Ed Lemay's dissertation has been recognized with awards from the International Association of Relationship Researchers and from the Society of Experimental Social Psychologists (SESP, to be awarded in October). Hooray for Ed! Congratulations!
[Added: 07/17/08]

Congratulations to Laurie Santos, who has been awarded the 2008 Stanton Prize from the Society for Philosophy and Psychology. This award is made annually to a young scholar who has made significant contributions to interdisciplinary research at the intersection of psychology, philosophy, and related disciplines. (Our own Paul Bloom also won this award, in 2002.) As part of this award, Professor Santos received a cash prize and delivered an invited address at this summer's meeting of the society. We congratulate Dr. Santos on this achievement, which comes less than a year after she was named one of Popular Science's annual "Brilliant 10", as one of the most impressive young scientists in the US!

[Added: 07/15/08]

Lawrence Williams, a graduate student in social psychology, was profiled in the online Science magazine. You can see the article (and a great picture of Lawrence) here.

Congratulations, Lawrence!

[Added: 03/05/07]

Marvin Chun has received the DeVane Award for teaching and scholarship from the undergraduate members of Phi Beta Kappa. The PBK students independently nominate, debate and vote on their choice. Our enthusiastic congratulations to Marvin on the occasion of this recognition of his exceptional dedication to and talent for teaching.

[Added: 02/23/07]

We are delighted to announce that Alan Kazdin had been elected to be the next President of the American Psychological Association. The American Psychological Association (APA) is a scientific and professional organization of 150,000 members that represents psychology in the United States. According to the APA Bylaws, the purposes of the American Psychological Association are “to advance psychology as a science and profession and as a means of promoting health, education, and human welfare” by promoting research and the improvement of research methods, promoting high standards of ethics and education, and distributing knowledge through meetings and publications. APA will be fortunate to have Alan’s ideas, intensity, and good humor dedicated to these tasks! Congratulations to Alan!

[Added: 12/04/06]

We are delighted to announce that John (Jack) Dovidio will join us as Professor of Psychology, beginning January 2007. Professor Dovidio spent many years at Colgate University, where in addition to being a Professor of Psychology, he served as Dean and Provost. Most recently Professor Dovidio was on the faculty at the University of Connecticut. His research focuses on prejudice and discrimination, social dominance, and intergroup relations. Professor Dovidio's award-winning research has made many important contributions to the understanding of intergroup conflict and prejudice, especially with the concept of subtle, implicit forms of racism that drive discriminatory behavior beneath the outward veneer of egalitarian values. His work combines models and insights from cognitive and political psychology with contemporary models of social identity and intergroup processes.

[Added: 09/28/06]

We are pleased to announced that John Bargh will receive the Donald T. Campbell Award at the annual meeting of Society for Personality and Social Psychology in January, 2007, for his pioneering work on the effects of the unconscious on social behavior. From the citation:

"... he more than anyone else, has ushered a totally new way to begin thinking about social cognition.... [W]ith colleagues ... he has applied these concepts to several areas, including [the] link between sex and power as well as age stereotypes.... Bargh's motivated unconscious is not the dark and primal place of Freud. Rather, Bargh compellingly demonstrates that what is automatic is the very essence of who we are: goals that become automatic are so because we, as people with free will, have chosen and pursued them so habitually. Bargh has trained a superb group of students and post-docs, who are themselves making key contributions to our field.... He has challenged conventional views about the conscious and deliberate nature of goal pursuit, showing that goal pursuit need not be the greedy consumer of resources that it has typically been construed. Rather, goals ... can be pursued wholly automatically, freeing the self to attend to the novel and demanding aspects of the situation.... [H]is keen insights and empirical talents are matched by an insatiable curiosity and passion that constantly drive him to seek new answers to psychology's most mystifying questions."

Congratulations, John!

