I read an article in Nature about how academics who work with graduate students could do a better job preparing grad students for non-academic careers (Forrester, 2022). It reminded me of when I was in grad school 30 years ago. (Yes, I walked through the snow uphill to get to campus–and to get home.) While I don’t remember anyone explicitly telling me that choosing/getting/accepting an academic job that primarily involved teaching would mark me a failure in the eyes of the program, I implicitly got the message. I remember one grad student who got a job in an applied field, and her work was discussed as a curiosity, not as a legitimate option for life after grad school. If we take the discussion down one more level, we can talk about the expectations undergraduate psychology programs put on bachelor’s students to go to grad school. If we’re not actively talking about career paths outside of grad school, we’re implicitly telling students they’re a failure if they don’t go the grad school route. Take a look at APA’s Center for Workforce Studies’ Careers in Psychology page to see how many people with which degrees and at what career stage are working in each career field. In the word cloud, click on a career field to get the estimated number of people working in the field and a percentage of this segment of the workforce. While the Nature article was written with an engineering, physical, and earth science grad faculty audience in mind, the advice works for psychology, too. And for both grad students and undergraduates. “Voice your support for alternative paths,” and “[g]ive students time to explore.” Let’s talk with our psych undergrad and grad students about psychology’s career path possibilities. If we feel we are not well-versed in the topic, then let’s make it an assignment. Turn students loose to do their own research with a report back to the class. Be prepared to learn a lot! As advisors, let’s “[a]sk students about their career interests and goals,” and “[d]evise a mentoring plan to help [our] students.” If students are interested in careers that we know nothing about, then it’s time to tap our networks. Let’s connect our students with others with similar degrees who are working in the fields they’re interested in. Have a psych major who is interested in going into business or healthcare? Or a grad student who is interested in helping golfers avoid the yips? If you don’t know where to start, I recommend posting to the Society for the Teaching of Psychology (STP) Facebook group. If you’re not on Facebook, try Twitter; STP’s Twitter name is @TeachPsych. Join the STP PsychTeacher email listserv and ask for networking help there. You may also want to contact the leadership of one or more of the 54 APA divisions that most closely matches your student’s interest. Don’t overlook your own department’s alumni. What are your former students doing now? If career and career interests match, are they willing to have a conversation with your current students? Mentoring isn’t always about having the answers. Sometimes it’s about helping finding someone who does.   Reference Forrester, N. (2022). How lab leaders can support students’ non-academic career plans. Nature, 601(7894), 655–657. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00162-y   ... View more

Students should not only be taught the core concepts of introductory psychology, but also how those ideas play out in their daily lives and the world around them. In a seven-part video series produced exclusively for Macmillan Learning, Garth Neufeld shows how APA’s Introductory Psychology Initiative (IPI) offers a guided structure for doing just that. As Professor Neufeld (Cascadia College) explains, APA’s IPI’s themes help students understand the trends and patterns of human thoughts and behaviors, which are concepts they can then apply to their current and future studies, and to their lives beyond the classroom. Furthermore, APA IPI themes allow instructors to organize course goals, learning, and assessments around these key topics. Watch the full series with a community account. ... View more

