Diane F. Halpern, Trustee Professor of Psychology and Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College, will present an Invited Address at the 2012 annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association. The title of Dr. Halpern’s address is Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities: What Changed and What Stayed the Same over the Last 25 Years.

One of the most controversial topics in psychology is how, how much, and why females and males differ in some cognitive abilities. How can we make sense of the data about cognitive sex differences, and even more importantly, how can we use these data appropriately and guard against their misuse in formulating public policies?

Dr. Halpern has a wide range of research interests, which are loosely rooted in human cognition, including expert-novice differences in Scrabble players, sex differences in cognitive abilities, critical thinking, using the principles of cognitive psychology to enhance teaching and learning, and work and family interactions. One recent project is Operation ARIES, an intelligent tutoring system that using principles from the science of learning to teach children scientific reasoning skills. Students participate in a game-like setting that begins when they sign up to be agents for the Federal Bureau of Science to save the earth from aliens from the ARIES constellation that are attempting to colonize the Earth. These aliens are taking over the Earth by turning humans into mindless consumers by using bad science. Students have to learn scientific principles to be able to identify the alien species and prevent the earth from being colonized.

Dr. Halpern has won many awards for her teaching and research, including the American Psychological Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching, the Distinguished Career Award for Contributions to Education given by the American Psychological Association, and the California State University’s State-Wide Outstanding Professor Award. Dr. Halpern was president of the American Psychological Association in 2004 and is a past president of the Society for the Teaching of Psychology. Her recent books include Thought and Knowledge: An Introduction to Critical Thinking, Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities, and Women at the Top: Powerful Leaders Tell Us How to Combine Work and Family.

Dr. Halpern’s address will be Saturday, May 5, 2012 at 9:00AM in the Crystal Room of the Palmer House Hilton. To hear her talk and other speakers at the annual meeting, visit the MPA website, become a member, or register as a non-member in advance.

Richard J. McNally, Professor of Clinical Psychology at Harvard University will give an Invited Address at the MPA Annual Meeting entitled, What is Mental Illness? McNally has conducted laboratory studies concerning cognitive functioning in adults reporting histories of childhood sexual abuse, including those reporting recovered memories of abuse. His research has been supported by the National Institute of Mental Health. He served on the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-IV PTSD and specific phobia committees, and he is an advisor to the DSM-5 Anxiety Disorders Sub-Workgroup.

Dr. McNally’s invited address is based on his most recent book What is Mental Illness? His book describes the intense political and intellectual struggles over what counts as a “real” mental disorder, and what goes into the “DSM,” the primary means of classifying mental disorders in the United States. An advisor to DSM-5, but also a fierce critic of exaggerated overuse, McNally defends the careful approach of describing disorders by patterns of symptoms that can be seen, and illustrates how often the system medicalizes everyday emotional life.

Neuroscience, genetics, and evolutionary psychology may illuminate the biological bases of mental illness, but at this point, McNally argues, no science can draw a bright line between disorder and distress. In a pragmatic and humane conclusion, he offers questions for patients and professionals alike to help understand, and cope with, the sorrows and psychopathologies of everyday life.

Dr. McNally has more than 320 publications, most concerning anxiety disorders (e.g., posttraumatic stress disorder, panic disorder, phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorder), including the books Panic Disorder: A Critical Analysis (1994), Remembering Trauma (2003). He is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist, a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, winner of the 2005 Distinguished Scientist Award from the Society for the Science of Clinical Psychology, winner of the 2010 Outstanding Mentor Award from the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, and he is on the Institute for Scientific Information’s “Highly Cited” list for psychology and psychiatry.

Dr. McNally’s address will be Thursday, May 3, 2012 at 3:00PM in the Red Lacquer Room of the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago. To hear his address, become a member of MPA or register for the conference as a nonmember through the MPA website.

Dan P. McAdams, chair of the Psychology Department at Northwestern University, will give an Invited Talk at this year’s annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association (MPA). The talk is entitled, The Psychology of George W. Bush.

Drawing from personality science, McAdams will consider the psychology of George W. Bush from the standpoint of his dispositional traits, characteristic goals, and the redemptive life narrative he constructed to make sense of his life.  Key to understanding Bush, is the projection of his personal narrative onto America after 9/11.

McAdam’s talk is based on his recently published book, George W. Bush and the Redemptive Dream: A Psychological Portrait. Steven Pinker called the book, “A new look at one of the most controversial presidents in history” whereas James Pennebaker commented, ” This book reflects a new genre that bridges cutting-edge scientific psychology with more traditional biographical analysis.”

McAdams is the author of nearly 200 scientific articles and chapters, numerous edited volumes, and seven books. He works in the areas of personality and life-span developmental psychology. His theoretical and empirical writings focus on concepts of self and identity in contemporary American society and on themes of power, intimacy, redemption and generativity across the adult life course. McAdams is most well-known for formulating a life-story theory of human identity, which argues that modern adults provide their lives with a sense of unity and purpose by constructing and internalizing self-defining life stories or “personal myths.”

Dr. McAdam’s talk will be Thursday, May 3, 2012 at 1PM in the Palmer House Hilton. To attend the MPA annual meeting and hear his talk, become an MPA member or register in advance on the MPA website.

