IU psychologist wins NAS’ Troland Award

By Jayne Spencer

The prestigious award for experimentation is the third for the IU Bloomington Department of Psychology.

He and Stanford psychologist David Heeger will receive the honor at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., during the NAS’ 139th annual meeting April 29. A sum of $50,000 will be given to each to support their continuing research within the broad spectrum of experimental psychology.

It’s a triple crown of sorts for the IU Bloomington Department of Psychology. The IU department now has three recipients—the most from any single institution—since the award was first conferred in 1984. Cognitive psychologist Robert Nosofsky won the award in 1995, and Joseph Steinmetz, the department’s chair, won the award in 1996.

Additionally, two of the department’s faculty, Richard Shiffrin and William Estes, have attained membership in the venerable organization over the years.

Kruschke was cited “for deep insights and empirical evaluations concerning concept formation and attention in learning and rigorous formalization of the underlying psychological principles in connectionist frameworks.”

‘’John uses experiments and formal mathematical models, known as connectionist models, that try to advance our understanding of how people attend to the relevant information for learning,” explained Steinmetz. “He uses both modeling and empirical research techniques. The experiments help in testing the mathematical models he creates and the models point him in new experimental directions.”

Phenomena such as “highlighting,” ”blocking” and “attentional shifting” in the learning process have “real-world” application in such areas as social stereotyping and in the ways consumers learn about products they might consider purchasing. Theories related to attention and learning also are being adapted to such illnesses as schizophrenia, Huntington disease and other disorders associated with brain damage.

Kruschke is also on the faculty of the nationally recognized Cognitive Science Program, an interdisciplinary program begun in 1989 and headed by Shiffrin, that explores the nature of the mind and intelligence.

The Department of Psychology houses the oldest continuing psychology laboratory in America. William Lowe Bryan, who served as president of both IU and the American Psychological Association during his career, opened the laboratory in January 1888.

To read about Kruschke’s experimentations, go to this Web site:

http://www.indiana.edu/~kruschke/research.html

To read about the work of some of the others in the IU department, go to this IU College of Arts and Sciences site:

http://www.indiana.edu/~coasinfo/iustars/mentor_psychology.shtml