PSYCHOLOGY DEPARTMENT

In 2005-2006, the students, faculty and staff in the Psychology Department enjoyed a very busy and productive year. Psychology continues to be a very popular major nationwide and at Williams. There were approximately 110 students (juniors and seniors) majoring in psychology this year and roughly 40% of them were double majors. A major overhaul of the department website now makes information about our activities and opportunities for students more accessible: see http://www.williams.edu/Psychology/. The central task of the Psychology Department this year was hiring two new faculty members, Richard Eibach in Social Psychology and Amie Ashley Hane in Developmental Psychology (see below). Our students continued to be very active in curricular and extracurricular activities related to psychology; seven students completed senior honors theses, on topics ranging from the role of hormones in spatial working memory in rats, to the evolutionary psychology of jealousy in romantic relationships and the effect of children’s social status on conformity with their peers. Their projects are listed in the Student Abstracts section of this report. A number of other students worked collaboratively with professors in work-study positions or independent studies on research across all areas of psychology. The Student Liaison Committee (SLC), a group of junior and seniors that consult with the department chair, ably assisted with interviewing many job candidates, planning social events between students and faculty, advising on curricular matters, and designing a senior exit survey. The SLC members this year were Sikan Assarat, Priyanka Bangard, Caroline Byrnes, Marita Campos-Melady, Andrew Eyre, William Ference, Geshri Gunasekera, Melanie Hobart, Justin Lavner, Tameika McLean, Magali Rowan, Tamara Springle, and Lauren Williamson.

Department events this year included fall and spring student/faculty family picnics in the Science quad with the traditional pizzas, spirited volleyball, and informal conversation; evening programs on “Graduate Study in Psychology” and “Careers in Psychology”; and a wine and cheese reception on the evening of the honors theses presentations at the Faculty Club. To encourage students to explore careers in academia, the Class of 1960 Scholars Program brought eminent researchers from other colleges and universities to campus to give colloquia. In advance of the colloquia, the group of 1960’s Scholars read and discussed the speakers’ work with a faculty member and then joined the speaker and faculty for dinner afterward. The 1960’s scholars this year are listed below. In addition, students attended a number of colloquia offered by candidates interviewing for positions in the department.

There were several transitions in the department this year. We welcomed Visiting Assistant Professor Brian Sundermeier in the Cognitive area and were glad to have Visiting Assistant Professor Tony Scinta back for a second year teaching in the Social Psychology area. Professor Scinta heads off this summer to Nevada State University; we will miss him and wish him well in his new position there. Professor Sundermeier, whose expertise is in cognitive psychology and language, will stay for a second year to teach courses in the cognitive area as well as the senior seminar and a very interesting winter study course, Artificial Languages. This past year, we were also happy to have a Bolin Fellow Janet Chang, who taught Cultural Psychology (PSYC 340) while finishing her dissertation from the University of California, Davis. Professor Chang has accepted a position at Trinity College and we wish her all the best as well in her new position down the road in Connecticut. The courses of these visiting faculty helped to fill teaching needs due to sabbaticals and added interesting new material and perspectives to our curriculum and courses. In January, we bid a fond farewell to Professor Al Goethals, who began a position at the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond in Richmond, VA; his many contributions to Williams will certainly be missed. We will also miss the full-time presence of Professor Saul Kassin, who has accepted a position at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, but we are very happy that he will travel back to Williamstown once a week to teach his popular Psychology and the Law course and advise a senior thesis student.

