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Chad Dube, a grad student in Caren Rotello’s lab, has accepted a postdoc position with Robert Sekuler at Brandeis University. He will be working on quantitative modeling of short-term recognition memory and associative recognition

Lori Astheimer Best, a Neuroscience and Behavioral doctoral student in Lisa Sanders’s lab has accepted a postdoctoral fellowship to work with Dr. Ellen Bialystok at York University to work on language, bilingualism, and cognitive development.

Jeff Blaustein has been awarded another grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to study factors mediating effects of pubertal stressors on adult response to hormones

Tammy Rahhal and John Bickford win Student Choice Awards

Tammy and John were selected as a Residential First-Year Experience Student Choice Award Winners for their contributions to the academic success of first-year students at UMASS.  This is Tammy's second year and John's third year to win this award.

HOLLY GRANT wins Jamie's Smile Outstanding Service Award

Jaime’s Smile was begun by emeritus professor Norm Simonson and his wife, Stacy, on the birth of his son, Jaime, 10 years ago.  The story goes that when Jaime was born his smile was so infectious that his parent’s were inspired to begin a small award in his name.  This award is available to anyone in Division IV, and is for someone who provides a non-expected degree of support to division functions, or who generally goes above-and-beyond the call of duty.  In the past it has been awarded to people in the clinic who have provided outstanding client service.  Last year it went to the whole 3^rd year class for their contributions and this year it went to Holly Grant-Marsney for her excellent work on the Division’s Diversity Committee (as opposed to the department’s diversity committee), and most especially for her work in organizing the Diversity Retreat held during winter break.

The six year old on this April's issue of Science is Professor Emeritus, Alexander Pollatsek. The photo was similar to one that appeared in Life Magazine on March 22, 1948 (in the Life photo, the other children were cropped out).  It appeared in an article titled “Genius School” about Professor Pollatsek's elementary school, Hunter College Elementary School, which was the only special elementary school in New York City for “gifted” children.  However, he did not continue on in a field of science (as often defined).  Professor Pollastsek does have master’s degrees in chemistry and mathematics, but his field is cognitive psychology. 

His primary research has been on reading using eye movements (in conjunction with Keith Rayner), and he contends they have learned a lot about the reading process using this method (including that people basically just process one word at a time).  Professor Pollatsek has also been involved in funded research on the understanding and misunderstanding of statistics (in conjunction with Clifford Konold and Arnold Well), and more recently has turned to studying driving and driving safety with Donald Fisher – also using eye movements as a primary variable of attention.  He is still active in all three areas at age 70.

Susan Whitbourne received a Residential First Year Experience Students Choice Award and a campus Phi Kappa Phi Award on April 10, 2011.

Mike Royer In Indonesia

Professor Royer has been working on a USAID funded project in Indonesia since 2005.  In March 2011 he traveled to Indonesia and conducted workshops in Banda Aceh (the site of the 2004 tsunami that killed 170,000 people), Malang and Makassar Indonesia.  Part of UMass's involvement in the project has entailed developing capacity in Indonesia in educational measurement.  The UMass team has developed several instructional modules and Royer and his colleagues provided workshops on the content of the modules and instruction in how they might be integrated into        Indonesian university courses containing content on educational measurement.

Buju Dasgupta’s  Team Researches Women, Math and Science

"Increasing the visibility of female scientists, engineers and mathematicians, and providing young women who are beginners in these disciplines the opportunity to have personal contact with them, profoundly benefits their self perception in STEM," they summarize. The women subjects tried harder on difficult math tests, showed more positive attitudes toward math and engineering, identified with these disciplines more strongly and felt more empowered about their ability to do well in the future after being exposed to female scientists and engineers rather than males. Findings are in the February issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.” Lab Manager.com

Their research has been picked up in two other publications: Slate.com and LabManager.com

Hal Grotevant Elected

to the Board of Directors of the North American Council on Adoptable Children (NACAC). This council promotes and supports permanent families for children and youth in the U.S. and Canada who have been in care - especially those in foster care and those with special needs. Through advocacy, education, adoption support, and leadership development in the U.S. and Canada, NACAC helps to reform systems, alter viewpoints, and change the lives of children and families.

Susan Whitborne was presented with a Presidential Citation from the American Psychological Association by Melba J.T. Vasquez this past February. The citation says in part "The author of over 130 refereed articles and book chapters and 15 books (many in multiple editions and translations), her most recent work is The Search For Fulfillment. Her research covers a wide range of topics related to adult development and aging, including personality development through midlife, contributors to sucessful aging, predictors of memory performance, and the relationship between physical health and sense of personal identity.....Dr. Whitbourne is commended for her longstanding and passionate commitment to pyschology and to APA."

