Tag Archives: American Psychological Association

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Charles Brainerd to receive G. Stanley Hall Award

Charles Brainerd, professor of human development and human neuroscience, will receive the American Psychological Association’s G. Stanley Hall award for distinguished contributions to developmental science at the APA’s August 2019 meeting in San Francisco.

Assisted-living is better when family and staff communicate

Karl Pillemer, the Hazel E. Reed Professor in Human Development and senior associate dean for research and outreach in the College of Human Ecology, has developed the Partners in Caregiving in Assisted Living Program (PICAL)  to reduce staff-family conflict in assisted living facilities.

Institute for the Social Sciences grant awarded to bethany ojalheto

The Institute for the Social Sciences (ISS) grants awards to faculty to develop new research or seek external funding. bethany ojalehto received funding for her project, "Cognitive Drivers of Environmental Decision Making: Mobilizing Indigenous Ecocentric Conceptual Perspectives in Diverse Contexts."

Our brains are wired to earn money, but not save it

Adam Anderson and Eve De Rosa recently studied why it is hard for people to save money. They found that when people were given the choice, over 90% of the time they chose earning money to saving it. They discuss how our brains may be hard-wired for earning and that saving requires more conscious effort.

Teens old for their grade more likely to enroll in college

Felix Thoemmes uses math models to better understand why high school students who are old for their grade are more likely to enroll in college than students who are young. The article discusses how the age at which one starts school has implications for each student as well as for the class as a whole.

MULTIMEDIA

Robert Sternberg and the Triangular Theory of Love

Robert Sternberg was interviewed on October 9, 2018 for the podcast, What Makes Us Human?from Cornell University's College of Arts & Sciences. This is the podcast's third season, "What Do We Know About Love?" and Dr. Sternberg discusses his "Triangular Theory of Love."

 

Developmental psychologist Charles Brainerd to receive APA award

Reprinted from the Cornell Chronicle, by Stephen D'Angelo,

Charles Brainerd

Charles Brainerd, professor of human development and human neuroscience, will receive the American Psychological Association’s G. Stanley Hall award for distinguished contributions to developmental science at the APA’s August 2019 meeting in San Francisco.

Regarded as the highest honor in the field of developmental psychology, the award is given to an individual or research team who has made distinguished contributions to developmental psychology in research, student training and other scholarly endeavors.

Brainerd’s research has had an impact on educational, developmental and cognitive psychology, and he is credited with major breakthroughs across his theoretical and empirical work.

“Chuck has done groundbreaking work in human memory and reasoning through experimental behavioral methods, mathematical models and neuroscience techniques,” said Qi Wang, professor of human development and department chair. “He co-developed fuzzy-trace theory of memory, judgment and decision-making that has been widely applied in the law and in medicine. His work exemplifies the best integration of theory-driven experimentation and evidence-based translational research.”

According to the APA, the award is based on the scientific merit of the individual’s work, the importance of this work for opening up new empirical or theoretical areas of developmental psychology, and the importance of the individual’s work linking developmental psychology with issues confronting society or with other disciplines.

Brainerd’s current research centers on the relationship between memory and higher reasoning abilities in children and adults, also focusing on false-memory phenomena, cognitive neuroscience, aging and neurocognitive impairment.

He has published more than 300 research articles and chapters and more than 20 books. His research covers human memory and decision-making, statistics and mathematical modeling, cognitive neuroscience, learning, intelligence, cognitive development, learning disability and child abuse.

Brainerd has been elected to the National Academy of Education; is a fellow of the Division of General Psychology, the Division of Experimental Psychology, the Division of Developmental Psychology and the Division of Educational Psychology of the American Psychological Association; and is a fellow of the American Psychological Society.

The editor of the journal Developmental Review, Brainerd has served as associate editor for journals including Child Development and The Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

Brainerd’s win of the 2019 G. Stanley Hall Award immediately follows the 2018 win of Stephen Ceci, the Helen L. Carr Professor of Developmental Psychology in the Department of Human Development.

Stephen D’Angelo is assistant director of communications at the College of Human Ecology.

Reprinted from The Cornell Chronicle, September 14, 2017.

by Stephen D'Angelo

Stephen Ceci

Stephen Ceci, the Helen L. Carr Professor of Developmental Psychology in the Department of Human Development, will receive the American Psychological Associations’ G. Stanley Hall award for distinguished contributions to developmental science at APA’s August 2018 meeting in San Francisco.

The highest honor in the field of developmental psychology, the award is given to an individual or research team who has made distinguished contributions to developmental psychology in research, student training and other scholarly endeavors.

“Steve has made seminal contributions to the basic scientific research of the developing mind in young children and to the critical translation of research findings to real-life settings,” said Qi Wang, professor of human development and department chair. “His work best exemplifies the integrative approaches that we take in the use of scientific theories and methods to vigorously study real-world problems in diverse populations.”

The award is based on the scientific merit of the individual’s work, the importance of this work for opening up new empirical or theoretical areas of developmental psychology, and the importance of the individual’s work in linking developmental psychology with issues confronting society or with other disciplines.

Ceci has written approximately 450 articles, books, commentaries, reviews and chapters. He has served on the advisory board of the National Science Foundation for seven years and was a member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Board of Behavioral and Sensory Sciences. He is past president of the Society for General Psychology, serves on 11 editorial boards, including Scientific American Mind, and is senior adviser to several journals.