Last but not least, we are delighted in the addition of Richard Eibach and Amie Ashley Hane to the department. Professor Eibach comes most recently from Yale University, where he has been a faculty member for three years, following his Ph.D. from Cornell University. He is a social psychologist specializing in the study of social perception and social judgment. His research examines the perception of social conditions, intergroup conflict, the psychology of ideologies and social movements, and autobiographical memory. This coming year, he will teach courses in social psychology, the psychology of beliefs and ideologies, and the senior seminar in psychology. Professor Hane received her Ph.D. in Applied Developmental Psychology from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in 2002. Since then she has been a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she worked on a large-scale longitudinal study examining the growth of social competence in children who were identified as temperamentally extreme in infancy. She is particularly interested in the evocative effects of infant temperament on caregiver behavior, and how infant temperament and caregiver behavior jointly influence the development of stress reactivity and social outcomes in late infancy and early childhood (e.g., mother-child attachment, child compliance, peer relationships, and behavior problems).  She will also teach the senior seminar, as well as Developmental Psychology and a seminar in social development in infants and very young children.

Through all of these transitions and our ongoing activities as well, we receive invaluable help from C.J. Gillig, Psychology Technical Assistant, and Beth Stachelek, Department Administrative Assistant. Their cheerful and wise assistance is well-known to students from Introductory Psychology through senior honors theses students, and they help keep our large department feeling friendly and accessible.

Professor Phebe Cramer attended the national meetings of the Association for Research in Personality, and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. Both were held in Palm Springs, CA, January 2006. At the meetings, she presented her research at a poster session. She also served as a judge for the Graduate Student poster competition. Cramer completed a new book, Protecting the Self: Defense Mechanisms in Action. In addition, she served on two Ph.D. dissertation committees as an external reviewer. In April, she traveled to Lewis and Clark College, where she served as an external reviewer for a study of the Psychology Department. She continued as a Consulting Editor for the Journal of Research in Personality, the European Journal of Personality and the Journal of Personality Assessment. She has been an invited ad hoc reviewer for multiple professional journals. Her current research focuses on the development of defense mechanisms over the life course, from childhood to adulthood, and on the life and psychological factors that contribute to this development.

Senior Lecturer Susan Engel received a two-year grant from the Spencer Foundation to study the development of children’s curiosity. Sikan Assarat ’07, Kathryn Lewkowicz ’06, and Priyanka Bangard ’07 worked on this research. Her book, Real Kids: Creating Meaning in Every Day Life, was published in October 2005. She also published a paper in Cognitive Development. In October 2005, she presented research on the autobiographical narratives of an autistic child at the Annual Meeting of Cognitive Development in San Diego CA. She gave a Tuesday Tea talk sponsored by the Williams Library and gave a talk at the Williams Faculty Club. Engel was chosen by the US Department of Education to attend a national meeting to discuss criteria for assessing high school students' readiness for college work. The meetings took place in St. Louis in December 2005.

The Program in Teaching hosted a visit from E. O. Wilson, which included meetings with teaching students, faculty, environmental studies students, and culminated with a lecture for the general public, “The Future of Life.” The Monthly Teaching Lunch Series included talks by Kelley DeLorenzo from Berkshire Centers for Families and Children on “Working with At Risk Kids and Their Families,” Brian Sundermeier on the development of reading, a roundtable discussion on “Teaching Evolution,” Karen Merrill on “Teaching History,” and Marlene Sandstrom on “Friends and Bullies.”

Professor Laurie Heatherington continued her three-year term as Chair of the Psychology Department. She continued her research and writing on change processes, including the measurement and role of the therapeutic alliance in couple and family therapy in collaboration with M.L. Friedlander at SUNY-Albany and Valentín Escudero at the Universidad de La Coruna, Spain. New projects this year included studies of culture, gender, and personality variables in preferences for different kinds of couples therapy (honors thesis of Justin Lavner, ’06) and family therapy (honors thesis of Tamara Springle, ’06). In August 2005, she attended the American Psychological Association conference in Washington, DC, and presented posters with former students Natalie Tolejko ’03, Maggie McDonald ’05 and Janette Funk ’04.

Professor Heatherington’s co-authored a book with M.L. Friedlander and V. Escudero, Therapeutic Alliances in Couple and Family Therapy: An Empirically Informed Guide to Practice. A related paper was published in the Journal of Counseling Psychology.

