APA Testimony on Fiscal Year 2007 Appropriations for the National Science Foundation and

APA Testimony on Fiscal Year 2007 Appropriations for NSF and NASA

Written Testimony of the American Psychological Association
Steven Breckler, PhD, Executive Director for Science

Submitted March 16, 2006 to the
United States House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations
Subcommittee on Science, State, Justice, and Commerce and Related Agencies
The Honorable Frank Wolf, Chairman

Fiscal Year 2007 Appropriations for the National Science Foundation and
National Aeronautics and Space Administration

The American Psychological Association (APA), a scientific and professional organization of more than 150,000 psychologists and affiliates, is pleased to submit testimony for the record. Because our behavioral scientists play vital roles within the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), APA will address the proposed FY07 research budgets for each of these agencies. APA urges the Subcommittee to support the President's FY07 request for NSF, which would increase support by 7.9% over current funding for a total of $6.02 billion. At NASA, APA recommends that Congress restore funding for two programs to their FY06 levels at a minimum: Human Systems Research and Technology at $624 million and Aeronautics at $724 million.

National Science Foundation

Core Psychological Research at NSF

NSF is the only federal agency whose primary mission is to support basic research and education in math, engineering and science - including behavioral and social science. NSF's investment in basic research across these disciplines has allowed for extraordinary scientific and technological progress, ensuring continued economic growth, improvements in the design, implementation and evaluation of public education, strengthened national security, and the generation of cutting edge new knowledge.

APA supports the Administration request of $6.02 billion for NSF in FY07, and urges Congress to implement plans within the President's American Competitiveness Initiative to double funding for NSF. Within the overall NSF budget, APA supports a strong investment in psychological research throughout the research and education directorates foundation-wide.

The necessity to support basic research continues to be paramount. With the increasing globalization of science, the U.S. faces greater-than-ever competition for scientific innovation and discovery. At the same time that we must work in international communities of researchers and scholars, we must find new ways to make our country safe from threats not only to our physical structures but to the American tradition of shared and freely accessible science and to the many challenges we face at home. Our best defense is a strategy of offense in which we continue producing the best science, ideas, and technology. We can do this only on the basis of a solid foundation of basic research.

Although psychologists receive funding from diverse programs within NSF, most core psychological research is supported by the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate (SBE), with its focus on the variables that determine human behavior across all ages, affect interactions among individuals and groups, and decide how social and economic systems develop and change. In addition to core behavioral research in cognitive neuroscience, human cognition and perception, learning and development, and social psychology, SBE also will continue to support a Special Research Priority in Human and Social Dynamics (HSD) in FY07. Psychologists and other behavioral and social scientists are uniquely poised to address the complex issue of how people and organizations can better understand and manage the profound and rapid societal changes we face - through research on decision-making, risk and uncertainty; adaptation and resistance to technological change; the evolution of society and its interaction with climate, geography and environment; and ways in which human performance can be enhanced in conjunction with advances in biology, engineering, nanotechnology, robotics and information technology. APA also supports a new emphasis within SBE on the development of science metrics, or a "science of science policy," designed to more effectively evaluate the return on research investments.

The Biological Sciences Directorate at NSF also provides support for research psychologists who ask questions about the very principles and mechanisms that govern life at the level of the genome and cell, or at the level of a whole individual, family or species. In previous testimony, APA has expressed concern about diminishing support for key behavioral research programs within this Directorate, most notably those focused on learning and cognition. NSF recognizes the importance of learning and cognition to many branches of science already, and supports Foundation-wide initiatives and individual research projects that seek to understand the neural or genetic mechanisms by which learning occurs, that use learning as an assay for the effects of environmental change on a biological system, that construct and evaluate artificial learning systems, that conceptualize the role of learning in biodiversity and evolution and that apply learning principles to education and workforce challenges.

However, we hope that NSF's focus on transformational science will continue to recognize that behavior links everything from molecular biology to ecology because in a sense behavior is the ultimate genetic phenotype. Animals behave to eat, defend and reproduce, so an understanding of how the molecular processes within and beyond the central nervous system lead to behavior and how behavior serves an adaptive function seems essential to integrating biology across levels. Within the field of animal behavior and cognition there are clear demonstrations that this integration is occurring. For example, individual differences in gene expression can now be linked to individual differences in memory, attention, decision making, individual adaptation and fitness. The opportunity for understanding individual differences is unprecedented.

Likewise, there are real opportunities for understanding how different levels of analysis relate to each other in the domain of the social and economic Sciences. For example, decision scientists have conducted research demonstrating that proximity to "ground zero" on September 11, 2001 is inversely related to risk evaluation in domains ranging from foreign policy to personal health. Thus there is a need to foster research aimed at how societal level events translate into changes in individual cognition and behavior. These connections are both non-obvious and non-trivial and afford an opportunity to examine the interplay between individuals and society. We are grateful that research topics of this sort, urban ecology and decision making under uncertainty, are in fact priorities of the Biological Sciences under the leadership of the new Assistant Director.