Ceci’s honors include the American Academy of Forensic Psychology’s Lifetime Distinguished Contribution Award (2000), the American Psychological Association’s Division of Developmental Psychology’s Lifetime Award for Science and Society (2002), the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award for the Application of Psychology (2003), the Association for Psychological Science’s James McKeen Cattell Award (2005), the Society for Research in Child Development’s lifetime distinguished contribution award (2013) and the American Psychological Association’s E.L. Thorndike Award for lifetime contribution to empirical and theoretical psychology (2015).

Stephen D’Angelo is assistant director of communications at the College of Human Ecology.

The American Psychological Association (APA) offers a 5-credit continuing education course based on the book, The Neuroscience of Risky Decision Making by Valerie Reyna and Vivian Zayas.

Whether the decision is to have unprotected sex, consent to surgery, spend rather than save for retirement, or have an extra piece of pie, risky decisions permeate our lives, sometimes with disastrous consequences. How and why risk taking occurs has important implications, yet many questions remain about how various factors influence decision-making.

This book advances basic understanding and scientific theory about the brain mechanisms underlying risky decision making, paving the way for translation of science into practice and policy. This compelling research topic crosses a number of disciplines, including social, cognitive, and affective (emotion) neuroscience psychology, brain sciences, law, behavioral economics, and addiction.

Learning Objectives of the course:

  • Describe the processes that govern risky decision-making.
  • Evaluate recent research on neurobiological and psychological theory that underlie risky decision-making, including recent theory on triple processing.
  • Identify the differences that underlie decision making in childhood, adolescence and older adulthood.

The American Psychological Association (APA) offers a 6-credit continuing education course based on the book, Emotion, Aging and Health by Anthony Ong and Corinna Loeckenhoff.

Although older adults face significant health challenges, they tend to have better emotion regulation skills than younger or middle-age adults. Why is this so? And how might we use this knowledge to promote better health and well-being in adulthood and later life?

This book explores the reciprocal relations between aging and emotion, as well as applications for promoting mental and physical health across the lifespan. The authors discuss the neural and cognitive mechanisms behind age-related shifts in affective experience and processing.

In addition to presenting emotion regulation strategies for offsetting age-related declines in mental and physical functioning, the book examines the role of culture and motivation in shaping emotional experience across the lifespan, as well as the factors defining boundary conditions between human illness and human flourishing in old age.

By highlighting these major advances in interdisciplinary research, the authors suggest promising avenues for intervention.

Learning Objectives:

  • Describe the reciprocal relations between aging and emotion.
  • Explain the neural and cognitive mechanisms behind age-related shifts in affective experience and processing.
  • Apply emotion regulation strategies to offset age-related declines in mental and physical functioning.

Emotion, Aging, and Health (Bronfenbrenner Series on the Ecology of Human Development) 

Edited by Anthony D. Ong and Corinna E. Löckenhoff

Although older adults face significant health challenges, they tend to have better emotion regulation skills than younger or middle-age adults. Why is this so? This book explores the reciprocal relations between aging and emotion, as well as applications for promoting mental and physical health across the lifespan. The authors discuss the neural and cognitive mechanisms behind age-related shifts in affective experience and processing. In addition to presenting emotion regulation strategies for offsetting age-related declines in mental and physical functioning, the book examines the role of culture and motivation in shaping emotional experience across the lifespan, as well as the factors defining boundary conditions between human illness and human flourishing in old age.

Robert Sternberg

Reprinted from the Cornell Chronicle, March 6, 2017.

By Susan Kelley

Robert J. Sternberg, professor of human development in the College of Human Ecology, has been selected to receive the 2017 William James Fellow Award from the Association for Psychological Science. The award is given annually and honors association members for their lifetime of outstanding intellectual contributions to the basic science of psychology.

Sternberg will receive the award and deliver an address during the association’s 29th annual convention May 25-28 in Boston. His address will discuss society’s promotion of intelligence at the expense of wisdom, resulting in an overpopulation of “smart fools:” people with decent or even stellar IQs whose preoccupation with themselves and others they perceive to be “like them” – at the expense of people “not like them” – imperils society and the world.

Sternberg transformed the study of intelligence with his “triarchic” theory of successful intelligence. It distinguishes among three aspects of intelligence: analytical, creative and practical. In a more recent augmented version of the theory, Sternberg has added a fourth aspect: wisdom. Within this framework, Sternberg and his colleagues have developed assessments to identify people who are gifted in ways that IQ and other standardized tests do not capture. According to Sternberg, successful intelligence is one’s developed ability to create and implement a meaningful life plan that enables one to achieve success according to one’s own concept of success, and to work toward achieving a common good.

“I’m honored to receive this award, which reflects in small part my contributions over the years and in large part the contributions of my advisers, students and family to making my career possible,” Sternberg said. “The award thus is really a collective one, as are all scientific awards, to the large network of colleagues and family who contribute to an individual career.”

Sternberg has tested and supported his intelligence theories using several kinds of methods. These include reaction time and error rate, cultural, convergent and discriminant, and instructional analysis, among other methods. His insights have had relevance for teaching, university admissions policy, the understanding of developmental processes and the prediction of leadership potential, the association said.

Sternberg is the author of more than 1,600 peer-reviewed research publications. His work has been cited by academic authors 124,410 times. He is the third-most frequently cited living author in introductory-psychology textbooks.

“His prolific efforts in bringing theories, methods and applications together in landmark handbooks and other publications have advanced our ability to facilitate human achievement,” according to a statement from the association.

Sternberg is past president of several national organizations, including the American Psychological Association and the Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences. He is also the editor of the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science.

Sternberg previously won the James McKeen Cattell Award from the same association for his contributions to applications of psychological science.