[Added: 09/05/06]

We are delighted to announce that Gregory McCarthy will join us as Professor of Psychology, as of September 2006. Professor McCarthy comes to Yale from Duke University, where he was a Professor in the Departments of Radiology, Neurobiology, and Psychological and Brain Sciences, and was Director of the Duke-UNC Brain Imaging and Analysis Center. His work spans the areas of cognitive, social, and developmental neuroscience, exploring such issues as working memory, face perception, perception of biological motion, perception of social cues (e.g., gaze, intentionality in reaching), and the relation between cognition and emotion, using methodologies including scalp electroencephalography (EEG), intracranial EEG, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

[Added: 09/05/06]

We would like to announce that Gregory Walton (Ph.D. 2005) has just been awarded the prestigious annual Dissertation Award from the Society for Experimental Social Psychology. Greg won for his dissertation titled "A role for social identity processes in motivation." Geoff Cohen was the chair of the dissertation committee and Greg's long-standing advisor at Yale; Valerie Purdie-Vaughns and David Armor were the other members of the committee.

[Added: 08/08/06]

Time Magazine has recognized Kelly Brownell, chair of the Department of Psychology and director of the new Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, as one of the “100 most influential people in the world” for 2006. The listing, which came out in the May 1st issue, cites his his role in raising public awareness on the relationship of unhealthy foods and childhood obesity, and for helping "set the U.S. agenda by calling for a ban on sweetened-cereal ads aimed at kids and a tax on high-fat, low-nutrition food, with the revenue earmarked for children’s nutrition." Yale Bulletin

[Added: 05/16/06]

Congratulations to recent graduate Brian Nosek (Yale PhD, 2002), who has won the 2006 American Psychological Association Division 3 Young Investigator Publication Award for his paper "Moderators of relationship between implicit and explicit evaluation."

[Added: 05/11/06]

We have recently received word that Teresa Treat will receive the 2006 Graduate Mentor Award in the Social Sciences, from the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Given yearly to only three professors across the university, this award is a special recognition by graduate students (who make the nominations) of her many contributions to their development as scientists and scholars. The time, expertise, and caring that Teresa offers though her mentoring is legendary, so it is wonderful that she is being honored with this award. Congratulations, Teresa!

[Added: 04/21/06]

We are delighted to announce that Professor Marvin Chun is the 2006 winner of the Troland Research Award from the National Academy of Sciences. This is perhaps the most prestigious early-career honor in the field that can be earned by an experimental psychologist, and it comes with a sizable research grant. We are extremely proud of Marvin and the impact that his work is having on the field. Kudos!

[Added: 01/20/06]

We are excited to report that Brian Scholl will be honored with the 2006 American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology in the area of 'Cognition and Learning'. This is a high achievement indeed, as some of the field's most distinguished figures over the years have been recipients of this award early in their careers. Brian is a particularly deserving recipient given the importance of his work, the unique contributions he has made, and the bright future before him. The awards ceremony will be held at the APA Convention in New Orleans, from August 10-13, 2006. Congratulations, Brian!

[Added: 01/18/06]

More congratulations are due to Marcia Johnson, who has won the 2006 Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association. This is one of the most significant honors in the entire field, and Marcia is certainly a deserving winner! This award caps an impressive year for Marcia, who also recently won a 'Master Mentor' award from APA, and won the 2006 William James Prize from the American Psychological Society. Kudos!

[Added: 11/17/05]

We are delighted to report that Professor and Chair Kelly Brownell has been elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academies. The IOM was established in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences to honor professional achievement in the health sciences and to serve as a national resource for independent analysis and recommendations on issues related to medicine, biomedical sciences, and health. "Election recognizes those who have made major contributions to the advancement of the medical sciences, health care, and public health," said IOM President Harvey Fineberg. "It is considered one of the highest honors in these fields." Current active members elect new members from a slate of candidates nominated for their professional achievement. A diversity of talent among members is assured by the Institute's charter, which requires that at least one-quarter be selected from fields outside the health professions, such as the social and behavioral sciences, law, engineering, and the humanities. With their election, members make a commitment to involve themselves in the work of the Institute, which conducts studies and other activities addressing a wide range of issues in medical science, health service, public health, and health policy. Some current studies are a project to recommend appropriate nutritional standards for foods sold in schools, an evaluation of the nation's system for ensuring the safety of prescription drugs after they have reached the market, and an assessment of emergency health care in the United States and recommendations for improving it.