While APA still remains concerned about funding for basic research on animal learning and cognition, we also applaud and welcome the new leadership in the Directorate and the initiative that the new Assistant Director for Biological Sciences has taken to examine cross-directorate opportunities for collaboration, particularly with SBE. The drive toward transformational science at NSF will require creative mechanisms to allow interactions across levels of analysis. However, at the same time we urge the Biological Sciences to encourage and maintain the innovation and activity within basic science sub-disciplines because often the strain to develop interdisciplinary programs can dilute activity in the basic programs at their core.

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National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Humans perform critical functions throughout all aspects of every NASA mission from concept development, system design and acquisition through operations. People are critical elements of complex aerospace systems. The ability to measure and predict human performance through all mission phases enhances mission safety and mission success. A range of psychological, behavioral and human factors research can enhance the national capability to explore the stars and understand our own planet while contributing to the safety, affordability and efficiency of aerospace operations.

Human Systems Research and Technology

In order to continue advancing our understanding of human adaptation to space, APA recommends that Congress restore funding for Human Systems Research and Technology to at least the FY06 level of $624 million.

In 2005, with a renewed commitment to extend our human presence in space, NASA began demonstrating an unprecedented interest in psychological and behavioral research. That interest stemmed from the recognition that space missions are complex systems that depend upon the integration of technical and human subsystems. A prescient 2001 National Academy of Sciences report entitled "Safe Passage: Astronaut Care for Exploration Missions" provided a detailed Bioastronautics Critical Path Roadmap. The Roadmap in turn drew needed attention to the behavioral health of astronauts: a term that subsumes psychological, interpersonal and cultural adaptation to space. Much to its credit, NASA appeared to be following the Roadmap and recognized the need to devote greater attention to behavioral health as these factors could significantly impact the success of long-duration missions. Future missions may introduce unique demands and impose new stresses on crews including extended operations on the lunar surface and, in the case of a voyage to Mars, unprecedented transit times.

Unfortunately over the past two years, support for programs within what once was called the Office of Biological and Physical Research has diminished significantly as relatively flat funding for NASA overall and escalating costs to ready the shuttle for return to flight have necessitated cuts to other accounts. Now renamed Human Systems Research and Technology, relative to 2006, the portfolio will be decimated with a 56% cut in FY07. This research must be securely and adequately funded, pervasive and considered an integral component of space mission planning. A successful overall behavioral health program will require a broad perspective, multiple convergent research strategies, ingenious measures, and a variety of settings, including space itself. Psychosocial studies relevant to space are also highly relevant to situations and problems on Earth, including the management of operations involving diverse participants, a trend that will only continue to grow.

Office of Aero-Space Technology

APA applauds NASA Ames Research Center for its historic attention to human factors research but continued cuts to aeronautics programming and a recent reorganization of the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate threaten to dismantle this once world-class center for human factors research. APA recommends that Congress restore NASA's Aeronautics programs to at least the FY06 level of $724 million and carefully examine support for human factors research at NASA.

Two of NASA's long-term interests have been to reduce the aircraft accident rate and increase the aviation throughput, and more recent imperatives include enhanced aviation security. However, increases in air traffic volume, changes to security procedures and airport delays make these challenges especially daunting. The majority of aviation accidents continue to involve human errors not only in the cockpit, but also in operations, maintenance, dispatch, air traffic control, design and manufacturing. Further, human technology issues that lead to security breaches in controlled aviation environments raise a number of operational concerns. The importance of eliminating or at least mitigating the impact of such errors on aviation safety and security continue to be recognized by major reviews of the national airspace (e.g., VISION 2050: An Integrated National Transportation System; Securing the Future of U.S. Air Transportation: A System in Peril) as well as the FAA's Flight Plan. Although NASA's Aviation Safety and Security Program have had a rich history of funding human factors research, the investment in this crucial topic has always been small in comparison to investment in other disciplines, and a fraction of what these multiple reviews have suggested is required to maintain and improve the safety and security of the nation's airspace. Further, it is unclear to what extent a recent reorganization of the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate involved the input of the NASA Human Factors research community.

A safe, secure and efficient airspace of the future will require much greater attention to the design of complex human integrated systems now. Although such systems rely on the combined activities of humans and machines, significant challenges exist for optimizing the roles of each at every level. At the systems level, creating effective teamwork involves many human operators and automated system elements. At the design level, creating effective tools involves developing human-centered operating procedures and system displays. To meet these challenges, NASA research must employ a broad, interdisciplinary approach that includes technology designers, users, and experts in human and organizational performance from the earliest stages of conceptual design through final implementation. Further, airspace management, as a geographically distributed activity, must focus research on keeping humans at the center of coordinated decision-making and planning functions that are mediated by computers and automated systems across the United States and throughout the world.