Professor Heatherington continued to serve on the editorial boards of Psychotherapy Research, Journal of Family Psychology, Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, and Applications, and did ad-hoc reviewing for several other journals. She served on the Associates Board of the Gould Farm (Monterey, MA), a treatment center/working farm, serving people with schizophrenia and other major mental illnesses and directs a five-year, ongoing program evaluation study there.

Professor Saul Kassin contributed chapters for three scholarly edited books. The chapters are entitled “Internalized False Confessions,” “A Critical Appraisal of Modern Police Interrogations,” and “Judging Eyewitnesses, Confessions, Informants, and Alibis: What Is Wrong with Juries, and Can They Do Better?” This past year, Kassin appeared on two television shows: ABC Primetime, for a story entitled Injustice, and a Court TV documentary, Stories of the Innocence Project: Confessions of an Innocent Man. He also spoke at several conferences, including the keynote addresses at the Rocky Mountain Psychological Association in Park City, UT; and the Criminal Justice Institute in Bloomington, MN; and two addresses at the American Psychology-Law Society, St. Petersburg, FL. He also presented colloquia, lectures, and seminars at New York University School of Law, New York State Defenders Association, Wisconsin Criminal Justice Study Commission, Indiana Prosecuting Attorneys Council, Minnesota Criminal Justice Institute, Colby College, Bates College, Smith College, University of Gothenburg (Sweden), and the University of Portsmouth (UK). Kassin continued to serve as consulting editor for Law and Human Behavior, a reviewer for the National Science Foundation, an external examiner on two Ph.D. dissertations, a consultant for the Innocence Project, and an expert witness in several high-profile cases.

Professor Robert D. Kavanaugh returned to full time teaching after his yearlong sabbatical during which he continued his research on the development of imagination and reasoning in young children. The primary focus of that research program is a longitudinal study, now in its fourth year, involving assessments of children beginning at age 2 1/2 and continuing until age 5. This past year, Mary Lindeke ’06, worked on this study, which formed the basis for her honors thesis on preschool children’s imaginary companions. In the spring, two chapters that Professor Kavanaugh wrote on the topic of imagination and reasoning were published in handbooks on education and child development. In June, Professor Kavanaugh participated as a faculty tester in a workshop that is developing new software to teach students about research in developmental psychology. During the year, he served as ad hoc reviewer for the British Journal of Developmental Psychology, Child Development, and Developmental Psychology.

Professor Kris Kirby was on sabbatical during the fall 2005 semester. During the spring semester Professor Kirby supervised the senior research project of cognitive science concentrator Brian Hirshman, ’06, titled “Generating Matrices for Latent Semantic Analysis.” He also published an empirical research article in the peer-reviewed journal Behavioural Processes. In addition to serving as a reviewer for the National Science Foundation and on the editorial board of the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, Professor Kirby served as an ad hoc reviewer for several journals, including Developmental Psychology, the Journal of Economic Psychology, Personality and Individual Differences, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, Psychological Science, and the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.

Associate Professor Marlene Sandstrom’s research this past year has continued to focus on children’s peer relationships. She is particularly interested in issues of competence and resiliency – that is, how children negotiate difficult peer experiences (teasing, exclusion, victimization) over time. This spring, Professor Sandstrom attended the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Adolescence in San Francisco, where she presented work on teens’ use of Instant Messenger as a forum for relational aggression. This research evolved from a group project in Childhood Peer Relations & Clinical Issues (PSYC 351). Professor Sandstrom also had her research on likeability and popularity published in the International Journal of Behavioral Development. Over the past year, Professor Sandstrom has served as an ad hoc reviewer for Developmental Psychology, Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, International Journal of Behavioral Development, and British Journal of Developmental Psychology.

Magali Rowan ’07 prepares brain tissue sections for assessing the neuroprotective effects of hormones.

Assistant Professor Noah Sandstrom enjoyed a productive sabbatical during 2005-06 and continued his studies examining hormonal modulation of learning and memory. In addition, he began a new set of studies examining the neuroprotective effects of ovarian hormones in a rodent model of ischemia. Much of this work was conducted during the summer with Geshri Gunasekera ’06, Magali Rowan ’07, and Lauren Williamson ’07. Geshri and Erika Williams ’08 continued to work with Professor Sandstrom during the academic year.