The Annual Meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association will feature an invited symposium of leading psychologists interested in goal pursuit, attainment, and self-regulation. The symposium, How to Reach a Goal: Lessons from Research on Self-Regulation, will occur at 1PM on Friday, May 4, 2012, at the Palmer Hosue Hilton in Chicago. The symposium will be moderated by Dr. Allen McConnell, Professor of Psychology at Miami University. It will include several presentations:

Exploring the Psychology of Will-Power: The Role of Subjective Construal in Self-Control; KENTARO FUJITA, Ohio State University

Everyday Temptations: Sampling Desire, Goal Conflict, and Self-Control in Everyday Life; WILHELM HOFMANN, University of Chicago, KATHLEEN D. VOHS, University of Minnesota, ROY F. BAUMEISTER, Florida State University

Emotions as a Catalyst for Self-Regulation: When, How, and for Whom? CHRISTINA M. BROWN & AARON A. SHILLING, Saint Louis University

Attaining Growth and Maintaining Security: The Distinct Meaning of Success at Different Self-Regulatory Concerns; DANIEL C. MOLDEN, Northwestern University

The MPA Annual Meeting will occur May 3-5, 2012 at the Palmer House Hilton. MPA members are admitted to the annual meeting at no additional charge. Individuals who hold a doctoral degree or who are graduate students are encouraged to join MPA and attend the meeting. Undergraduates and other non-members are also welcome to attend the meeting; they can register for the annual meeting in advance by visiting the MPA nonmember registration site.

An invited symposium entitled, Succeeding at Math: Cognition, Development, and the Classroom, will be presented at the annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association in May 2012. The symposium will feature four leading researchers in the areas of achievement and cognitive development.

Sian Beilock is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at The University of Chicago. Dr. Beilock is chiefly interested in examining the cognitive and neural processes governing skill success and failure across different task types, performance environments, and levels of expertise. Her research is funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education. Her recent book, Choke, uses psychological science to help people succeed in high-pressure situations.

Clancy Blair is a professor of applied psychology at New York University. Dr. Blair  is a developmental psychologist who studies self-regulation in young children. His primary interest concerns the development of executive functions and the ways in which these aspects of  cognition are important for school readiness and early school achievement.

David Geary is a Curators’ Professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at University of Missouri. Dr. Geary is a cognitive developmental and evolutionary psychologist with interests in mathematical learning and sex differences. Dr. Geary is the lead investigator on a longitudinal study of children’s mathematical development and learning disabilities and co-directs studies of sex differences in risks associated with prenatal and early developmental exposure to endocrine disrupting compounds.

Bethany Rittle-Johnson is an associate professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University. Dr. Rittle-Johnson’s  interests are in how children learn problem-solving procedures and key concepts in domains such as mathematics. This research bridges between psychological theory and educational practice. Dr. Rittle-Johnson also collaborates with teachers, cognitive scientists, and computer scientists to apply and test her research in educational settings.

The symposium will be open to all attendees at the MPA conference.

Dr. Leona Aiken, Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University, will give the APA Distinguished Scientist Lecture at the annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association in Chicago. Dr. Aiken is internationally known for her research in applied statistics and health psychology.  

With respect to statistics and quantitative methods, Dr. Aiken is interested in continuous variable interactions in multiple regression. She is also interested in the use of design approaches and mediational analysis to untangle the effects of individual components in multi-component interventions. She is  co-author of one of the most cited statistics textbooks, Multiple Regression: Testing and Interpreting Interactions.

With respect to health psychology, Dr. Aiken is interested in the adoption of health protective behaviors across the life span, particularly among women, both from the perspectives of psychosocial models of the putative determinants of health protective behavior and from the perspective of interventions to increase health protective behavior. She has studied mammography screening, breast augmentation, condom use, sun protection, and the adoption of hormone replacement therapy.

Besides being a distinguished scholar and prolific writer, Dr. Aiken is a highly treasured professor as her awards attest: ASU Professor of the Year (2010); Outstanding Graduate Mentor award (2009); the Distinguished Teaching/Mentoring award (Division 5, Evaluation, Measurement, Statistics, of the American Psychological Association, Inaugural Award, 2001); College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Distinguished Teaching award (2000); and ASU Alumni Association Excellence in Teaching award (1997).  

Most recently, Dr. Aiken was named an ASU President’s Professor in recognition of her excellence in undergraduate education.

Dr. Aiken is very excited about returning to MPA, the conference at which she gave her first research paper.

Submissions for the 2012 Meeting are currently being accepted. The deadline for submissions is Monday, November 7, 2011, 11:59 PM EST.

To submit, visit the submission website. If this is your first submission for this year’s meeting, you will be asked to “Create a New Account.” You will then be asked to enter your name and contact information and select your type of presentation (i.e., paper, poster, symposium). You will need to provide the following:

1.) Names and contact information (e.g., affiliations, emails) for yourself and all coauthors.

2.) A 400-word abstract describing your research. This abstract will be reviewed by the program committee.

3.) A 50-word abstract describing your research. This abstract will be cut-and-pasted into the program book if your submission is accepted.

Please remember that you must be a member of MPA, or have an MPA member coauthor or sponsor your presentation, in order to present. Membership is $45 for faculty and $20 for graduate students and includes registration at the conference. Complete the online membership application to become a member.