2010 Department News
department of psychology
Go to Photos from 2010 ยป
Basic Psychological Science Research grant
Jill Waring has received a 2010 Basic Psychological Science Research grant. This award from the APA provides support for graduate students conducting psychological science research studies.
In Building a Script for an Emotion, Do Preschoolers Add Its Cause Before Its Behavior Consequence?
As children build a script for each emotion, in what order do they add each subevents (e.g., cause, consequence)? For some emotions, more children associated the emotion with the cause than with the consequence, but the reverse was true others. Subevents are added to scripts in a different order for different emotions.
Pumpkin Contest
The Infant and Child Cognition Lab decorated pumpkins the Friday before Halloween.
Talk for BC Alumni
Elizabeth Kensinger gave a talk on "Emotion and Memory Changes in Aging" for BC Alumni at and event organized by the Alumni Association.
Still Present Pasts exhibit
Ramsay Liem was recently interviewed by the Associated Press about unresolved legacies of trauma from the Korean War for an article about the 60th anniversary of the first hot war of the Cold War. He also appeared on the Hawaiian NBC television affiliate, KHNL, to talk about the opening of his exhibit, Still Present Pasts: Korean Americans and the "Forgotten War" at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu (6/25-9/12/2010).
Related to this showing, the exhibit creators received a letter of commendation for "strengthening our communities by creating this public space of 'embodying' and 'remembering' history," from Kiran Ahuja, Executive Director of the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
Faculty Focus on Sara Cordes
The Infant and Child Cognition lab, run by Sara Cordes, is featured in Boston College Magazine's Light the World section. Click here for the full article.
Instant Recall
Scott Slotnick's research on visual memory appears in Boston College Magazine in the Advances section.
Shannon Snapp receives Mentoring Excellence Award
Shannon Snapp was selected by a committee of faculty, staff, and students to receive a 2010 University Award. The award description for the "Mentoring Excellence" award reads as follows:
The Mentoring Excellence Award is given to the student who has committed himself or herself to advancing intellectual dialogue and inquiry through mentorship of other Boston College students.
Shannon will receive the award at the Graduate and Professional Student Awards Banquet, Tuesday, April 20.
Harvard University Mind Brain Behavior Initiative Postdoctoral Fellowship
Kristen Lindquist has been awarded a Harvard Mind Brain and Behavior fellowship to support her postdoctoral research. MBB fellowships are given to support postdocs who have achieved excellence in at least one of the disciplines that comprise the mind or brain sciences and who wish to pursue research that transcends disciplinary boundaries to connect two or more fields of study. Kristen will work under the advisement of Dr. Bradford Dickerson (Department of Neurology, Harvard Medical School) and Dr. Christine Hooker (Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts and Sciences) to investigate the affect-based deficits that occur in frontotemporal dementia.
Is talent taught rather than innate? No.
In The Times of London Science Magazine, Eureka, Ellen Winner wrote the "No" position in response to the question of whether talent is taught rather than innate.
Brain Awareness Week
Members of the Boston College Psychology department went to a local school and housing project to teach children about the brain this month. Hands-on activities included making a brain out of clay and learning about the lobes, making neurons out of pipe cleaners, playing pin the spinal cord on the brain and many others. This outreach and education effort was part of a global campaign to increase public awareness about brain research. Next month the group will continue the outreach by giving talks about the brain at a local senior center.
Psi Chi Graduate Research Grant
Katherine Mickley Steinmetz has been awarded a Psi Chi Graduate Research Grant. This grant will be used to fund her dissertation work on emotional memory trade-offs as a function of trait anxiety and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Postdoctoral Fellowship
Kristen Lindquist has accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at the Martinos Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she will work with Dr. Brad Dickerson in the department of Neurology. Kristen will study the emotion- and affect-based changes that occur in disordered aging to shed light on the neural mechanisms that ground emotions more generally.
Body Satisfaction in Adolescent Females
Shannon Snapp's poster presentation entitled "Body Satisfaction in Adolescent Females: An Analysis of Protective Factors" was accepted for presentation at the 2010 Conference on Human Development in NYC in April 9-11.
Frank X. Barron Award
Thalia Goldstein has been awarded the Frank X. Barron award for 2010. This annual award is given for outstanding work by a student scholar in APA Division 10 (Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts).
MPRF NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship
Thalia has been awarded a two-year postdoctoral fellowship from the National Science Foundation, to begin August 1. She will be joining the Mind and Development Lab at Yale University under the supervision of Dr. Paul Bloom.
Thalia Goldstein interviewed by Arts|Learning
Arts|Learning (formerly the National Arts and Learning Collaborative) received a Kennedy Center grant to create a short 10-12 minute film for arts education advocacy purposes. The point of this film is to highlight some of the remarkable and recent arts education research that has occurred in the New England region. Thalia's research on theatre will be included in the film.
Congratulations to Michael Numan on AAAS Fellowship
On January 30, the Department celebrated Michael Numan's election to the rank of Fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Election to rank of AAAS Fellow
Michael Numan was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Each year the AAAS Council elects members whose efforts on behalf of the advancement of science or its applications are scientifically or socially distinguished. Michael Numan is being honored for original discoveries and the continuing elucidation of the hormonal, neurotransmitter, and neural basis of maternal behavior in mammals.