COGDOP Linda Smith 2.11

8/11/2019 COGDOP Linda Smith 2.11

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Challenges facing psychology departments

Linda Smith

Indiana University


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to be ahead of the curve, where the field is going


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to be ahead of the curve, where the field is going

But how do you do that, where is the field going?


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1. Signs of fundamental change in the discipline

2. How PBS at Indiana is being challenged by and is responding to these changes

3. Is Psychology at the end of a 150 year run?


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Signs of change

who is doing psychology?

mechanisms and principles of behavior and intelligence (all the topics one

would see in an introductory psychology text)


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Who is doing psychology?

K. Gold, M. Doniec, C. Crick, and B. Scassellati.(2009) Robotic Vocabulary

Building Using Extension Inference and Implicit Contrast.,Artificial

Intelligence Journal. Vol. 173(1), p. 145-166. 2009.

K. Gold & B. Scassellati (2010). Using Probabilistic Reasoning over Time to

Self-Recognize. Robotics and Autonomous Systems

Shic & B. Scassellati. (2010) A behavioral analysis of robotic models of

visual attention. International Journal of Computer Vision

Robotocists like Brian Scassellati at Yale


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Honey CJ, Sporns O, Cammoun L, Gigandet X, Thiran JP, Meuli R, Hagmann

P (2009) Predicting human resting-state functional connectivity from

structural connectivity. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 106, 2035-2040.

Bullmore, E.T, Sporns, O. (2009) Complex brain networks: graph-

theoretical analysis of structural and functional systems. Nature Reviews

Neuroscience 10, 186-198.

Physicists like Olaf Sporns at Indiana


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Who is doing psychology?(this is from Reviews of modern

physics (cited by

Goldstone and Todd in an experimental

and computational paper on swarm behavior in humans)


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Neurobiologists

Computational linguists

Experimental philosophers

Law Professors

MDs in Behavioral Medicine

Physicists! Roboticists!

It is not our own little guild of like-minded and like-trained any more. Breakoutadvances can be coming from anywhere and the discoveries that advanceknowledge will determine future of psychology whether or not they are madeby a psychology PhD in a psychology department


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Signs of change

where psychology is being published

APA, APS, the Psychonomic Society Journals, Archives of Psychiatry,

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

(how did we know these journals were good because the members of our

guildthe folks we respectedtold us they were)


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Signs of change

where psychology is being published

APA, APS, the Psychonomic Society Journals, Archives of Psychiatry, JPSP

Neuron, PNAS, PloS, Cell, Nature Neuroscience, Experimental Brain

Research, Law and Psychology Review, Computational Linguistics, Frontiers

in Cognition, Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Affective Behavioral

Neuroscience, IEEE journals, Neuroscience Letters, Schizophrenia Research


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Where should you put a great paper?

Psychological Review, Psychological Science, PloS One?

The SJR indicator measures the scientific influence of the average article in a journal, it expresses

how central to the global scientific discussion an average article of the journal is. Cites per Doc.

(2y) measures the scientific impact of an average article published in the journal, it is computed

using the same formula that journal impact factor (Thomson Reuters).


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Where should you put a great paper?

Psychological Review, Psychological Science, PloS One?

Psychological Review PloS One

Psychological Science

Open access (authors pay) vs. traditional Journals (readers pa

Psychology vs. Broad cross-discipline journals

One field versus centrifugal forces pulling us apart

(papers in Child Development and Cell?)

Guild reputation or objective measures like h factors


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Where is psychology published?

Open access (authors pay) vs. traditional Journals (readers pay)

Psychology vs. Broad cross-discipline journals

One field versus centrifugal forces pulling us apart

(papers in Child Development and Cell?)

Guild reputation or objective measures like h factors


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What is getting funded?

Transformational, translational, interdisciplinary,

multidisciplinary, multileveled, integrative, large and open

data sets, neural bases

e.g., human genomics, behavioral genetics, and human imaging group grants on

addiction

e.g., the human connectome


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Who is getting jobs?

