Challenges facing psychology departments
Linda Smith
Indiana University
“to be ahead of the curve, where the field is going”
“to be ahead of the curve, where the field is going”
But how do you do that, where is the field going?
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?
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)
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
Who is doing psychology?
• 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: graphtheoretical analysis of structural and functional systems. Nature Reviews
Neuroscience 10, 186-198.
• Physicists like Olaf Sporns at Indiana
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)
Who is doing psychology?
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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. Breakout
advances can be coming from anywhere and the discoveries that advance
knowledge will determine future of psychology whether or not they are made
by a psychology PhD in a psychology department
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
guild –the folks we respected –told us they were)
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
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).
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 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
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
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
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
Signs of change reflect advances in science
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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
Change brings challenges
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department structure
graduate training
research support and infrastructure (and teaching loads)
traditional views of psychology departments
the existence of psychology itself
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 neuroscience
and 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
an area-less dept
(not quite there yet but trying)
admissions, training of graduate students
Funded research grants (training grants
excluded)
•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)
brave hiring
is there a traditional core? If not by area then by what?
• in questions?
• in methods?
• in levels of analysis?
We don’t want fads, we don’t want “cool” things of the moment, we cannot
actually predict where science and advances are going….
brave hiring
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(from the PBS policy committee report, Fall 2009)
• We need to embrace the field-changing advances that are
occurring 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 insights
into neural mechanisms at the molecular and cellular level, from
new technologies such as brain imaging and molecular genomics,
and from the application of advanced computational approaches
and mathematical theories that study large data sets and groups of
individuals.
• Because science depends on community and interactions among
researchers with different expertise and who study problems from
different levels of analysis, hires should increase the connectivity
(decrease path length, increase small world structure) of research
groups in the department.
2009 plan
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embrace the field-changing advances and levels of analyses
actively pursue interdisciplinary and translational research
link to larger interdisciplinary groups and programs on the campus
increase in size to around 60 faculty
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
undergraduate education (more hierarchichal, more integrative)
• the required core
– social, neuroscience, cognitive
– 2 labs
– 1 capstone
• service learning
• honors thesis
• senior integrative lab
Real teaching labs
a big science mentality
building shared space
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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)
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 father’s –not even your – psychology department
But if we don’t, can psychology last?
central hubs and centrifugal forces
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Neurobiology/neuroscience
robotics
computational neuroscience
Physics, informatics (many body behaviors and large data sets)
can psychology last?
bring it under one roof, psychology should own the integrative question,
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neurobiology
neuropsychology
robotics
computational neuroscience
Behavioral genetics and human genomics
Social networks and large group behavior
Computational linguistics