Ervin Staub has been awarded the 7th Annual Morton Deutsch Awards for Distinguished Contributions to Social Justice.  April 14th he will presented with the award and give a talk. He will talk about humanizing the “other,” creating constructive ideologies, promoting active bystandership by individuals and nations to prevent the evolution of increasing hostility and violence, and constructive leadership. He will discuss interventions in Rwanda and elsewhere to help people heal from past violence and reconcile, and research evaluating their effects. He will talk about rescuers, resisting evil, and ways to develops inclusive caring and moral courage.

Ervin Staub is Founding Director of the Psychology of Peace and Violence Doctoral Program at the University of Massachusetts. His latest book is Overcoming Evil: Genocide, violent conflict and terrorism (2011).

The Hampshire Gazette has published a two-part series written by Christopher Overtree titled "To counter bullying, look to accentuate the positive." The first part of the article ran in the February 7th edition, with the second on the following Monday. As a part of the national ASPIRE project, the Gazette is publishing the two part series to "present commonsense solutions to the problem of behavior, such as bullying, that belittles and disrespects others."

Chris says, "I am pleased they chose to run the piece in two-parts, as opposed to asking me to cut it down...It gives a good picture of a process in which schools and communities can begin to make progress around these tough issues, something that relies heavily on student leadership, civic engagement, and programs that build on the existing strengths of our students, teachers, parents and school administrators..."

Linda Tropp was interviewed on the radio station WAMC  to talk about her new co-edited book “Moving Beyond Prejudice Reduction: Pathways to Positive Intergroup Relations,” which explores intergroup relations. It was published to coincide with the Martin LutherKing holiday.

Todd Harris has some upcoming conference presentations:

1) "Identifying, Selecting and Developing High-Potential Leaders: Making It Work" - 20th Annual Gulf Coast Symposium on Human Resources Issues, Houston, TX, May 11-12th, 2011

2) "High-Stakes Hiring: When You Absolutely, Positively Have to Get It Right" - 26th Annual Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology Conference, Chicago, IL, April 14th-16th, 2011

 and was has been active in the media.

1) Todd was interviewed recently by a reporter from this publication (www.infoworld.com), primarily about the impact of personality on individual and team performance in information technology (IT) companies.

2) Todd will also be taping a spot sometime soon for this organization (http://www.bigtrucktv.com/) highlighting the research that he has done in the occupational health and safety realm, specifically as it applies to reducing the likelihood of truck drivers having accidents.

Jane Stout has accepted a postdoctoral position at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She will be working with a research team studying ways to eliminate stereotype threat among women in math and science.

Grant to fund Whitbourne's research on videogames and cognition in older adults

Susan K. Whitbourne, professor in the Department of Psychology, was recently awarded a grant from PopCap Games, Inc., a leading developer of popular videogames such as Bejeweled, Peggle, and Bookworm.

The grant will fund a project to study the transferability of videogame training on cognitive skills such as visual search processes. The study is unique in that it will use the extremely popular puzzle game Bejeweled Blitz to investigate the cognitive effects of videogame play in both younger adults (18-24 years of age) and older adults (ages 65 and over).

The investigators hope the study will show that this training produces transferable skills to real-world tasks involving rapid decision-making. If successful, games such as Bejeweled Blitz could prove to be valuable training aids for older adults looking to improve cognitive skills such as reaction time, attention, and visual search processes that are used in everyday activities such as driving.

Jeff Blaustein was awarded the 2011 UMass Amherst Distinguished Alumni Award to be presented at the State House in April this spring.

Lisa Sanders just published a collaborative work.

Sanders, L. D., Zobel, B. H., Freyman, R., L., and Keen, R. (2011). Manipulations of listeners' echo perception are reflected in event-related potentials. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 129, 301-309

Icek Aizen presented two keynote addresses overseas recently:

Environmental Protection and the Theory of Planned Behavior. Keynote Address. 
Symposium, "Theory of Planned Behavior: Recent developments and applications to pro-environmental behavior." 
Environmental Center, Charles University, Prague, 2010.

Fertility Intentions and the Theory of Planned Behavior.  Keynote Address.
"From Intentions to Behavior: Reproductive Decision-Making in a Macro-Micro Perspective." 
Vienna Institute of Demography, Vienna, Austria, 2010.

Linda Tropp, a social psychologist at University of Massachusetts, and Robyn Mallet of Loyola University of Chicago, co-edited a book about positive relations among different ethnic groups published last week on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday.

The book titled “Moving Beyond Prejudice Reduction: Pathways to Positive Intergroup Relations,” explores new methods to improve interactions and promote empathy between racial minority and majority groups. Traditionally, social scientists have tried to understand why discrimination is prominent between members of different cultural groups and have worked to lessen it. Tropp and Mallet, however, believed research should go beyond simply diminishing intolerance in order to find what motivates people to interact with other races.

To read more of the Daily Collegian article click here.