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172004Volume 17, Issue7July 2004

About the Observer

The Observer is the online magazine of the Association for Psychological Science and covers matters affecting the research, academic, and applied disciplines of psychology. The magazine reports on issues of interest to psychologist scientists worldwide and disseminates information about the activities, policies, and scientific values of APS.

APS members receive a monthly Observer newsletter that covers the latest content in the magazine. Members also may access the online archive of Observer articles going back to 1988.

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  • Thumbnail Image for Disaster Response and Recovery

    Disaster Response and Recovery

    Disasters like Hurricane Florence and Typhoon Mangkhut draw massive media coverage, trauma interventions, and financial donations to victims. But psychological research shows the efforts don’t always yield the intended benefits.

APS Spotlight

  • Meet Me at the Fair

    An original postcard of the Ferris wheel, then only a decade old, at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis. On May 14, 1804, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, and the other members of their expedition, boarded their boats north of St. Louis for a trip upriver on the Missouri and an adventure that would take them west to the Pacific Ocean. Part of their mission was to explore portions of the vast new piece of real estate purchased in Thomas Jefferson's presidency just a year earlier — the Louisiana Purchase — a land so vast that its acquisition doubled the size of the young nation.

  • High School Low: Once Thriving High School Psychology Programs Need More Support

    The most frequent comment I get when I meet a new person and tell him that I used to teach high school psychology is, “Oh, I didn't know they taught psychology in high school.” Perhaps surprisingly, I am as likely to get that comment from a psychologist as a lay person. There are no accurate statistics as to how many high schools offer psychology. It follows that no one knows how many students take psychology annually in high school, though a widely cited but unverified figure is 800,000 (Ernst and Petrossian, Teaching of Psychology Journal , 1995). Regardless of the number, there are a lot of students whose only psychology class will be the one they have in high school.

  • The Interdependence Paradigm:A New Blueprint for a More Cohesive Discipline

    Logan When psychologists began to define psychology as a natural science, they chose Newtonian Physics as the model. Correlations were useful for making predictions, but an experimental analysis was required to establish causality. In the prototypical experiment, all known relevant factors were held constant save one, the “independent variable,” and if there were systematic changes in behavior, the “dependent variable,” associated with changes in the independent variable, then unidirectional causality could be legitimately inferred. The behavioristic paradigm was simply S > > R exemplified by the reflex arc.

First Person

  • New APSSC Board Introduced

    Borynski Hello, my name is Michele Borynski and I am honored to serve as the 2004-2005 President of the American Psychological Society's Student Caucus. I completed my bachelor's degree at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and then earned my master's degree at Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois. I am currently a fifth-year student in the clinical psychology PhD program at Central Michigan University. I begin my internship this fall. My primary internship site is the Oklahoma Forensic Center in Vinita, Oklahoma, and my secondary site is the Jess Dunn Correctional Center in Taft, Oklahoma.

More From This Issue

  • The Adventures of Psuper Girl

    I am writing this article as an expert on psychology's effect on family life. No, I am not a research scientist or a journalist. I wasn't even a psych major. I am writing this as an eye-witness account. That's right. I am a daughter of a psychologist. Please, hold your gasps, shrieks, and sighs. It's something that I was born with and have learned to deal with. This is the first time I am writing openly about this affliction. All events documented in this article are true. However, for the sake of reputation and my allowance, I am going to keep my father's identity a secret. But, I will give you one hint: My last name is Kraut.

  • News

    Past President Roediger Receives Honorary Doctorate Roediger APS Immediate Past President Henry L. (Roddy) Roediger, III received an honorary doctorate in social sciences from Purdue University in May 2004. “Roddy's influence is still strongly felt and his friendship still cherished,” said Howard M. Weiss, head of the department of psychological sciences at Purdue.

  • Giving Students a Hand: William James Lecturer Goldin-Meadow Shows the Importance of Gesture in Teaching

    APS Fellow and Charter Member Susan Goldin-Meadow, The University of Chicago, is head of the Goldin-Meadow Laboratory, which focuses on the study of non-verbal communication, specifically gesture. In the face of an American school system increasingly stressing results over method, APS Fellow and Charter Member Susan Goldin-Meadow recently presented research on the relationship between learning and gesturing that could, quite literally, put a powerful instructional tool at a teacher's fingertips. “There's information in gesture that's unique, that's not found in speech, and that could be useful if you want to instruct a child,” said Goldin-Meadow, The University of Chicago.

  • Mind Over Matter

    Jackson When a psychologist needs a little inspiration, he or she might turn to the wise words of an old master, seeking in some eternal axiom the courage to move forward in the face of uncertainty. Many likely turn to Sigmund Freud, others to William James, a few possibly to B. F. Skinner. James S. Jackson turned to Dan Quayle. Jackson remembered when Quayle, the notoriously misspoken former Vice President, once (mis)said, “a mind is a terrible thing to lose.” If the statement contained an absurd shred of sagacity, Jackson found it: “I'm going to vindicate Vice President Quayle,” Jackson said during his spring 2004 talk Physical and Mental Health Disparities Among African Americans.