Several students joined Professor Sandstrom at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience held in Washington, DC. At the meeting, John Rudoy ’05 presented research findings from his senior thesis (along with Geshri, Erika, and Professor Sandstrom). Geshri, Jessica Yankura ’05, Meghan Faughnan ’06, and Patricia Chambers ’06 joined Prof. Sandstrom as coauthors on a poster based on a group project they conducted in their seminar, Hormones & Behavior (PSYC 315). In addition, Geshri, Magali, Lauren and Professor Sandstrom presented their research on the effects of estradiol on spatial learning.

Professor Sandstrom and two recent students, Ju Kim ’05 and Molly Wasserman ’04 recently had a paper published in Hormones & Behavior. Prof. Sandstrom has served as a reviewer for several journals including Brain Research, Neurobiology of Learning & Memory, Psychoneuroendocrinology, Hormones & Behavior, and Endocrinology. Professor Sandstrom’s research was funded during this year by grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke at the National Institutes of Health.

Associate Professor Kenneth Savitsky conducted research on egocentrism in social judgment and published articles in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology and in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, the latter of which was co-authored with Wayne M. Wight ’00. He supervised the honors thesis research of one student and the independent study research of three additional students, and taught a new seminar on The Psychology of Self-Esteem (PSYC 346) as part of the Critical Reasoning and Analytical Skills (CRAAS) initiative.

Assistant Professor Ari Solomon published the first report from his NIMH-funded investigation of clinical depression's boundaries in Psychological Medicine, and wrapped up a two-year collaboration with Dr. Keith Saylor at Neuroscience, Inc. that has focused on developing a more sensitive outcome measure for Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. The measure is showing impressive validity as an index of several kinds of ADHD-related impairment that are not fully captured by existing outcome measures. Dr. Solomon supervised an honors thesis by Drew Raab ‘06 that involved designing and validating a new measure of individual differences in depressotypic beliefs. This summer Prof. Solomon will be joined by Joanna Korman ’07, who will continue her exploration of personality traits that began as an independent study. Prof. Solomon continues to serve on the editorial board of Cognitive Therapy and Research, and on the board of the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

Visiting Professor Brian Sundermeier is a cognitive psychologist, having recently received his doctorate at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. In addition to teaching Cognitive Psychology (PSYC 221) this fall, he also taught a new empirical lab course this spring, The Psychology of Language (PSYC 325). He is currently conducting research on the effects of attention capacity on the cerebral hemispheric processing of inferences during reading. This research will be presented in July at the annual meeting of the Society for Text and Discourse in Minneapolis, MN.

Associate Professor Safa Zaki was on sabbatical in Williamstown this year. She continued her research on models of perceptual categorization with the aid of Williams students Marita Campos-Melady ’06 and Thomas Hall ’06. In addition, with Sara Ossi ’06 and collaborators at Indiana University, Professor Zaki started a new line of research investigating a potential cause of face recognition deficits in high-functioning autism. She published one article and another was recently accepted for publication. She also reviewed several proposals for the National Science Foundation and served as an ad-hoc reviewer for several journals including Cognitive Science; Journal of Experimental Psychology; Learning, Memory, and Cognition; Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Psychonomic Bulletin and Review; Neuropsychology; Journal of Memory and Language; and Memory and Cognition.

Professor Betty Zimmerberg continued her research on the neural mechanisms underlying behavioral responses to fearful situations, using a novel animal model of anxiety: rats bred for high and low rates of vocalization after brief maternal separation. During the summer of 2005, Julie Esteves ’07 investigated the effects of an adverse experience of neonatal isolation on play behavior in juvenile rats. Under her sponsorship, Elizabeth Killien ’06 and Devon O’Rourke ’06 spent their summers in Seattle and Vancouver, respectively, working in labs of Zimmerberg’s colleagues studying both human and animal aspects of fetal alcohol exposure. In the fall, Kate Sauerhoff ‘06 conducted an independent study project looking at the response of Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) to neonatal isolation at two brain regions in rats. Devon O’Rourke ’06 continued his interest in Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, completing a Neuroscience thesis on the effects of fetal alcohol exposure on BDNF levels in juvenile rats.