[Added: 10/29/05]

Congratulations to Marcia Johnson, who has won the 2005 APA Division 20 (Adult Development and Aging) 'Master Mentor' Award. This award is presented to an established figure in the field who has had a significant impact on the development of the careers of students and junior colleagues in the psychology of adult development and aging. Kudos, Marcia!

[Added: 10/29/05]

Congratulations to Brian Scholl, who has been named as the 2005 winner of the Robert L. Fantz Memorial Award from the American Psychological Association. The Fantz Award honors and supports the careers of promising young investigators in psychology or related disciplines, focusing on candidates who have shown exceptional promise in their research and scholarship in perceptual-cognitive development. The award also includes a grant presented to the awardee's institution on their behalf, which can be used to continue such research.

[Added: 10/29/05]

Marcia Johnson has received the 2005 Graduate Mentor Award in the Social Sciences, from the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. This is a special recognition by graduate students (who make the nominations) of her many contributions to their development as scientists and scholars. This award is given yearly to only three professors across the university. Congratulations, Marcia!

[Added: 10/29/05]

It is our pleasure to announce that Brian Scholl has been awarded Yale College's Lex Hixon Prize for Teaching Excellence in the Social Sciences from Yale College. This award, presented during the commencement exercises for the class of 2005, recognizes a single professor from the social sciences each year. From the citation:

Brian Scholl, no one dozes in your class. Cognitive Science is your discipline, and alert as you are to the brain's workings, you use every imaginable device to quicken, excite and hold your students' interest. Your beautifully clear and illuminating lectures ... are studded with relevant interactive experiments, video clips, and props ... that relate your explanations to everyday life. But your energetic explanations and brilliant showmanship always illuminate the heart of your complex material and never overshadow it. "All thought, little regurgitation" is the way one student explained your courses. Yale delights in honoring a teacher who, as a scholar of perception, leaves no shadow of doubt about how his own students will perceive him.

With this award, Brian becomes the only faculty member at Yale to have won both the major prize from the Graduate School (the Graduate Mentor Award, in 2003) and the major prize in the social sciences from Yale College. Congratulations, Brian!

[Added: 10/29/05]

We are excited to announce that Julia Kim-Cohen will be joining the faculty as an Assistant Professor of Psychology in January of 2006. Dr. Kim-Cohen conducts research on the mechanisms by which parental psychopathology is transmitted to children. She uses behavioral genetics methods and behavioral assessments of children and their parents to distinguish the influence of genetic factors and environmental factors in the development of mental health problems in children. Dr. Kim-Cohen comes to us from a postdoctoral position at the Institute of Psychiatry in London.

[Added: 5/16/05]

We are delighted to announce that Margaret Clark has joined the faculty as Professor of Psychology, as of July 2005. She is a very well known researcher of close personal relationships, interpersonal processes, and emotion, and is currently President of both the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and the Society for Experimental Social Psychology. She received her PhD from the University of Maryland and then was on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University for the next 25 years, before coming to Yale.

[Added: 3/29/05]

We are very excited to announce that Marcia Johnson -- the Charles C. & Dorathea S. Dilley Professor of Psychology and our Director of Graduate Studies -- has been named the winner of the William James Fellow Award from the American Psychological Society. This award honors a lifetime of significant intellectual contributions to the basic science of psychology. Recipients must be APS members recognized internationally for their outstanding contributions to scientific psychology. This high honor is richly deserved, as we all know: Marcia has made enormous contributions to science but has also been a remarkable colleague, mentor, and friend to generations of top-rate people. The award will be presented at the 2006 APS meeting in New York. Hats off to our distinguished colleague!

[Added: 3/17/05]

We are happy to report that Emeritus Professor Bill McGuire has received an honorary doctoral degree (Laurea Honoris Causa) in honor for his landmark contributions to social psychology from the world's oldest university, the University of Bologna.

