APS, day 1
A report on day 1 of my trip to the Annual Convention of the Association for Psychological Science:
Thursday:
* Spend the morning preparing to depart for the conference. Discover tragedy in my worm bin.
* Tired and anxious about my talk during travel. Difficulty focusing. My garment bag is incredibly unergonomic and the handle hurts my hand so badly that I come close to sitting down and crying in the middle of Union Station. Vow to find a packing guru who can teach me how to put a suit in a roller bag.
* Arrive at hotel. For once I'm at a real hotel right next to the conference, not in a hostel a mile away. I hooked up with three roommates (dudes from OSU) over the internet. We had to pick each other out of the comparative sea of women looking for female roommates only, but I'm glad we did -- being close to the action means more time to sleep in the morning and more time to schmooze in the evening.
* Whine a little, stop whining, shower, go to hotel. At the opening talk I discover the UM section, including Phoebe, Christine, Dan, and Julie. Despite all my complaining about wishing I had colleagues to talk to, I now am tired and grumpy, wishing I could just go sulk by myself.
* Carol Dweck gives her opening talk. The topic is "Can personality be changed?" We're all excited because it's a departure from her previous work. Her talk goes, "you probably can't change personality, but you know what you can change? Beliefs about intelligence!" followed by her standard-issue talk on entity and incremental theories. Of course, when Dweck's a speaker you can't lose. There are few people who have been as wildly successful as she is, at both lab science and real-world interventions that have changed people's lives.
* At the end of Dweck's talk, the APS president says "any questions? No? Then let's all go to the reception!" I have no idea why she did that.
* We descend on the reception, which is also the first poster session. Both the presenters and the caterers are taken by surprise, but soon there are snacks and posters for everyone. I munch on bell peppers and bleu cheese and take in some science, which gradually relaxes me.
* Spend a while chatting with Joe Mikels, Cornell professor, former peplabber, ICC alumnus, and all-around nice guy. I fill him in on the latest lab gossip and the changing fortunes of Joint / Jones / ?? house.
* I spend 9-midnight working through the final set of blocks on my talk, which won't cause me distress again for the rest of the weekend. Actually I spend a little time on blocks and a good bit of time playing Tontie, but if that wasn't the case they wouldn't be blocks, would they?
THURSDAY'S POSTER SELECTIONS:
Cognitive Flexibility Relates to Emotional Adjustment to Loss - Vine, V. J. et al. National Center for PTSD, VA Boston Research System.
Starts with shout-outs to the broaden-and-build theory and some other research we in the peplab are very fond of. We've suggested that the cognitive flexibility induced by positive emotions may help people who suffer a traumatic event get through it in better shape -- they can think of more ways to deal with it, and break out of rumination before it causes severe depression. These folks tested the idea directly: they recruited people who'd had a close friend or family member commit suicide, and assessed them for symptoms of trauma, depression, or reduced functioning following the event. They then tested them using the WCST, a challenging card-game-type task that requires you to learn a rule, use it frequently and rapidly, and then change the rule repeatedly without getting confused. People who were more disturbed were also worse at being fast and flexible at this task. This suggests that low cognitive flexibility may cause people to suffer more impairment following a trauma, although it could also be that people who were more traumatized had fewer brain processor cycles available to do the task.
The Emergence of Othermindedness and Moral Evaluation in Inner-City Children's Personal Narratives - Stagg, A. C. et al., Rhodes College.
Recruited children between the ages of 4 and 11 from predominantly impoverished, african-american families. Had them do a 9-month workshop that consisted of telling autobiographical stories, like "tell a story about a pet" or "tell a story about a time someone was blamed for something they didn't do." They told their stories to facilitators and to each other, and received help revising and recording them. The authors claim that over the 9 months, children showed gradual increases in the sophistication of their thoughts about others and their insight into what others might be thinking or feeling. Most interesting point: kids who were introduced to the course in (say) month 4 showed the same level of other-insight as other participants at month 4. So it's not about maturation or even practice -- it seems to be a social thing. Caveat: It's not clear how they analyzed the data, but it is clear that they severely cherry-picked it. Still, what they say might be true and important.