Psychiatry and psychology are not averse to renaming our constructs. For example, with DSM-III, manic-depression became bipolar disorder. Since then, mental retardation became the more descriptive intellectual disability, and the controversial multiple personality disorder became the no less controversial dissociative identity disorder. Schizophrenia started life as dementia praecox. Is it time to change the name again? There are two arguments for a name change. First, there is much stigma associated with the term schizophrenia. As a class discussion item, ask students what immediately comes to mind when they hear “schizophrenia.” Be ready for students to say things describing people diagnosed with schizophrenia as being violent and having poor hygiene. What your students say is probably a pretty good representation of the public’s perception of schizophrenia. The more stigmatizing the label, the harder it is for clinicians to give the diagnosis to clients. And for those who have the diagnosis, the experience is all the more stressful when they have to manage the knee-jerk reactions of others. As if living with the symptoms of schizophrenia doesn’t make life much more difficult already. The second argument for a name change is that the word “schizophrenia” is not descriptive of the symptoms, and the name implies that schizophrenia is a single entity. Our modern understanding of schizophrenia is much more nuanced. For example, we now understand schizophrenia to encompass a wide and varying spectrum of symptoms. The disorder has already undergone a name change in Japan (to integration disorder), South Korea (to attunement disorder) and Hong Kong and Taiwan (disordered thought and perception) (Mesholam-Gately et al., 2021). Ask your students if they think schizophrenia should be renamed. A U.S. survey that included participants with mental illness, family members of those with mental illness, mental health providers, and others found much support for a name change; two-thirds supported a name change before seeing some possible names, and three-quarters supported a name change after seeing possible names and their descriptions. The names that received the most support were: Altered perception syndrome: “Indicates that people with this illness experience sensory information differently in a way that changes their day to day experiences.” Psychosis spectrum syndrome: “This term refers to a spectrum of common psychosis symptoms, such as hallucinations, delusions and thought difficulties.” and neuro-emotional integration disorder: “A biopsychosocial (biological, psychological, and social) term describing difficulty integrating cognition, emotion, and behavior” (Mesholam-Gately et al., 2021). (Download the pdf of the survey questions). Having seen these proposed terms and their descriptions, ask your students again if they think schizophrenia should be renamed. Personally, I find psychosis spectrum syndrome to be the most descriptive, but I doubt that being psychotic carries any less stigma than schizophrenia does. I can see why altered perception syndrome had the most support as it is probably the most innocuous of the group, but the name makes me think of synesthesia or ESP. I could work with neuro-emotional integration disorder. If you would like to extend the discussion, give your students a few minutes to consider alternate names. Give them these criteria: “Mental health professionals suggest that a successful name change should be clearly defined, neutral, easily understood, and illustrate the core symptoms of the disorder in order to increase accessibility and communicability by healthcare providers” (Mesholam-Gately et al., 2021). After students have a few minutes to brainstorm some names on their own, ask students to share their ideas in small groups. Ask each group to share their top one to three names. Invite the class to vote on the names.   Reference Mesholam-Gately, R. I., Varca, N., Spitzer, C., Parrish, E. M., Hogan, V., Behnke, S. H., Larson, L., Rosa-Baez, C., Schwirian, N., Stromeyer, C., Williams, M. J., Saks, E. R., & Keshavan, M. S. (2021). Are we ready for a name change for schizophrenia? A survey of multiple stakeholders. Schizophrenia Research, 238, 152–160. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.schres.2021.08.034    ... View more

In Intro Psych, we often approach sleep deprivation as an issue faced by individuals with solutions directed at individuals. A compelling article in Science (Pérez Ortega, 2021) argues that we should also consider sleep deprivation in the context of social justice. I’ll skip over how important sleep is. Instructors of Intro Psych, on the whole, probably have a pretty good grasp of the research on sleep deprivation and its effects. After covering the importance of sleep, share these data with your students: A 2015 study in the United States found that, 43.4% of Blacks, 37.1% of Chinese Americans, 31.5% of Hispanics, and 19.3% of Whites reported sleeping an average of less than six hours per night. Ask students to consider what environmental, socioeconomic, and social factors may contribute to that disparity.   Here are some of the factors identified by researchers in the Science article: Black and Hispanic workers are more likely to work nights. Those who work the night shift are less likely to get enough sleep. Acculturation stress for immigrants contributes to sleep loss. The stress of being the target of—or fear of being the target of—prejudice and discrimination is associated with greater insomnia.  “[P]eople of color tend to reside in brighter areas, where they are exposed to approximately twice as much ambient light at night as white people” (Pérez Ortega, 2021, p. 553). “Black, Hispanic, and Asian people in the United States are also exposed to disproportionately high levels of particulate air pollution”(Pérez Ortega, 2021, p. 553). Air pollution affects how well we breathe. The more difficult it is to breathe, the more difficult it is to sleep. Black Americans are more likely to live in neighborhoods where nighttime noise is common. Conclude the discussion by asking students what we can do as society members to mitigate these environmental and social factors. As an example, there is a movement to reduce city light pollution (Payne, 2021). While much of the impetus for the movement is about energy conservation, changing city lights to softer, less intense lights should make urban sleeping a little easier, too. “For the first time, the Department of Health and Human Services earlier this year included improving sleep as one of the main disease prevention goals for the next decade. [Marishka Brown, director of the National Center on Sleep Disorder Research at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, who chaired the working group that came up with sleep objectives for the project, called Healthy People 2030, is elated that improving sleep is now a national health priority. She is disappointed, however, that tackling sleep disparities wasn’t ultimately included, despite all the evidence she and others presented to decision-makers” (Pérez Ortega, 2021, p. 555). Here is the Healthy People 2030 section on sleep, for your reference.     References Payne, E. (2021, September 27). Dark skies ordinance to dim Pittsburgh’s light pollution. Carnegie Mellon University. http://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2021/september/light-pollution-ordinance.html Pérez Ortega, R. (2021). Divided we sleep. Science, 374(6567), 552–555. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.acx9445     ... View more

