Olivia DrakeA chapter titled "Research Domain Criteria (RDoC)" by Charles Sanislow, associate professor of psychology, associate professor of neuroscience and behavior, was published in the Encyclopedia of Clinical Psychology in January. Kevin Quinn of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and Isaiah Sypher ’13 co-authored the chapter. Sypher worked in Sanislow’s lab at Wesleyan and then went on to a research position at the NIMH Intramural Program in Affective Neuroscience. He is currently in the process of applying to clinical science programs in psychology. Sanislow and Quinn are both charter members of the NIMH Working Group for the RDoC, a project that is developing…
Lauren RubensteinRobinson's new study explains why it can be so hard to resist alcohol, drugs or sweet treats
On Dec. 5, the Quantitative Analysis Center (QAC) hosted its annual student research final exam evaluation event for its QAC 201 course. More than 100 students presented their projects at a poster session to fellow students, faculty, alumni and friends of Wesleyan. (more…)
In the summer of 2014, students from more than 200 countries enrolled in Professor of Psychology Scott Plous's Social Psychology "MOOC" (massive open online course). The class was offered by Wesleyan, hosted by Coursera.org, and drew more than 200,000 students. The final assignment of the course, "The Day of Compassion," asked students to live 24 hours as compassionately as possible and to analyze the experience using social psychology. (more…)
Assistant Professor of Psychology Clara Wilkins is the co-author of a paper titled "You Can Win But I Can't Lose: Bias Against High-Status Groups Increases Their Zero-Sum Beliefs About Discrimination" published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, November 2014. The article will be published again in the in the journal's March 2015 print edition. Wilkins co-authored the article with several other researchers including Joseph Wellman, formerly a postdoctoral fellow in psychology at Wesleyan, who is now at California State University, San Barnardino, and Katherine Schad BA '13/MA '14. The study considered what causes people to espouse "zero-sum beliefs"—or beliefs that gains for one…
Steve Stemler, associate professor of psychology, is the co-author of "Development and Validation of the Wesleyan Intercultural Competence Scale (WICS): A Tool for Measuring the Impact of Study Abroad Experiences," published in Frontiers: the Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, XXIV, 25-47, 2014. He's also the co-author of "Testing the theory of successful intelligence through educational interventions in Grade 4 language arts, mathematics and science," published in the Journal of Educational Psychology, 106(3), 881-899, 2014.
It turns out that teaching language arts, math and science to fourth graders is not the same as manufacturing cars on an assembly line. That is, the microeconomics principle of economies of scale—or the cost advantages that businesses get by increasing the scale of production—do not always apply to educational interventions. Put another way, an intervention that works great in one specific educational setting cannot necessarily be “scaled up” to work in many other settings. This is the finding of a major new study funded by the National Science Foundation, on which Associate Professor of Psychology Steven Stemler collaborated with…
BBC News features the real world impacts of Plous' popular Social Psychology MOOC
Faculty and student researchers from Wesleyan's Cognitive Development Lab recently received a $3,000 stipend from the National Living Laboratory® Initiative, which receives support from the National Science Foundation. The award will support an ongoing collaboration between Wesleyan and the the Connecticut Science Center. Hilary Barth, associate professor of psychology, associate professor of neuroscience and behavior, oversees a Living Laboratory® site at the science center's museum. For the past year and a half, Wesleyan researchers have visited the museum on Saturdays to collect data for current studies, talk with children and their families about child developmental research, and guide visitors in hands-on activities that demonstrate important findings in developmental psychology. The…
Observers tend to see the shooting as black and white due to "confirmation bias," says Plous
Associate Professor of Psychology Anna Shusterman has received a major grant from the National Science Foundation to study language structure and number word learning in children. The research is a collaboration with David Barner at the University of California-San Diego. The total grant is $1,496,636, of which $724,128 will go to Wesleyan. According to Shusterman, the project explores how the structure of a language affects children's acquisition of word meanings for abstract concepts. Specifically, they will consider how the pace of children's number acquisition is affected by the presence of a "dual marker" — that is, grammatical marking to specify a precise quantity…
The Board of Trustees recently conferred tenure to two Wesleyan faculty and promoted five faculty to full professor. Their promotions take effect July 1. Victoria Pitts-Taylor, professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies, and Charles Sanislow, associate professor of psychology, will receive tenure. Pitts-Taylor will join Wesleyan as a new faculty members and chair of the FGSS program on the same date. They join four other faculty members who were awarded tenure earlier this spring. Those promoted to full professor are Martha Gilmore, professor of earth and environmental sciences; Yuri Kordonsky, professor of theater; James Lipton, professor of mathematics and computer sciences; Brian Stewart,…