Faculty
Earl (Buz) Hunt Wins Lifetime Contribution Award
Buz Hunt, professor emeritus of psychology, will receive the Association for Psychological Science’s James McKean Cattell award for lifetime contributions to scientific psychology. The award will be made at the 2011 conference of the society. The APS is the largest non-clinical psychological organization in the world, and regards the Cattell Award as their highest honor. The award from the APS comes on the heels of the Lifetime Achievement award from the International Society for Intelligence Research that Buz received in December 2009.
Buz has been a professor at the University of Washington since 1966, coming here from previous positions at Yale, UCLA, and the University of Sydney, in Australia. In addition to his work in Psychology, he was a member of the group that founded the Computer Science Department, and also served as an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science. While generally focusing on issues in cognition, Buz’s research is particularly noteworthy because it spans multiple topics and techniques. His research has included psychopharmacological studies of drugs that improve learning in animals, studies of artificial intelligence and the use of expert systems computer programs in education. His primary research interest has focused on individual differences in cognition with a particular emphasis on intelligence.
He and the late Professor Clifford Lunneborg conducted studies that established a link between information processing models of human thought and individual differences in intelligence. His 1995 book, Will we be smart enough?, won the American Psychological Association’s William James book award in 1996. His work has been characterized by the use of mathematical models, an interest that he has pursued during his active retirement. His book on the topic, The Mathematics of Behavior, is a Scientific American book club entry.
Buz emphasizes that while Lifetime Achievement awards are given to individuals, they also highlight the team of colleagues who have worked with the recipient. In particular, he acknowledges his many colleagues who, as postgraduates, graduate students, or undergraduates, worked in his laboratory, and to the administrative support staff who also made his work possible.
New Autism Center Director
Welcome Wendy Stone! Wendy joins the Psychology Department as a professor in the Child Clinical area and director of the UW's Autism Center. World renowed for her research on the development of autism, Wendy comes to us from the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center's Treatment and Research Institute for Autism Spectrum Disorders and the Marino Autism Research Institute at Vanderbilt University. Please read more about Wendy here.
Recent Major Grant Awards
The UW Psychology Department is one of the most successful in the country at securing grant awards – a testament to the high quality research programs of our faculty. Our most recent awards include:
Associate Professor Sean O’Donnell was awarded a three year, $230,000 grant from the National Science Foundation entitled, “Comparative-Developmental Analysis of Brain Architecture in Social Wasps.” Sean’s research examines how brain architecture changes in response to social complexity in insects. Wasps, in particular, have a wide range of social behaviors and provide a window on the co-evolution of brain architecture and social interactions.
In addition to the grant from the NSF, Sean was also recently elected vice-chair for research for the Organization for Tropical Studies. The organization provides leadership in education, research and the responsible use of natural resources in the tropics. It conducts graduate and undergraduate education, facilitates research, participates in tropical forest conservation, maintains three biological stations in Costa Rica and conducts environmental education programs.
Research Associate Professor Lynn Fainsilber Katz was recently awarded a five year, $1.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health and National Cancer Institute entitled, “Pediatric Cancer, Family Conflict and Child Adjustment.” The overall goal of the research is to improve the quality of life of child cancer survivors and their family members. Recent evidence suggests that children with cancer have higher levels of conflict with their parents. The aim of this research is to understand why and to identify techniques to minimize the impact of the stress and family conflict associated with a cancer diagnosis.
Associate Professor Lori Zoellner has received a five year, $1.8 million dollar grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, in collaboration with Case Western Reserve University, entitled, “Optimizing PTSD Treatments.” Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a terrifying event in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened. Traumatic events that may trigger PTSD include violent personal assaults, natural or human-caused disasters, accidents, or military combat. Though both drug-based and counseling-based approaches are known to help with PTSD, how the two approaches can be most effectively combined remains unknown and is a major aim of this research.
Associate Professor Jaime Olavarria is Co-Investigator with a team of researchers at the Oregon Health Sciences University that received a five year, $1.3 million dollar grant. The grant is from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and is entitled, “Structural Determinants of Diffusion Tensor Imaging Observations in Developing Cortex and White Matter.” Diffusion Tensor Imaging uses MRI to measure white matter connectivity patterns. In humans it has been successful at revealing problems in brain connectivity in a variety of deficits such as autism and schizophrenia. However, the nature of these structural differences at the cellular level remains unknown. This grant supports research that compares DTI and cellular staining techniques. The results could eventually help develop therapies for neurodevelopmental disorders of the cerebral cortex and white matter.
2010 Faculty Promotions
We are very pleased to announce the promotion of several of our faculty. As you can see from the descriptions below, they all lead exciting research programs. In addition, they all uniquely contribute to the high quality educational experience of our undergraduate and graduate students.
