hosts some 200 interdisciplinary researchers and professors in the social sciences as part of 10 separate research teams.

Apfelbaum has also served as a professor at the University of Picardie and the University of Paris, where she currently directs doctoral research. She has been a visiting professor at the University of Guelph (Ontario) and the Free University of Brussels, as well as at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

She is a prolific researcher and author in the areas of feminism, power and counterpower, the uprooting, identities and legacy of peoples, and the history of 20th century ideologies and social movements.

Raymond A. Weiss, PhD, and Rosalee G. Weiss, PhD, established the Lynn Stuart Weiss lecture series in 1998 to honor the memory of their daughter Lynn, who died of cancer in 1971, at the age of 25. The series is designed to connect Lynn's range of interests in the science and art of politics with a focus on world law and on those individuals and institutions that promote peace and conciliation among nations.

Lecturers are selected on a rotating basis by APA divisions
9 (SPSSI), 41 (American Psychology-Law Society), 48 (Peace) and 52 (International).

1999 Rosalee G. Weiss lecture

Larry E. Beutler, PhD, one of the best known and most well-published leaders in the field of clinical psychology, will deliver a talk titled "David and Goliath: when psychotherapy research meets health-care delivery systems" as the 1999 Rosalee G. Weiss lecture at this year's APA Annual Convention in Boston. Beutler's lecture will focus on research findings that can make psychological care more manageable, efficient and predictable.

Beutler is professor and recent director of the Counseling/
Clinical/School Psychology Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He serves as the co-editor of the Journal of Clinical Psychology and was a former editor of the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.

A fellow of APA and the American Psychological Society, Beutler has written some 300 scientific journal articles and chapters, and served as editor or co-author of 11 books on psychotherapy and psychopathology. One of Beutler's projects involves writing and editing an Oxford University Press (OUP) series of comprehensive treatment guidebooks that will present treatment guidelines for affective disorders, anxiety disorders, alcohol and drug abuse and schizophrenia. Beutler is also an associate editor for the upcoming APA-OUP Encyclopedia of Psychology.

Raymond A. Weiss, PhD, established the Rosalee G. Weiss Lecture series in 1994 to honor his wife. Lecturers are selected from among the outstanding leaders in the field of psychology or leaders in the arts and sciences whose work has had a significant impact on psychology.

Psychopharmacology dissertation award

Drake Morgan, PhD, is the recipient of the 1999 Robert A. and Phyllis Levitt Best Dissertation in Psychophar-
macology and Drug Abuse Award, which recognizes graduate students with promising careers in the fields of neuropsychology and pharmacology.

Morgan is conducting research in the department of physiology and pharmacology at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine. His dissertation, "Analysis of effects of opioids with varying degrees of intrinsic efficacy at the mu receptor," reports on a series of experiments that ranked numerous drugs of the opioid category from low to high, depending on how effectively they activated the mu opioid receptor. Next, Morgan tested the interaction among several low efficacy opioids and several higher efficacy opioids in an analgesic procedure.

In the study, Morgan noted that combining a drug, which has no effect on its own, with a higher efficacy drug caused an undesirable decrease in analgesic effects. How-
ever, Morgan observed desirable additive effects when he combined two pain relief drugs. Depending on a patient's level of pain, Morgan's results suggest that various combinations of opioids could either help or hinder a patient's post-operative recovery.

In a final set of experiments, Morgan examined the individual reactions to opioids across rats within one rat strain and across several others. The tests revealed that the magnitude of individual and strain differences partially depended on the function of the intrinsic efficacy of the opioid, the stimulus intensity used in the procedure, and the particular behavioral changes examined. This data has implications for research on differences in vulnerability to drug abuse across individuals.

Morgan's latest research involves studying the social influences on vulnerability to drug self-administration in group-housed monkeys.

Morgan received his doctoral degree in experimental and biological psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He accepted a pre-and post-doctoral training fellowship from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), and received travel awards from both NIDA and the College on the Problems of Drug Dependence.

The Robert A. and Phyllis Levitt Best Dissertation Award, established in 1995, seeks to encourage promising careers in neuropsychology and pharmacology and carries a $1,000 prize for travel to attend APA's Annual Convention. The awards committee of Div. 28 (Psychopharmacology and Substance Abuse) selects the winner for approval by the APF Board of Trustees.

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