A break is never a waste of time, especially under circumstances of increased stress. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/202201/take-break ... View more

In December 2021, snow closed the major highways in northern California, including I-80. With those routes closed, Google Maps and Waze (also owned by Google) suggested routes that sent people on rural roads through the Sierra Nevada Mountains. People ended up stranded in the middle of nowhere. One person was quoted as saying, “Blaming vulnerable people for going down the wrong road is the same as blaming some of those poor vulnerable people who drowned in their basement apartments in New York City” during September 2021 flooding (Vigdor, 2021). This is not the only instance of drivers blindly following an app’s directions and ending up in trouble, e.g., 8 Drivers Who Blindly Followed Their GPS into Disaster, and Truck Drivers Following GPS Get into Serious Trouble. I admit that I am struggling with this one. My primary reaction upon reading such stories is thinking that, as drivers, we cannot turn off our brains. If a snowstorm has dumped enough snow that the department of transportation cannot keep the biggest highways open, how could the secondary roads possibly be open? Now, being a psychological scientist, my next thought is, “Wait. Am I blaming the victim?” Are the drivers who chose to follow their phone’s GPS victims of technology? But the drivers were not forced to follow those directions, so are they really victims of their own making? I grew up with snow in a mountain-y, rural area, so I have a lot of knowledge about snow and mountains and rural roads. For drivers who do not have that experience, is it reasonable to think that they and I share the same “common sense”? In grad school at the University of Kansas, a friend who had grown up in Kansas and I took a road trip back to my home state of Pennsylvania. As I-80 (the same highway that was closed in that northern California snowstorm) started into the Allegheny Mountains, the speed limit dropped from 70mph to 55mph. My friend who had no experience driving on major highways through mountains could not comprehend why the speed limit had dropped. I, foolishly, told her that if she thought she could drive 70mph to give it a try. She quickly discovered that they had built the road according to the terrain, so sharp turns that are more judiciously taken at 55mph are part of the driving experience. All of that is to say that our experience of driving conditions is not universally shared. Instead of following their GPS, let’s imagine that the drivers had pulled over and asked a local resident for directions, and the local suggested a snow-packed rural route that the drivers then followed. To me, the drivers now feel more like victims of bad advice, and blaming the drivers does feel like blaming the victim. But is there really any difference between a driver who trusts the advice of a local and a driver who trusts the advice of their phone’s GPS? This could be an interesting discussion with your students after you have introduced the blaming the victim concept. A few years ago, The Atlantic had a pretty good article on blaming the victim if you would like your students to have a bit more information about the concept (Roberts, 2016). Describe the snowstorm incident, and then ask students if the drivers were victims of technology or victims of their own making. Ask them to explain why. If the predominant answer is blaming the victim (victim of their own making), ask students if the directions had been given to the drivers by a local resident, would it change their thinking. Why or why not?     Reference Roberts, K. (2016, October 5). The psychology of victim blaming. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/10/the-psychology-of-victim-blaming/502661/ Vigdor, N. (2021, December 31). Snow closed the highways. GPS mapped a harrowing detour in the Sierra Nevada. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/31/us/google-maps-waze-sierra-nevada-snow.html   ... View more

