As you know, NSF is the only federal agency whose primary mission is the support of fundamental research and education in science, math and engineering. Over the past half century, NSF has had monumental impact on our society. The NSF investment in basic research has paid dividends in building the infrastructure of the individual scientific disciplines – including psychology – and has laid the groundwork for innovative interdisciplinary research to meet modern day scientific and technical challenges. Leading edge advances in science and engineering today, more often than not, need cross-disciplinary perspectives, which depend on the vitality of the science, mathematics, computing and engineering disciplines supported by NSF. It is clear that many of the technology innovations enjoyed today are based upon research done twenty and thirty years ago, and that innovations twenty to thirty years in the future will depend upon significant investment in present-day research.

APA appreciates the efforts of this Subcommittee and your colleagues in the Senate on behalf of NSF last year. We applaud the goal of doubling the NSF budget and the FY 2001 appropriation clearly set us on the right path. We believe it is critical not to lose the opportunity to build on this strong start, and we strongly hope that the FY 2002 budget will continue this effort.

Although the new Administration is laudably focused on reinvigorating education as well as medical research, there appears to be less appreciation for the need to support the more basic scientific research underpinning true educational reform and medical breakthroughs. Simply put, basic research is the engine that drives applied developments. For example, geographic information systems, World Wide Web search engines, automatic heart defibrillators, product bar codes, computer aided modeling, retinal implants, optical fibers, magnetic resonance imaging technology, and composite materials used in aircraft all arose from NSF investments in basic research. These methods, products and advances in understanding accrue from basic research performed over many years, not always pre-determined research efforts aimed toward a specific result.

Just as basic research spawns new technologies, basic research also generates new ideas. Psychologists funded by NSF’s Biological Sciences Directorate have developed models for understanding the human brain, how it grows and develops, and how it can deteriorate with aging and disease. This has profound implications for understanding how young children learn and why our aging brains often forget. My own work, funded by NSF’s Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate, aims to discover how normally developing children learn language and how they develop other crucial cognitive capacities, such as remembering where things are and finding their way through their environment. I also study these capacities in children with genetically-caused brain damage, seeking to understand how early brain damage might affect development. The insights that we gain through this kind of basic research are critical to understanding how we can avoid developmental disabilities, or remediate them when they do occur.

Currently, NSF must decline almost as many highly-rated grant proposals as it can fund. Increased funding for NSF will not only enable the funding of more outstanding proposals that will help broaden the nation’s knowledge base, it also will enable the agency to increase the size and duration of its grants. By supporting basic research in all fields of science, this nation can ensure continued economic growth, a better-educated workforce, technological leadership, improved prevention of disease, and strengthened national security.

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APA joins the Coalition for National Security Funding in its strong opposition to the President's proposed budget increase of only 1.3% for NSF in FY 2002. We urge this Subcommittee to provide a minimum of $5.1 billion (a 15% increase) for NSF in FY 2002. We believe this increase is a crucial step toward doubling NSF’s budget by 2006 and reinvesting in the critical basic research enterprise.

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. NASA Human Factors research and technology enhances the national capability to explore the stars, understand our own planet as well as contributing to more affordable and efficient aerospace operations.

NASA is demonstrating an unprecedented interest in psychological and behavioral research. That interest stems from historical observations of astronauts and cosmonauts living aboard Mir, the recognition that a multicultural workforce has built and is occupying the International Space Station, and the longer term goals of sending astronauts to Mars. Psychologists are involved at many levels within NASA studying everything from basic neuroscience in rats to determining how to optimize the habitability of next-generation space suits.

Much of this research has been funded through the Office of Life and Microgravity Science and Applications [OLMSA, recently renamed Office of Biological and Physical Research (OBPR)]. OLMSA has enjoyed active collaborations with the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). With NASA priorities in mind, both of these partner agencies have advanced psychological research. Last year, NSBRI expanded from eight core research teams to twelve including one dedicated to Neurobehavioral and Psychosocial Factors. And last year, 10 NIH Institutes joined NASA in the release of a joint program to help expand the breadth of ground-based research with an increased emphasis on Behavioral and Psychological processes. OBPR leads the nation’s efforts in using the attributes of the space environment to advance knowledge about the effects of gravity on living systems to improve the quality of life on Earth, and to strengthen the foundations for continuing the exploration and utilization of space. However, OBPR still lacks the resources it needs to attract the very best researchers. Despite large numbers of meritorious applications OBPR funds only a small percentage of the applications it receives with relatively short-term awards during a single review cycle each year. APA congratulates NASA for recognizing the critical role that psychological science must play in evaluating and maintaining astronaut health and performance.

