Society for Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Science

Last updated

The Society for Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Science (SEPCS) [1] (also known as American Psychological Association Division 3; formerly known as the Division of Experimental Psychology and the Division for Theoretical-Experimental Psychology) is a scholarly organization of psychologists in the principal area of general experimental psychology. The goals of this society are to promote, advance, and increase inclusion and exchange of ideas among the scholars in the many subfields of experimental psychology (including but not limited to behavior analysis, psychophysics, comparative, social, developmental, bio/physiological/neuropsychology/behavioral neuroscience, and the many topic areas of cognitive psychology, such as the study of memory, attention, language, intelligence, decision making, and so forth), both in basic and applied research. The society focuses on supporting research through advocacy, training and education, public policy, and outreach. It engages in a wide variety of service work, including leadership in the American Psychological Association's governance. [2]

Contents

Membership

There are several memberships that one can have in the SEPCS, including:

Members in the SEPCS may be APA members or fellows who affiliate with Division 3; however, one can join the SEPCS without being a member of APA.

History

When the APA was founded in 1892 by G. Stanley Hall, it was itself a small society of experimental psychologists. Given the rapid growth and breadth of the organization, a new division structure for APA was introduced in 1944, with specialty areas organized under the APA umbrella. Among the 19 charter divisions, General Psychology was Division 1, Teaching was Division 2, and Theoretical-Experimental Psychology was Division 3. Professor Edward C. Tolman of Berkeley, CA was the first Chairman (President) of the division. Charter Division 6 was Physiological and Comparative Psychology, but would merge into Division 3 (renamed the Division of Experimental Psychology) in 1949. [3] Division 6 would re-emerge as a separate division in 1964, although most members of Division 6 (which was renamed the Society for Behavioral Neuroscience and Comparative Psychology in 2015, the same year that Division 3 adopted its current name) remain affiliated also with Division 3.

The list of scholars who have served as officers of Division 3 reflects a virtual "who's who" of psychology. For example, the following psychologists (listed in chronological order) have been elected to lead Division 3 as President (or Chairman in 1945): Edward C. Tolman, Edwin Ray Guthrie, Clarence H. Graham, Clark L. Hull & Frank A. Beach, B.F. Skinner & WJ Brogden, Harry Harlow (1950), Harold H. Schlosberg, Neal E. Miller, Donald O. Hebb, James J. Gibson, Frank A. Geldard, Carl Pfaffmann, Judson S. Brown, William Kaye Estes. Benton J. Underwood (1960), David A. Grant, WD Neff, Lorrin A. Riggs, Lyle V. Jones, Howard H. Kendler, Charles N. Cofer, Richard Soloman, Delos D. Wickens, Arthur W. Melton, Leo J. Postman (1970) James E. Deese, Frank W. Finger, James J. Jenkins, Richard C. Atkinson, Wendell Garner, Gordon H. Bower, Bert F Green, Jr., Frank A. Logan, George Mandler, G. Robert Give, Roger N. Shepard (1980), William Bevan, James Greeno, Julian Hochberg, Robert A. Rescorla, Henry C. Ellis, Herschel W. Liebowitz, Russell M. Church, Elizabeth Loftus, Sam Glucksberg, Stuart H. Hulse (1990), Lyle E. Bourne, Jr., J. Bruce Overmier, Walter Kintsch, Judith P. Goggin, Neal F. Johnson, Geoffrey Keppel, Vincent M. LoLordo, Harry Bahrick, Henry L. Roedigger III (2000), Douglas L. Nelson, Morton Ann Gershbacher, David A. Balota, Randall W. Engle, Alice F. Healy, Thomas R. Zentall, Howard Egeth, Edward Wasserman, Nelson Cowan, Ralph Miller, Jeremy Wolfe (2010), Karen Hollis, Mark A. McDaniel, Nancy Dess, David A. Washburn, Leah Light, Anne Cleary, Jonathon Crystal, Frank Farley, Stephen Goldinger (2020), Stephen J. Ceci, Valerie F. Reyna, Kristi Mulhaup. Professor Elizabeth F. Loftus, who presided over the division's 1988 annual meeting, was the first woman elected to the office.

Awards

Lifetime Achievement Award [4]

The award will honor an individual who has made long-lasting and distinguished theoretical and/or empirical contributions to basic research in experimental psychology. The awardee will receive a plaque and will be invited to present an address at the next APA convention.