Available exclusively in Achieve starting Fall 2022, this extraordinary new collection features over 120 in-demand clips from high-quality sources—classic and contemporary— as well as engaging original content. It’s a remarkably diverse and relevant resource, developed in partnership with a faculty and student advisory board, and encompassing such captivating topics as COVID and stress, Alzheimer’s, loneliness & the brain, Black Lives Matter/racial trauma & racial bias, online dating, and topics related to transgender youth. Videos are closed-captioned with warnings for sensitive content, and each clip includes assignable assessments, with results reporting into the Achieve gradebook. You can learn more and view the full Table of Contents here or with the attached file. ... View more

Anxious about time passing you by? You might have chronophobia. https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/cant-stand-time-passing-you-by-you-may-have-chronophobia/ ... View more

According to the CDC, as of December 8, 2021, 83.5% of U.S. adults have had at least one dose of a COVID vaccine. When the unvaccinated are interviewed by journalists, they report a number of reasons for choosing not to get the vaccine, such as being too healthy to need it and not trusting that the vaccine is not harmful (Bosman et al., 2021). What I have not heard in person-on-the-street interviews, however, is someone saying they are not getting vaccinated because they are afraid of needles. In a pre-COVID meta-analysis, researchers found “[a]voidance of influenza vaccination because of needle fear occurred in 16% of adult patients, 27% of hospital employees, 18% of workers at long-term care facilities, and 8% of healthcare workers at hospitals” (McLenon & Rogers, 2019, p. 30), and the younger the people, the more common the fear. For young and young-ish adults (ages 20 to 40), approximately 20% to 30% have a needle fear (McLenon & Rogers, 2019). I wonder how many of the unvaccinated have a fear of needles but are citing other reasons for avoiding the vaccine. All of the photos of healthcare workers jabbing people with needles cannot be helping. For someone who is needle-phobic—or merely needle-averse—seeing a jabbing photo would likely result in them immediately turning away. Not only are they not getting the vaccine, they are not getting good information about the vaccine. In our Intro Psych courses, we can assume that 20% to 30% of our students have a fear of needles. For our students who do not have a fear, they certainly know someone who does, whether they know it or not. When we cover phobias and treatment for phobias, let’s include needles (but no photos!) as an example. Where does the fear of needles and shots come from? It is easy to see how a needle fear would develop. Classical conditioning offers a pretty likely scenario. A young child is approached by a gloved healthcare worker carrying a needle, gets a shot, and the shot hurts! Things that hurt are scary. The hurting is the unconditioned/unconditional stimulus, and the fear is the unconditioned/unconditional response. The needle (and all things associated with it) is the conditioned/conditional stimulus, and the fear of it is the conditioned/conditional response. Observational learning may have been the source of the fear for some, such as seeing a sibling screaming after they got a shot. As we know, the key to overcoming fear is exposure. For most of us, as we got older and we received more and more shots, the fear began to dissipate. Yes, the shot may still hurt, but by the time we are well into adulthood, we have been hurt in many worse ways. The sting from the jab is a pain that we know is both temporary and manageable. For some, though, that is not the case. The fear has not dissipated, perhaps because they have spent most of their life avoiding needles. Strategies and Treatment for Fear of Needles There are several strategies a person with a fear of needles can use (Huff, 2021). Techniques useful for relaxation can help, such as taking deep breaths and picturing serene environments. For some, knowing exactly what is going on as the shot is being prepared is helpful. For others, knowing absolutely nothing and, with headphones on, being completely absorbed in a game or video is preferred. In either case, the person should communicate their preferences with the healthcare provider. A little self-talk doesn’t hurt, either: “I have so got this!”   For those with more severe fears, working with a mental health provider trained in systematic desensitization would be best (Huff, 2021). Identifying the cause of the fear is first. Is it the needle? The pain? Blood? Next, the mental health provider would work with the client to create a fear hierarchy. If the fear is the needle, then they may start with viewing a drawing of a needle. With the help of say, progressive muscle relaxation, the client relaxes. Once again, the drawing is presented, and the client relaxes. Once the client can look at the drawing without tensing up, they move on to the next item in the fear hierarchy, such as a photo of needle, then perhaps a plastic toy needle, and so on up to a real needle. Helping our students see that a fear of needles is conquerable may help save their lives or the lives of their loved ones. References Bosman, J., Hoffman, J., Sanger-Katz, M., & Arango, T. (2021, July 31). Who are the unvaccinated in America? There’s no one answer. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/31/us/virus-unvaccinated-americans.html Huff, C. (2021). How psychologists can help patients with injection fear. Monitor on Psychology, 52(4). https://www.apa.org/monitor/2021/06/injection-fear McLenon, J., & Rogers, M. A. M. (2019). The fear of needles: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 75(1), 30–42. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/jan.13818   ... View more