[Added: 1/24/05]

It is our pleasure to announce that Paul Bloom has been awarded Yale College's Lex Hixon Prize for Teaching Excellence in the Social Sciences. From the citation:

Psych 110, one of your former students writes, was "a course I really didn't want to take." But for her as for hundreds of others of Yale students, it turned out that Intro to Psychology fulfilled more just than the Group III distributional requirement; it also fulfilled the fundamental need, as you express it in the title of your most recent book, to "explain what makes us human." Your lectures seek out these explanations in materials ranging from statistics to movie clips, from analysis of philosophical theories of childhood to anecdotes about your own young son. Notoriously restless at the podium and roving the aisles, you surprise your class by inviting -- and taking -- their questions at any moment. In one of those developmental paradoxes best explained by a psychologist, students find that, by following your lead, they themselves mature into potential leaders of our common intellectual enterprise.

Congratulations, Paul!
 
[Added: 11/2/04]

We are delighted to report that Susan Nolen-Hoeksema has accepted a senior position in the Clinical area of our department! Susan is currently at the University of Michigan and previously was on the faculty at Stanford. Because Susan was a Yale undergraduate, and her husband Richard received his Ph.D. from Yale (in Geology and Geophysics), they will returning to academic roots. Susan has an outstanding reputation for her research on several topics, including rumination and gender differences in depression. Through her research and her reknown as a teacher, mentor, and colleague, Susan will soon enrich our department in many ways!
 
[Added: 5/10/04]

Congratulations to Susan Birch and Christina Meade, two graduate students who recently won disseration awards from the APA!

Susan Birch has won the 2004 Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Division of Developmental Psychology (Division 7) of the American Psychological Association. Susan will receive her Ph.D. this year for her thesis, titled Social Cognition Across Development: Abilities and Limitations in Mental State Reasoning, after which she is off to a faculty position at the University of British Columbia. Congratulations, Susan!

Christina Meade has won the 2003 Todd E. Husted Memorial Award from the American Psychological Foundation and the Science Directorate of the American Psychological Association. Christina, a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology, earned this award for her work in the area of HIV/AIDS. The award recognizes outstanding dissertation research demonstrating strong potential to improve mental health services for those with severe mental illnesses. Congratulations, Christina!
 
[Added: 5/28/04]

We are pleased to announce that associate research scientist and lecturer Kristi Lockhart is one of the 2004 winners of the prestigious Elm-Ivy Awards, presented in April 2004 by President Levin and Mayor DeStefano. This award is given in recognition for important work that fosters relationships between the University and the New Haven community. Kristi's work in placing students in community settings (such as Fellowship Place and ALSO/Cornerstone) is quite impressive and now has been celebrated with this well-deserved honor.
 
[Added: 5/10/04]

We have just received word from the President and Fellows of Yale University that Marcia Johnson has been honored with an endowed professorship and is now the Charles C. and Dorathea S. Dilley Professor of Psychology. This is a real tribute to Marcia, and is a well-deserved honor, given Marcia's remarkable work and her many contributions to the department and the university. Please join us in congratulating Marcia for this distinction!
 
[Added: 4/4/04]

We are delighted to report that Mitch Prinstein has been named this year's winner of the Theodore H. Blau Early Career Award for Outstanding Contribution to Professional Clinical Psychology, awarded by Division 12 (Clinical Psychology) of the American Psychological Association. Congratulations, Mitch!
 
[Added: 4/4/04]

John Bargh will join the faculty as Professor of Psychology starting July, 2003. He received his PhD from the University of Michigan and has been on the faculty of New York University since 1981. His work bridges social and cognitive psychology, and focuses on how unconscious processes influence thought, attitudes and behavior. Professor Bargh has received numerous awards, including the Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution from the American Psychological Association, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Professor Bargh will teach seminars and courses in social psychology and will serve as Director of Graduate Studies in the Psychology Department for 2003-2004.
 