Last year: 69% of jobs in psychology* in research 1 institutions asked for more than

behavioral experimental research (computational, neural, human genomics, genetics,

atypical populations)

*all job listings on PBS Indiana joblistserve

for our graduate students and post-docs as coded

by key words


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in the interplay between behavioral, computational, and neural approaches

integrative neuroscience -- from molecular to systems to behavioral to cognitive

to social neuroscience

from genes to proteins to behavior to developmental process and back

massive data streams, nested scales complex systems, connectivity (neural, social)

in the integration of advances in basic science with applications through

translational research (medical, educational, technical)

If you try to stop the future, you will lose

Signs of change reflect advances in science


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Change brings challenges

department structure

graduate training

research support and infrastructure (and teaching loads)

traditional views of psychology departments

the existence of psychology itself


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Changes at Indiana

One change, as a consequence or all this at Indiana,

our name: Psychological and Brain Sciences (2003)

With the name change, concerted growth in cognitive neuroscienceand in molecular and cellular neuroscience

We had a core in systems, goal was to both go down to lower mechanistic

levels and up to connect to human behavioral research


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an area-less dept

(not quite there yet but trying)

admissions, training of graduate students


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Funded research grants (training grants

excluded)


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5 training grants (2NSF, 3NIH) all

Integrative multi-level and include folks

across traditional areas

Graduate training by committee

All hiring department wide, not by committee,

No replacements (75% yes of all faculty to hire,

all search committees broad dept representation)


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brave hiring

is there a traditional core? If not by area then by what?

in questions?

in methods?

in levels of analysis?

We dont want fads, we dont want cool things of the moment, we cannotactually predict where science and advances are going.


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brave hiring

(

(from the PBS policy committee report, Fall 2009)

We need to embrace the field-changing advancesthat areoccurring rapidly in all areas of the psychological and brain sciences.The current rapid rate of new discoveries is resulting from the

maturity of behavioral and cognitive approaches, from new insightsinto neural mechanisms at the molecular and cellular level, fromnew technologies such as brain imaging and molecular genomics,and from the application of advanced computational approachesand mathematical theories that study large data sets and groups ofindividuals.

Because science depends on community and interactions amongresearchers with different expertise and who study problems fromdifferent levels of analysis, hires should increase the connectivity(decrease path length, increase small world structure) of researchgroups in the department.


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2009 plan

1. embrace the field-changing advances and levels of analyses

2. actively pursue interdisciplinary and translational research3. link to larger interdisciplinary groups and programs on the campus

4. increase in size to around 60 faculty

5. hire to decrease link length from any faculty member to any other

PhDs in computer science, in biomedical

engineering, in physics, in biology, an MD, as

well as PhDs in psychology

Areas: social neuroscience, neurodevelopment

Molecular neuroscience, behavioral

development, cognitive neuroscience,

computational linguistics, social networks


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undergraduate education (more hierarchichal, more integrative)

the required core

social, neuroscience, cognitive

2 labs

1 capstone

service learning honors thesis

senior integrative lab


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Real teaching labs


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a big science mentality

building shared space

labs (size and infrastructure)

shared cutting edge (expensive) facilities

multimodal methods cog. neuro (eeg, eyetracking in magnet, tms, optical

imaging etc.)

multimodal social interactions (eeg, multi-person motion capture and

eyetracking)


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a big science mentality? can we really pull it off?

labs (size and infrastructure)

teaching requirements (1400 majors, 50 faculty, a 2 and 1 load that needs

to be 1 and 1)

tenure requirements

start-up

not your fathers not even your psychology department


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But if we dont, can psychology last?

central hubs and centrifugal forces

Neurobiology/neuroscience

robotics

computational neuroscience

Physics, informatics (many body behaviors and large data sets)


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can psychology last?

neurobiology

neuropsychology

robotics

computational neuroscience

Behavioral genetics and human genomics

Social networks and large group behavior

Computational linguistics

bring it under one roof, psychology should own the integrative question,

COGDOP Linda Smith 2.11

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