In the October 1, 2021 issue of Science, Jennifer S. Chen shares with readers her experience switching from one research direction to another mid-graduate career. The four big lessons she learned from this experience apply to, well, life. But since this is a blog about teaching, let’s talk teaching. “It’s OK to fail.” In the context of doing research, failure is part of the game. Although, if a study didn’t go as I expected I don’t know that I thought of it as failure. In any case, I certainly don’t think that way now. Regardless of the results, we always know more after the completion of a study than we did before. Even if I managed to screw up the procedure in some way, I now know to be more careful next time. That’s progress. In teaching, how often have I tried something new—assignment, discussion, activity—only to have it completely bomb? Raise your hand if you have ever passed out a test only to discover that the answers were copied onto the last page. Those instructors who are so fearful of failure are too paralyzed to try anything new. Anyone else thinking of growth mindset? If we are going to get better—at teaching, at science, at life—we have to see failure as a learning opportunity, not as a comment on who we are as a teacher, a scientist, or a human being. I have worked with faculty going through the tenure process, and I have served on the committee that recommends faculty for tenure. I was not looking for perfect teaching. I was looking for instructors who were willing to take risks. If that risk didn’t work out, what did the instructor learn from it? What are they going to try next? “Value your transferable skills.” All of the time Chen spent working within her first research area was not wasted time. Instead, she learned skills, such as how to quickly read a research paper, that will serve her well, no matter her research area. The two biggest skills that I have learned through teaching that come immediately to mind are public speaking and translating science for a general audience. I am not saying, by any stretch of the imagination, that I am perfect at those, but I am sure a whole lot better than I was 30 years ago! While teaching a new course for the first time can be intimidating and we don’t feel like we know everything to be covered in the course, we have the basic skills: public speaking and science translation. I see these in all of you, too. When I attend conference sessions, those who spend a lot of their time teaching are, on the whole, much better speakers than those who don’t. And because we have to communicate (sometimes complex) psychological findings to novices, we get pretty good at translating psychological science to the general public. I would love to see more psychology instructors writing blogs, writing editorials, or hosting podcasts geared toward a general audience. Have you noticed that a lot of psychology instructors lead college and university teaching and learning centers? (See for example, Claudia Stanny at the University of West Florida, Elizabeth Yost Hammer at Xavier University of Louisiana, and Regan A. R. Gurung at Oregon State University.)  Given our knowledge of psychological science and our ability to communicate those scientific findings, instructors of psychology are easy choices for departments that help others become better instructors. “Ask for help.” In Chen’s new research area, there was one component of her research that she didn’t know how to do. Rather than take weeks to learn how to do it on her own, she solicited the help of another lab who had the experience and the expertise to do it for her.   Teaching Intro Psych is hard. The word Intro is deceptive. “Introductions” to things should be easy. The Intro Psych course is not so much an “introduction” as it is “a tidal wave of information from every corner of the field.” But we don’t call it that because it exceeds the number of characters allowed by the course title field in our college catalogs. If you have a colleague who is an expert in sensation and perception, then ask them to present that content to your Intro Psych students. Take notes! Now you can lecture on it for the next year or two. Then invite your colleague to do it again. Take notes on what’s changed, and you’re good to go for another year or two. If you are having a tough time with a particular concept, ask. If you don’t work with someone who knows, put it out to the teaching of psychology community. At the time of this writing, the Society for the Teaching of Psychology Facebook group has over 16,000 members. Someone will know the answer to your question. “Share your story.” When Chen started talking about her experiences with failed research studies and switching research areas, she discovered others who had had the same experiences. Talking with our teaching colleagues about our teaching failures helps us normalize the experience. This is especially important for our colleagues who are relatively new to teaching. Trying and failing are all part of the profession.   Reference Chen, J. S. (2021). Embracing a change. Science, 374(6563), 114 ... View more