[Added: Pre-2004]

Glenn Schafe will join the Department in January, 2004 as Assistant Professor of Psychology. He received his PhD from the University of Washington, and is currently an Assistant Research Scientist at the Center for Neural Science at New York University. He studies the neurobiological substrates of learning and memory, with particular emphasis on Pavlovian fear conditioning. Specifically, he is interested in the cellular and/or biochemical events that contribute to fear memory consolidation, or the process by which short-term fear memories are transformed in the brain, over time, into stable, long-term memories. Toward this end, he uses a multidisciplinary approach that includes behavioral, anatomical, electrophysiological, and biochemical techniques. Professor Schafe will teach courses in behavioral neuroscience and next year he will offer a graduate seminar on the Cellular Analysis of Learning and Memory.
 
[Added: Pre-2004]

Jeremy Gray will join the Department July 1, 2003 as Assistant Professor of Psychology. He received his PhD from Harvard University, and is currently a Research Scientist in the Department of Psychology, Washington University, St. Louis. Dr. Gray's research focuses on emotion and cognitive/executive control, and how they interact -- particularly the effects of emotional states on higher cognitive functions, such as working memory and attentional systems. He uses both behavioral and fMRI methods and is interested in individual differences, both cognitive and affective, as a way of exploring self-regulation and human abilities and expertise more broadly, and as a tool for ascribing psychological function to brain structures.
 
[Added: Pre-2004]

Congratulations to recent graduate Nancy Kim (Yale PhD, 2002), who has won a 2003 American Psychological Association Division 3 Young Investigator Publication Award for a recent article in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Her award-winning paper reports parts of her dissertation research, and is co-authored with Professor Woo-Kyoung Ahn:

Kim, N. S., & Ahn, W-k. (2002). Clinical psychologists' theory-based representations of mental disorders predict their diagnostic reasoning and memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 131, 451-476.

[Added: Pre-2004]

We are delighted to announce that Brian Scholl has received the 2003 Graduate Mentor Award in the Social Sciences, from the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. This is a special recognition by graduate students (who make the nominations) of his many contributions to their development as scientists and scholars. This award is given yearly to only three professors across the university. Congratulations, Brian!
 
[Added: Pre-2004]

Woo-kyoung Ahn will join the department on July 1st 2003 as a Professor of Psychology. Professor Ahn received her BA from Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea, and her PhD at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is currently an Associate Professor at Vanderbilt University, where she moved in 1999, after 3 years as an Assistant Professor at Yale. Professor Ahn works in the area of conceptual structure and causal reasoning (e.g., how clinicians use symptoms in diagnosis), and her work shows how mental concepts are influenced by our knowledge and beliefs about causal relations among features of the information we experience. Professor Ahn will teach courses in areas of cognitive psychology and cognitive science and, starting in the Fall of 2003, will serve as the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Psychology Department.
 
[Added: Pre-2004]

Marvin Chun will join the department on July 2nd 2003 as a Professor of Psychology. Professor Chun received his BA from Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea, and his PhD from MIT. He is currently an Associate Professor at Vanderbilt University, where he moved in 1999, after 3 years as an Assistant Professor at Yale. Professor Chun's research is in human cognition, especially the analysis of processes at the interface of attention, perception, and memory (including processes that occur without our awareness and that make perception more efficient). In 2002, he was awarded the American Psychological Association's Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology in the area of Cognition and Learning. Professor Chun will teach Introductory Psychology and courses in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience.
 
[Added: Pre-2004]

Richard Eibach will join the Department this summer as an Assistant Professor, primarily associated with the program in social-personality psychology. Mr. Eibach completed his undergraduate work at Cornell University and will receive his Ph.D. this Spring, also from Cornell. He conducts intriguing work on biases in human judgment and decision making, especially the ways in which people mistakenly think changes in themselves are actually changes in the world around them. These biases also appear in retrospective accounts of autobiographical events. Mr. Eibach likely will teach courses in social psychology, judgment and decision making, social cognition, and statistics and research methods.
 