Thursday:
* Spend the morning preparing to depart for the conference. Discover tragedy in my worm bin.
* Tired and anxious about my talk during travel. Difficulty focusing. My garment bag is incredibly unergonomic and the handle hurts my hand so badly that I come close to sitting down and crying in the middle of Union Station. Vow to find a packing guru who can teach me how to put a suit in a roller bag.
* Arrive at hotel. For once I'm at a real hotel right next to the conference, not in a hostel a mile away. I hooked up with three roommates (dudes from OSU) over the internet. We had to pick each other out of the comparative sea of women looking for female roommates only, but I'm glad we did -- being close to the action means more time to sleep in the morning and more time to schmooze in the evening.
* Whine a little, stop whining, shower, go to hotel. At the opening talk I discover the UM section, including Phoebe, Christine, Dan, and Julie. Despite all my complaining about wishing I had colleagues to talk to, I now am tired and grumpy, wishing I could just go sulk by myself.
* Carol Dweck gives her opening talk. The topic is "Can personality be changed?" We're all excited because it's a departure from her previous work. Her talk goes, "you probably can't change personality, but you know what you can change? Beliefs about intelligence!" followed by her standard-issue talk on entity and incremental theories. Of course, when Dweck's a speaker you can't lose. There are few people who have been as wildly successful as she is, at both lab science and real-world interventions that have changed people's lives.
* At the end of Dweck's talk, the APS president says "any questions? No? Then let's all go to the reception!" I have no idea why she did that.
* We descend on the reception, which is also the first poster session. Both the presenters and the caterers are taken by surprise, but soon there are snacks and posters for everyone. I munch on bell peppers and bleu cheese and take in some science, which gradually relaxes me.
* Spend a while chatting with Joe Mikels, Cornell professor, former peplabber, ICC alumnus, and all-around nice guy. I fill him in on the latest lab gossip and the changing fortunes of Joint / Jones / ?? house.
* I spend 9-midnight working through the final set of blocks on my talk, which won't cause me distress again for the rest of the weekend. Actually I spend a little time on blocks and a good bit of time playing Tontie, but if that wasn't the case they wouldn't be blocks, would they?
THURSDAY'S POSTER SELECTIONS:
Cognitive Flexibility Relates to Emotional Adjustment to Loss - Vine, V. J. et al. National Center for PTSD, VA Boston Research System.
Starts with shout-outs to the broaden-and-build theory and some other research we in the peplab are very fond of. We've suggested that the cognitive flexibility induced by positive emotions may help people who suffer a traumatic event get through it in better shape -- they can think of more ways to deal with it, and break out of rumination before it causes severe depression. These folks tested the idea directly: they recruited people who'd had a close friend or family member commit suicide, and assessed them for symptoms of trauma, depression, or reduced functioning following the event. They then tested them using the WCST, a challenging card-game-type task that requires you to learn a rule, use it frequently and rapidly, and then change the rule repeatedly without getting confused. People who were more disturbed were also worse at being fast and flexible at this task. This suggests that low cognitive flexibility may cause people to suffer more impairment following a trauma, although it could also be that people who were more traumatized had fewer brain processor cycles available to do the task.
The Emergence of Othermindedness and Moral Evaluation in Inner-City Children's Personal Narratives - Stagg, A. C. et al., Rhodes College.
Recruited children between the ages of 4 and 11 from predominantly impoverished, african-american families. Had them do a 9-month workshop that consisted of telling autobiographical stories, like "tell a story about a pet" or "tell a story about a time someone was blamed for something they didn't do." They told their stories to facilitators and to each other, and received help revising and recording them. The authors claim that over the 9 months, children showed gradual increases in the sophistication of their thoughts about others and their insight into what others might be thinking or feeling. Most interesting point: kids who were introduced to the course in (say) month 4 showed the same level of other-insight as other participants at month 4. So it's not about maturation or even practice -- it seems to be a social thing. Caveat: It's not clear how they analyzed the data, but it is clear that they severely cherry-picked it. Still, what they say might be true and important.