Recipients of the Society for Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Sciences Lifetime Achievement Award

2021: Alice F. Healey, PhD

2020: Nelson Cowan, PhD

2019: Harry Bahrick, PhD

2018: Michael I. Posner, PhD

2017: Anne Treisman, PhD and Morton Ann Gernschbacher, PhD

2016: Henry L. "Roddy" Roediger III, PhD & Duane M. Rumbaugh, PhD

2015: Larry L. Jacoby, PhD

2014: Keith Rayner, PhD

2013: Randall W. Engle, PhD

New Investigator Award [5]

Since 1995, Division 3 has presented awards to honor outstanding new investigators. Each year the editors of each of the five sections of the Journal of Experimental Psychology are asked to nominate individuals based on the editors’ judgment of the most outstanding empirical papers published or accepted during that year that were authored by a new scholar (i.e., no more than three years post-PhD). The awards committee then makes recommendations to the Division 3 executive board for final approval. Typically, but not always, there is one winner from each journal.

Publications

SEPCS publishes a bi-annual newsletter, The Experimental Psychology Bulletin, [6] which encompasses member news, and recent awards, amongst others.

The five flagship Journals of Experimental Psychology of the society, each published by the APA:

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American Psychological Association</span> Scientific and professional organization

The American Psychological Association (APA) is the main professional organization of psychologists in the United States, and the largest psychological association in the world. It has over 157,000 members, including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students. It has 54 divisions, which function as interest groups for different subspecialties of psychology or topical areas. The APA has an annual budget of around $125 million.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edward C. Tolman</span> American psychologist (1886–1959)

Edward Chace Tolman was an American psychologist and a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. Through Tolman's theories and works, he founded what is now a branch of psychology known as purposive behaviorism. Tolman also promoted the concept known as latent learning first coined by Blodgett (1929). A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Tolman as the 45th most cited psychologist of the 20th century.

Diane F. Halpern is an American psychologist and former president of the American Psychological Association (APA). She is Dean of Social Science at the Minerva Schools at KGI and also the McElwee Family Professor of Psychology at Claremont McKenna College. She is also a former president of the Western Psychological Association, The Society for the Teaching of Psychology, and the Division of General Psychology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Psychonomic Society</span>

The Psychonomic Society is an international scientific society of over 4,500 scientists in the field of experimental psychology. The mission of the Psychonomic Society is to foster the science of cognition through the advancement and communication of basic research in experimental psychology and allied sciences. It is open to international researchers, and almost 40% of members are based outside of North America. Although open to all areas of experimental and cognitive psychology, its members typically study areas such as learning, memory, attention, motivation, perception, categorization, decision making, and psycholinguistics. Its name is taken from the word psychonomics, meaning "the science of the laws of the mind".

Quantitative psychology is a field of scientific study that focuses on the mathematical modeling, research design and methodology, and statistical analysis of psychological processes. It includes tests and other devices for measuring cognitive abilities. Quantitative psychologists develop and analyze a wide variety of research methods, including those of psychometrics, a field concerned with the theory and technique of psychological measurement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lisa Feldman Barrett</span> American psychological scientist and neuroscientist

Lisa Feldman Barrett is a University Distinguished Professor of psychology at Northeastern University, where she focuses on affective science. She is a director of the Interdisciplinary Affective Science Laboratory. Along with James Russell, she is the founding editor-in-chief of the journal Emotion Review. Along with James Gross, she founded the Society for Affective Science.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mahzarin Banaji</span> Indian social psychologist (born 1959)

Mahzarin Rustum Banaji FBA is an American psychologist of Indian origin at Harvard University, known for her work popularizing the concept of implicit bias in regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, and other factors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nora Newcombe</span>

Nora S. Newcombe is the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Psychology and the James H. Glackin Distinguished Faculty Fellow at Temple University. She is a Canadian-American researcher in cognitive development, cognitive psychology and cognitive science, and expert on the development of spatial thinking and reasoning and episodic memory. She was the principal investigator of the Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center (2006-2018), one of six Science of Learning Centers funded by the National Science Foundation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Larry Squire</span> American psychologist

Larry Ryan Squire is an American psychiatrist and neuroscientist. He is a professor of psychiatry, neurosciences, and psychology at the University of California, San Diego, and a Senior Research Career Scientist at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, San Diego. He is a leading investigator of the neurological bases of memory, which he studies using animal models and human patients with memory impairment.