[Added: Pre-2004]

Valerie Purdie-Vaughns will join the Department in the summer of 2004 as an Assistant Professor, primarily associated with the program in social-personality psychology. After completing her B.A. in Psychology from Columbia University, Ms. Purdie-Vaughns directed the "I Have A Dream" Foundation of the Southfield Village Public Housing Project in Stamford, Connecticut. She is now completing her doctoral work in the social psychology program at Stanford University. While at Stanford, Ms. Purdie-Vaughns has worked as a research consultant to the Chief Administrative Officer of Humanities and Sciences and served on the Search Committee for the Associate Dean of Graduate Multi-Cultural Education. Ms. Purdie-Vaughns's research is focused on social identity threat, and she has a particular interest in how organizations such as businesses and schools can inadvertently undermine the institutional trust and intellectual performance of underrepresented minorities.
 
[Added: Pre-2004]

Elena Grigorenko, Deputy Director of the PACE Center at Yale, has been named 2003 winner of the Richard E. Snow Early Career Award in Educational Psychology by the Division of Educational Psychology (15) of the American Psychological Association. Elena is an Associate Professor in Yale's Child Study Center, and has a joint appointment in the Department of Psychology. This is Elena's fourth APA divisional early career award; she also has received comparable awards from the divisions of developmental psychology, theoretical and philosophical psychology, and psychology and the arts. To our knowledge, this is an unprecedented feat in APA. Congratulations, Elena!
 
[Added: Pre-2004]

We are delighted to report on the award-winning accomplishments of three recent Ph.D.s from our graduate program:

First, Isabel Gauthier (Yale PhD, 1998) received a New Investigator Award from the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. This is the first year for these awards, so it's auspicious to see a Yale graduate receive one of the two inaugural awards.

Second, Yuhong Jiang (Yale PhD, 2001) recently received the 2002 American Psychological Association Division 3 Young Investigator Publication Award for a recent article in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance. Yuhong is currently a postdoc at MIT and will start a faculty position at Harvard next year. Her award winning paper is:

Jiang, Y., & Chun, M. M. (2001). Asymmetric object substitution masking. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 27, 895-918.

Finally, Tony Freitas (Yale PhD, 2002), a first-year professor in the Department of Psychology at SUNY Stony Brook has received the Society for Personality and Social Psychology's (APA Division 8) Student Publication Award for the following article:

Freitas, A.L., Liberman, N., Salovey, P., & Higgins, E.T. (2002). When to begin? Regulatory focus and initiating goal pursuit. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 121-130.

Congratulations to all!
 
[Added: Pre-2004]

We are delighted to announce that two new clinical psychologists will be joining the faculty as assistant professors in the summer of 2002:

Will Corbin completed the Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at the University of Georgia in 1999. He is now in the third year of an NIAAA Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Corbin studies the cognitive and behavioral impact of alcohol and alcohol expectations in the context of trying to understand the determinants of alcohol abuse. In the studies that constituted his master's thesis, Dr. Corbin explored whether alcohol use could be decreased in abusing college students by challenging their expectations about alcohol by asking them to generate memories of experiences that contradicted their own positive expectations about the consequences of drinking. In subsequent work for his dissertation, Dr. Corbin addressed social learning influences on the development of adolescents' expectancies and attitudes about alcohol use, especially their beliefs about the behavior of their peers.

Doug Mennin completed his Ph.D. at Temple University and is currently an Assistant Professor of Psychology at New York University. Dr. Mennin's primary area of research and clinical interest is anxiety disorder. He is especially interested in the role of chronic, intrusive, and uncontrollable worrying as the hallmark of Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), a commonly-diagnosed complaint that is treated through anxiolytic medications and cognitive-behavior therapy. In his empirical work, he has been able to demonstrate that worry is a distinct mental phenomenon from other forms of psychopathological thought such as rumination and obsession. Dr. Mennin has also developed a theoretical model that focuses on the role of emotional dysregulation in the development and maintenance of GAD.
 