Miriam Bassok: promotion to Full Professor
The general topic of research in the Bassok laboratory is high level cognition, and more specifically formal (i.e. mathematical or physics related) problem solving in the real world. She is interested in understanding how one’s semantic understanding of real world objects impacts our approach to solving problems. She was the first to find that our reasoning abilities (especially in the domains of physics and math) appear to be dramatically influenced by our (learned) understanding of the functions and significance of the elements of the problem. For example, people tend to add together objects that are perceived to come from the same semantic category: tulips and roses (from the semantic category of flowers) tend to be added together. In contrast objects from different semantic categories (e.g. tulips and vases) tend to divide object numbers. Dr. Bassok’s most recent work shows that the impact of this kind of semantic alignment occurs without the awareness of the individual. This knowledge about our reasoning abilities could have profound implications for the development of math or physics related curricula at all levels (K-12, or even college level). Most recently, Dr. Bassok has established a new collaboration with Professor Osterhout in our department to begin neurobiological assessment of semantic alignment and its consequences.
Ione Fine: promotion to Associate Professor with tenure
Dr. Fine’s research is to understand the organization of sensory processing in the brain. Her approach has been to study neural and behavioral recovery from sensory loss or deprivation using brain imaging methods (e.g. fMRI). In this way, she is able to gain new insight into normal brain plasticity mechanisms (i.e. flexibility in processing) by observing how the brain reorganizes as a result of the sensory insult, and how it tries to ‘recover’ when sensory input is restored. This challenging yet innovative approach has allowed Dr. Fine to document that the brain’s information coding schemes are not as ‘set in stone’ from birth as previously thought. Rather, the traditionally defined ‘visual areas of brain’ can actually ‘learn’ to process auditory information if visual input is denied. Such findings have tremendous impact on not only our understanding of brain function and plasticity, but also on the development of effective therapeutic treatments.
Cheryl Kaiser: promotion to Associate Professor with tenure
Dr. Kaiser has become a leading expert in the field of prejudice, social stigma, and discrimination. Her laboratory was the first to document the negative impact on those who protest about being victims of discrimination. Her research describes the negative social stigma attached to individuals that blame racial discrimination for their negative evaluation. This can explain why few workers are willing to complain when they feel discriminated against. Another facet of her work studies how the social perception of an individual that belongs to a stigmatized group can vary depending on how much that individual identifies with the stigmatized group. NSF funded work focuses on the conditions that lead to a group member deciding whether to interfere or help with the success of another group member in a highly competitive situation. For example, will senior female colleagues interfere with the promotions of junior female colleagues? The question is: will those higher up on the ladder ‘lift up’ or ‘kick down’ colleagues from a similar stigmatized group? Dr. Kaiser’s work has already impacted national policy, and has the potential to have direct impact at state and local levels as well.
Scott Murray: promotion to Associate Professor with tenure
Dr. Murray’s research program focuses on extra-retinal influences on visual perception. Dr. Murray has made important contributions to a growing literature showing that neural responses and visual performance is strongly affected by factors such as attention and 3-D context. This has revolutionized the way we think about how the early stages of the visual processing occur in the brain (within a structure called V1). For example, Dr. Murray recently showed how changes in the perceived size of a stimulus affect the neural representation of that stimulus. This is a great example of how contextual information affects the way information is represented in the brain. Importantly, receptive fields of V1 neurons, which had previously been considered static, dynamically shift depending on the perceived distance of an object. This may have important implications for further neural processing in the service of learning and memory.
Sean O’Donnell: promotion to Full Professor
Over the years, Dr. O’Donnell has successfully established one of the most influential research labs on social insect in the world (e.g. he was featured on a National Geographic episode). His research seeks to understand the neurobiological and evolutionary (i.e. genetic) basis of social behaviors of all animals. To study such a complex problem, Dr. O’Donnell developed methods for studying model animal systems that have clear social organization (and hence are tractable). These are societies of wasps, bees, and ants. Within these groups he studies fascinating topics such as the determinants of social hierarchies, socially-induced aggression, and communication amongst members of a society. He looks not only at adult systems, but he is also interested in how these complex behaviors develop and change within a lifetime. In addition to this core research program, Dr. O’Donnell has become interested in understanding the impact of human habitats and climate change on the variety of terrestrial ecosystems in the tropical montane forests.
Joe Sisneros: promotion to Associate Professor with tenure
Understanding the behavioral, hormonal, and neural mechanisms of gender specific acoustic communication has been the primary focus of the Sisneros laboratory. The fish is a particularly good model for examining hormone effects on auditory perception because of their seasonal (i.e. hormone dependent), tractable, and reliable gender-specific courtship behaviors. Dr. Sisneros’ discovery that reproductive hormones impact acoustic perception and sound detection resulted in a Science paper during his first year here at the University of Washington. This finding also received a tremendous amount of press coverage because of the obvious implications. For example, as people age, there is a reduction in reproductive hormone levels (estrogen and testosterone) that is coincident with a loss of hearing in the high frequency range. The particular fish model under study continues to serve as a platform for studies on the underlying biological bases of gender specific behaviors.