Isabel Gauthier is a cognitive neuroscientist, and the David K. Wilson Professor of Psychology and head of the Object Perception Lab at Vanderbilt University’s Department of Psychology. In 2000, with the support of the James S. McDonnell Foundation, she founded the Perceptual Expertise Network (PEN), which now comprises over ten labs based across North America. In 2006 PEN became part of the NSF-funded Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center (TDLC).

Gordon Logan is the Centennial Professor of Psychology at Vanderbilt University. A cognitive and mathematical psychologist, Logan is well known for his work on cognitive control and inhibition of cognitive and motor activity, divided attention and the nature of the human brain’s processing limitations, and the fundamental characterization of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder ADHD. He has also done extensive research on the hierarchical control of skilled copytyping, which he views as a useful model for hierarchically organized complex human skills in general. He collaborates on research that applies mathematical models to neural and behavioral data.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eric Youngstrom</span> American psychologist

Eric Arden Youngstrom is an American clinical child and adolescent psychologist, professor of psychology and neuroscience, and psychiatry, at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association. His research focuses on evidence-based assessment, and assessment of bipolar disorder across the life span.

Marvin R. Goldfried is an American psychologist and retired distinguished professor of clinical psychology at Stony Brook University. His area of interest include psychotherapy integration and LGBT issues. He is married to Anita Goldfried and has two sons, Daniel and Michael.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karen Saywitz</span> American psychologist

Karen Jill Saywitz was an American psychologist, author, and educator. She worked as a developmental and clinical psychologist and professor at the UCLA School of Medicine and Department of Psychiatry and Development. For more than 20 years Saywitz taught child development and was director of several mental health programs for families. She also developed "non-leading" techniques for interviewing child witnesses and victims, based on cognitive and developmental psychology principles. She died of cancer in 2018.

David Alan Washburn is an American psychologist who is professor emeritus of psychology and neuroscience at Georgia State University. From 2001 to 2019, he also served as the Director of the Georgia State University Language Research Center. In August, 2019, he retired at Georgia State University and joined the faculty of his alma mater as professor of psychology at Covenant College. His research includes studies of individual and group differences in cognitive competencies, particularly attention and its relation to learning, memory, and executive functioning. He is best known for his noninvasive behavioral and cognitive research with monkeys, using game-like computerized tasks.

Adriana Galván is an American psychologist and expert on adolescent brain development. She is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where she directs the Developmental Neuroscience laboratory. She was appointed the Jeffrey Wenzel Term Chair in Behavioral Neuroscience and the Dean of Undergraduate Education at UCLA.

Antonette M. Zeiss is an American clinical psychologist. Zeiss was chief consultant for mental health services at the Central Office of the United States Department of Veterans Affairs – the first woman and the first psychologist and nonphysician to hold this position. In 2013 she received the APA Award for Lifetime Contributions to Psychology from the American Psychological Association (APA).

William D. Timberlake was a psychologist and animal behavior scientist. His work included behavioral economics, contrast effects, spatial cognition, adjunctive behavior, time horizons, and circadian entrainment of feeding and drug use. He is best known for his theoretical work: Behavior Systems Theory and the Disequilibrium Theory of reinforcement.

Jessica Henderson Daniel is a psychologist and educator, known for her work on mental health in the Black community, racial trauma, and the effects of stress and violence on Black children and adolescents. Daniel was the first African American woman to lead the American Psychological Association (APA), serving her term as President of the organization in 2018.

J. Bruce Overmier is an American experimental psychologist, author, and academic. He is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychology at the University of Minnesota (UMN).

References

  1. "APA Division 3". www.apadivisions.org. Retrieved 2019-06-02.
  2. "About the Society for Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Science". www.apadivisions.org. Retrieved 2016-10-27.
  3. Dewsberry, Donald A. "A HISTORY OF DIVISION 6 (BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE AND COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY): NOW YOU SEE IT, NOW YOU DON'T, NOW YOU SEE IT" (PDF). Retrieved 2019-06-02.
  4. "Lifetime Achievement Award". www.apadivisions.org. Retrieved 2016-10-27.
  5. "Division 3 New Investigator Awards". www.apadivisions.org. Retrieved 2016-10-27.
  6. "The Experimental Psychology Bulletin". www.apadivisions.org. Retrieved 2016-10-27.