My dissertation advisor was fond of repeating a quote attributed to Albert Einstein–”If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.” One might assume that physics is harder to explain than psychology, but that is not always the case. In spite of over 30 years in the classroom, I occasionally find myself thinking–there has to be a better way to get this across to students.
Enter Wray Herbert, who combines a true love of things psychological and extensive experience in journalism. Not only is Wray a wonderful blogger, who participated as our discussant in our Psychology Blogging symposium at 2008 APS, but he has now ventured into writing books about psychology. His latest is On Second Thought: Outsmarting Your Mind’s Hard-Wired Habits, due out September 14 for Random House. In On Second Thought, Wray tackles the extensive, and often difficult and jargon-infested, literature on decision-making. Although our ancestors obviously had good enough decision-making skills to survive, they left us with some predispositions that lead us in some seemingly crazy directions–launching the Challenger, the Bay of Pigs invasion, and those everyday little things we decide to do that leave us scratching our heads later–What was I thinking?
Time to brush up on those decision-making skills...
We can all brush up on decision-making, and finding out where we go astray is a terrific first step. Wray not only educates with his usual classy clarity, but provides real-world examples that draw you along, learning a lot without really being aware that you’re learning a lot. You can check out an excerpt, in which he applies decision-making theories to a real-life case of backcountry skiers versus an avalanche. Teaching social is going to be a lot easier this year. Thanks, Wray!
One of the main reasons I bought an iPad (okay, in addition to the coolness factor) was that I strongly believe this will be the textbook platform of the future. I am hopeful that we can move in the direction of providing easily updated, heavily linked content that will allow students seamless access to text, illustration, definition, video, animation, quizzes, and enrichment reading.
I've zoomed in to see the cholinergic pathways up close....
In the meantime, I was able to download the coursesmart app that allows me to look at my own book in eBook format. Being an “older” person who still has a fondness for leather-bound books, I must confess to being somewhat reluctant to move to the e-form. However, one of the great things about the eBook is that it’s instantly searchable, something we just can’t do with the best hard copy index. The Kindle and its clones are not suitable for my book, due to the dependence in biopsych on color illustrations, but the iPad has great color resolution. Finally, it’s just too cool to do the zoom-in zoom-out thing with a two-finger swipe.
I do catch myself trying to swipe my laptop. Oops.
On another note, if you’re planning to go to APS, I’ll be spending some time at the Cengage booth if you want to chat textbooks and biopsych. Hope to see you there!
Our family is anxiously awaiting the arrival of wireless 3G iPads at the end of April. I haven’t really had a chance to explore the possibilities of the technology yet, but one of the apps that is definitely on my list is the 3-D brain app from Genes to Cognition. If you already have an iPhone or iPod Touch, you can download the app from the iTunes store.
As I mentioned in a previous post, Cold Spring Harbor has done an absolutely fantastic job on the Genes to Cognition site, which was launched just about one year ago. Just be sure to wait to visit until you’ve cleared all your homework. Like TED, it’s addicting.
Here’s a screen shot from the iPhone, so one can only imagine how cool this would be on the iPad.
Genes to Cognition 3D Brain App Screen Shot
I’m not sure when or how the app might be available for iPad, but I’m hoping it’s sooner and not later. On the other hand, the availability of this app brings a whole new wrinkle to my infamous Neuro ID tests, given the handy labeling feature….
When I introduce the psychological disorders unit in both intro psych and biopsych, I spend quite a bit of time discussing what we mean in psychology by the term “abnormal.” This sometimes seemed like overkill–the students were always anxious to get into the meat of the material. After reading Allen Frances’ commentary on DSM V in the Los Angeles Times, though, I am more than ever convinced that the time spent in the discussion of “abnormal” is time well spent.
If you’re not familiar with Professor Frances, he is an emeritus professor and former department chair in psychiatry at Duke University, and he headed up the DSM IV task force in 1994. Those credentials suggest to me that when he has something to say about DSM V, we should all listen carefully.
I am not a clinician, and I have often been troubled by the DSM’s couching what seems to be very typical behavior to me in terms of disorder. Here are a few of my favorites:
- “Often avoids, dislikes, or is reluctant to engage in tasks that require sustained mental effort (such as schoolwork or homework)” from the criteria for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Do we know anybody who doesn’t do this?
- “Often leaves seat in classroom or in other situations in which remaining seated is expected.” Another gem from the ADHD criteria. Instead of making this a symptom of a mental disorder, why don’t we consider our expectations for young children remaining seated? After all, with current rates of childhood obesity, maybe we shouldn’t let them sit down at all.
- “Often initiates physical fights” from the DSM criteria for Conduct Disorder, which is the psychologists’ equivalent of juvenile delinquency. I’m not saying physical fights are ideal behavior, but this is what boys do. I attended a very prissy school system, and most of my classmates are college graduates and successful professionals, and I distinctly recall the boys getting about a block away from our elementary school and starting to punch each other. And what about “mean girl” behavior that doesn’t involve physical fighting? There aren’t too many more vicious creatures on the planet than a pack of 7th grade girls, yet the DSM seems to think that relational aggression is just dandy….
But let’s get back to Dr. Frances, who has some stern things to say about the upcoming DSM V. Here are some of my favorite quotes from his article:
- Our panel tried hard to be conservative and careful but inadvertently contributed to three false “epidemics” — attention deficit disorder, autism and childhood bipolar disorder.
- This wholesale medical imperialization of normality could potentially create tens of millions of innocent bystanders who would be mislabeled as having a mental disorder. The pharmaceutical industry would have a field day — despite the lack of solid evidence of any effective treatments for these newly proposed diagnoses.
- …many misidentified teenagers would receive medications that can cause enormous weight gain, diabetes and shortened life expectancy.
- Defining the elusive line between mental disorder and normality is not simply a scientific question that can be left in the hands of the experts.
- This is a societal issue that transcends psychiatry. It is not too late to save normality from DSM-V if the greater public interest is factored into the necessary risk/benefit analyses.
The last two points Dr. Frances makes are consistent with continuing to emphasize a general education at the university level, not just career training. We need citizens educated in history, philosophy, ethics, and social sciences to help make wise decisions for how the science we produce is used. I hope the current DSM task force pays attention to Dr. Frances’ comments, or we soon won’t have any normal people left on the planet.
It’s always fun to do research, but it’s even more fun when people find what you do interesting. We have had a lot of attention for the Facebook work that our group of stalwart student researchers have done over the last year and a half or so. The most recent recognition comes from HealthDay’s Alan Mozes, with whom I enjoyed a nice conversation this week about our work. Alan asked me to comment on an article in the 2/17 online version of Psychological Science by UT Austin’s Samuel Gosling and his colleagues. The researchers found that people’s Facebook profiles are actually quite accurate.
Our Student Research Continues to Generate Interest
These results, which Gosling said were surprising to their group, were actually quite consistent with our own, which have focused on the relationships between feelings of loneliness and Facebook use by college students. We have found that the image of people constructing some alter ego online that is vastly different from who they really are just hasn’t worked for social networking sites like Facebook. Our participants who are very lonely are not compensating for that by spending more time online or seeking to amass huge networks of friends. Facebook seems to be WYSIWYG, literally.
I suppose the down side of all this attention is that we have to stop tweaking our data (we’ve improved our questionnaires from last year’s APS presentation and are collecting more data and running more analyses) long enough to finalize our papers for publication. Sometimes it’s hard to fit that in with midterms and grad school apps, but I want the students to really be involved with all steps of the project. Stay tuned!