In order to redress budgetary short-falls across previous years and to continue advancing our understanding of human adaptation to space, APA joins the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) in recommending an increase of $50 million for investigator-initiated research in FY 2002 for the Office of Biological and Physical Research at NASA.

Another arm of NASA makes good use of psychological science closer to Earth. One of the stated goals of the NASA Administrator is to reduce the aircraft accident rate by a factor of five within 10 years. A second goal is to triple the aviation throughput in all weather conditions by 2007. The vast majority of accidents are attributed to human error. Recent increases in air traffic volume and airport delays make these challenges especially daunting. NASA will need to make an extraordinary investment in human factors research to achieve these ambitious milestones.

Human factors psychologists conduct research on the decision-making processes of pilots and controllers, ensure that new technology is designed with the user in mind, and have played a critical role in our understanding of why mistakes happen when humans are required to operate in a complex environment. Continued research on the complex interactions of flight crews with ground controllers, with cockpit technology, and with other aircraft systems will provide the insight needed to design error-tolerant systems. NASA is pursuing new computational modeling approaches to human-system design and human-computer interaction that permit human-in-the-loop simulation to evaluate new system design concepts. Model-based evaluation of individuals, teams and organizations will contribute to affordable and efficient aerospace systems. NASA has continued to strengthen its existing ties with the Federal Aviation Administration in an effort to advance the common research interests of both agencies in the areas of aviation capacity and safety.

NASA OAST has also "raised the roof" on aerospace operations to include low-earth orbit space operations supporting the International Space Station, reusable launch vehicles and unmanned space operations. A growing commercial space industry requires that the air transportation system of the future incorporate space launch capabilities and new aerospace vehicles. NASA's expertise in aviation human factors and human-centered computing is being applied to the development of better cockpit displays for the astronauts and improved mission support on the ground.

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The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) funds intramural research that supports its clinical mission to care for our nation’s veterans, including medical, rehabilitation and health services research. Mental illness has been designated as a priority area of research, and psychological scientists within the VA continue to make great strides in:

• developing more sensitive diagnostic tools to detect the early stages of Alzheimer's disease and other dementias, problems increasingly seen both in our veterans and our aging population in society at large;
• improving the diagnosis and treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder;
• developing and implementing important substance abuse prevention, cardiac rehabilitation, stress management, vocational, and smoking cessation programs; and
• evaluating the effectiveness of VA health services as they continue to evolve.

We are deeply concerned that for the third year in a row, the initial budget request from the Administration does not recommend a funding increase at all for VA medical research. Despite being a highly productive research program that has a direct impact on the quality and effectiveness of care provided to veterans, the appropriation for VA research consistently has been inadequate to fund many of the proposals rated "highly meritorious" by VA’s renowned peer review process. Over time, VA has accumulated an enormous backlog of approved projects awaiting funding. Each of these is a missed opportunity to advance knowledge of Parkinson’s disease, or Alzheimer’s, or paralysis. Additionally, because VA grantees must be VA employees, the VA research program offers a dedicated funding source to attract and retain high-quality clinical investigators. This in turn ensures that our nation’s veterans receive the highest quality health care. When funding opportunity falls, VA loses this valuable recruiting tool and is less able to leverage VA-appropriated research dollars.

We strongly encourage the Subcommittee to support the VA research program – for too long, this program has suffered from a roller coaster of threatened cuts and flat funding, with an occasional hard-won increase. This instability has made it difficult for the VA research program to maintain its momentum and to attract to VA the talented and skilled personnel necessary to conduct cutting-edge research and to care for veterans.

Summary

On behalf of APA, I would like to express my appreciation for this opportunity to present testimony before the Subcommittee. Psychological scientists address a broad range of important issues and problems confronting our nation, from basic research on children’s acquisition of language, to studies of how to design more error-tolerant aircraft systems and development of tools to better detect Alzheimer's disease. As the Subcommittee considers funding requests, I urge you to place a high priority on the issues I have outlined in my testimony - the need to reinvest in vital behavioral research within the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the VA so that our nation can meet the millennium's scientific and technological challenges.

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