Zimmerberg taught her tutorial, Nature via Nurture: Explorations in Developmental Psychobiology (PSYC 317T) in the spring, this time including a laboratory component. Zimmerberg served on the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Science Advisory Committee and NSF’s SOMAS Grants Review Board. Other professional activities included serving on the editorial board of Developmental Psychobiology and reviewing manuscripts for Developmental Psychobiology; Behavioral Neuroscience; Neurotoxicology and Teratology; Psychoneuroendocrinology; and Behavioural Brain Research. She also maintained her NSF-sponsored website for teaching Synaptic Transmission, found at www.williams.edu/imput/synapse.

Dr. Paul Bloom, Yale University

“Bodies and Souls”
Dr. Cheryl D. Conrad, Arizona State University

“The Detrimental Effects of Chronic Stress on Hippocampal Morphology and Function: The Resilience of Females”
Dr. Susan Engel

“Why It Took Me 28 Years to Write Real Kids”
“Bad Education”
Dave Marsh, Rolling Stone Magazine (co-sponsored with President’s Office)

“Music of the Civil Rights Movement and Popular Music Today”
Dr. Brian Sundermeier

“Psychology of Reading”
Dr. Edward O. Wilson (co-sponsored with Program in Teaching)

“The Future of Life”

Phebe Cramer

“Defense Mechanisms Predict Planful Competence”
National Meetings of Association for Research in Personality and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Palm Springs, CA
Susan Engel

“Back to the Start of the Universe: The Autobiographical Narratives of a Child with Autism”
Annual Meeting of Cognitive Development, San Diego CA
Laurie Heatherington

“Attributions and Parent-Teen Conflict: A Longitudinal Study”
with Natalie Tolejko ’03, Maggie McDonald ’05, Janette Funk ’04
American Psychological Association Conference, Washington, DC

“The Relationships between Thoughts and Conflict in Parent-Teen Relationships”
with Janette Funk ’04
American Psychological Association Conference, Washington, DC
Saul Kassin

“Inside Interrogation: Why Innocent People Confess”
Keynote address at the Rocky Mountain Psychological Association, Park City, UT

“True, False, and Coerced Confessions: Why People Confess to Crimes They Did Not Commit”
Keynote address at Criminal Justice Institute, Bloomington, MN

“Does Expert Testimony on Confessions Pass the Frye Test? Lessons from the Retrial of a
DNA-Exonerated Defendant”
American Psychology-Law Society, St. Petersburg, FL

“Police Interviewing and Interrogation: A National Self-Report Survey of Police Practices and Beliefs
American Psychology-Law Society, St. Petersburg, FL
Marlene J. Sandstrom

“New Method for Harm: Relational Aggression on Instant Messenger”
Biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Adolescence, San Francisco, CA
Noah J. Sandstrom

“Basolateral Amygdala Modulation of Consolidation and Reconsolidation of Inhibitory Avoidance Memory”
with John Rudoy ’05, Geshri Gunasekera ’06, and Erika Williams ’08
Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, Washington, DC

“Maternal Experience Causes Lasting Changes in Place Learning and Anxiety”
with Geshri Gunasekera ’06, Jessica Yankura ’05, Meghan Faughnan ’06, and Patricia Chambers ’06
Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, Washington, DC
Betty Zimmerberg

“Early Deprivation and Maternal Separation Have Differing Effects on Juvenile Play and
Communicative Behaviors in Rats” with K. Sageser ’05
International Behavioral Neuroscience Society Annual Meeting, Santa Fe, NM

“Developmental Psychobiology of Anxiety Behavior”
Amherst College