[Added: Pre-2004]

Feeling great pride and considerable reflected glory, we are happy to report that the next President of the American Psychological Association will be our own Bob Sternberg. With more than 155,000 members, the APA is the largest association of psychologists worldwide. The APA's mission is to advance psychology as a science, profession, and means of promoting human welfare. We know that Bob's creativity and energy will be of great benefit to the APA and our field. On behalf of your Yale colleagues: Congratulations, Bob!
 
[Added: Pre-2004]

We are pleased to announce that Elena Grigorenko has won the Berlyne Early Career Award for Creative Achievement, presented by Division 10 of the American Psychological Association. Elena is a Research Scientist in the Department of Psychology where she also serves as Deputy Director of the PACE Center.
 
[Added: Pre-2004]

We are delighted to pass along the exciting news that a relatively recent graduate from our doctoral program has won a major award from the American Psychological Association.æ Alexander Rothman, a 1993 Ph.D. from Yale who was a student in the social psychology program, will be awarded the 2002 Award for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contribution to Psychology (in the health psychology area). Alex is now on the faculty of the University of Minnesota where recently he received tenure in the Department of Psychology. Once again, we bask in the reflected glory of our former students!
 
[Added: Pre-2004]

We are delighted to report that Laurie Santos will be soon be joining the faculty as an Assistant Professor of Psychology. Ms. Santos will complete her Ph.D. at Harvard University in the coming months, remain at Harvard as a post-doctoral scholar through next Fall, and then join our faculty on January 1, 2003. Ms. Santos's work is best described as an investigation of the evolutionary origins of the human mind through the study of the cognitive capabilities of non-human primates. Her research program combines an interest in evolutionary biology, cognitive/behavioral neuroscience, and developmental psychology. She investigates primates' understanding of objects, the properties of objects, and judgments about the use of those objects through both laboratory experiments and observation in the field.
 
[Added: Pre-2004]

We are very pleased to report that two funds have been established in the Department of Psychology through generous gifts from The Crowder Family in memory of Robert G. Crowder, our colleague of many years who died much too young last summer. The first gift will endow the Robert G. Crowder Colloquium Fund, which will be used to support speakers in experimental psychology and, especially, at least one annual Robert G. Crowder Lecture on a topic directly relevant to Bob's research and general scientific interests including memory, perception, learning, and musical cognition. The second gift will establish and support the Robert G. Crowder Prize Fund, an annual prize for an undergraduate in the Department of Psychology. In the spirit of Bob's many years of service as the Director of Undergraduate Studies in Psychology, the prize will be awarded to a graduating senior in Yale College, who majored in Psychology or was significantly involved in the Department in other ways. The recipient would be a student who has completed an especially novel research project at any time in his or her college years and who contributed to the quality of undergraduate life in the Department through his or her generosity, service, and or willingness to share learning and knowledge with other students. This prize will complement the presently awarded Angier Prize. Donations received from our alumni in Bob's memory will be added to this fund.
 
[Added: Pre-2004]

It is our pleasure to announce that Paul Bloom will receive the 2002 Maccoby Book Award from APA's Division 7 for his recent book, How Children Learn the Meanings of Words. If you still haven't read this fine volume, perhaps the following citation will whet your appetite:

Paul's book is a scholarly piece that is a delight to read. In this work, he weaves together philosophical discussions and modern psychological experiments that have allowed us to better understand how we acquire a vocabulary. The story of how words work intersects with subplots from throughout the study of human development and thus provides us with a true window onto the human mind. The learning of words requires that we represent concepts and categories of objects, actions and events. The learning of words highlights the relationship between language and thought. The learning of words demands that we appreciate the referential intent of others; seeing the world from another's point of view rather than from our own point of view. Thus, at a time in our history when areas of social and cognitive development are rarely united, Paul shows us how they are inextricably intertwined in the seemingly simple acquisition of our first words.

Congratulations, Paul!
 
[Added: Pre-2004]

Karen Wynn has been awarded one of the two Troland Research Awards for 2001 by the Council of the National Academy of Sciences. The Troland award is probably the most prestigious honor given to a young experimental psychologist. The award carries with it a sizable research grant. Congratulations, Karen!
 
[Added: Pre-2004]