As false information permeates our society, scientists keep their focus on the facts. The Covid-19 vaccine is not in any way associated with decreased fertility -- but the Covid virus itself is. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/covid-vaccine-infertility-pregnancy-false-information ... View more

When about to give birth, I would like my healthcare provider to make a recommendation for cesarean or vaginal delivery based on my particular set of circumstances and indicators, and mine alone. I would also like a pony. Both may be equally likely. Using 21 years-worth of data (2000 to 2020), Manasvini Singh* reviewed reports of “86,345 deliveries by 231 physicians” that occurred at two hospitals, one urban and one suburban (Singh, 2021). She discovered that if a particular physician delivered a baby say, via cesarean at 1pm and the birth had complications, then the next delivery overseen by that physician later that day would be more likely to be vaginal. Conversely, a vaginal birth with complications was more likely to be followed by a cesarean birth. Interestingly, the more experienced the physician, the more likely the physician was to make the switch. Similar results were found among physicians regarding colonoscopies. If a physician referred a patient for a colonoscopy, and the patient experienced serious complications, the rates of colonoscopy referrals from that physician decreased during the next quarter of the year (Keating et al., 2017). The same is true for prescribing drugs. Physicians who had a patient who had a bad reaction to a drug were less likely to prescribe that drug again (Choudhry et al., 2006). Now, the million-dollar question: why? The data, unfortunately, are silent on the matter. One possibility identified by Singh, Keating et al., and Choudhry is the availability heuristic. When it comes to making decisions about whether to recommend a vaginal or cesarean birth, whether to recommend a colonoscopy, and whether to recommend a particular drug, the physician may mentally flip through how things have gone in the past. Events that stand out—such as events with bad outcomes—will most easily come to mind. For the purposes of teaching Intro Psych, the availability heuristic is a perfectly fine explanation. For those who would like to split cognitive hairs, there are some other possibilities, such as the recency effect, the frequency illusion, or the affect heuristic. In my mind, those are all subtypes of the availability heuristic. I will concede that if this were my area of research, I might have a better appreciation for the nuance. If you would like to challenge your students while introducing them to even more cognitive biases, ask students to review the biases in one section of the Cognitive Bias Codex. Are there any other biases in that section that could possibly explain the physician decision-making described above? Explain.   * Singh’s website includes this tidbit: “My secret talent: If you send me your study, I’ll summarize the results in a limerick for you.” References Choudhry, N. K., Anderson, G. M., Laupacis, A., Ross-Degnan, D., Normand, S. L., & Soumerai, S. B. (2006). Impact of adverse events on prescribing warfarin in patients with atrial fibrillation: matched pair analysis. BMJ (Clinical research ed.), 332(7534), 141–145. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.38698.709572.55 Keating, N. L., James O'Malley, A., Onnela, J. P., & Landon, B. E. (2017). Assessing the impact of colonoscopy complications on use of colonoscopy among primary care physicians and other connected physicians: an observational study of older Americans. BMJ open, 7(6), e014239. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2016-014239 Singh, M. (2021). Heuristics in the delivery room. Science, 374(6565), 324–329. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abc9818   ... View more

In the Society for the Teaching of Psychology (STP) Facebook group, Bridgette Martin Hard wondered why conditioning (as in classical and operant conditioning) is called conditioning (members of the STP Facebook group can read the discussion). While I had heard that this was due to a mistranslation of Pavlov’s work, it was Olga Lazareva who provided the details. Lazareva explains that Pavlov wrote условный in his papers. When you pop that into your favorite Russian translation website, you’ll see that the most common English translations are “conditional” and “contingent.” Lazareva goes on to say, “Pavlov called the whole thing условный рефлекс, or conditional reflex, to be distinguished from безусловный рефлекс, or unconditional reflex, because he viewed CR as automatic as UR, once acquisition was completed. We now know that's not entirely correct, and the word ‘reflex’ never stuck in English, but is still used in Russian literature instead of ‘conditioning’.” Conditional, frankly, does make a whole lot more sense than conditioned. As Ruth Frickle noted in that same Facebook thread, “Now I can stop being vaguely annoyed when my students say conditional.” Instead, we can say, “You know, you’re closer to being right than you know.” In a 2012 Scientific American article, science journalist Jason G. Goldman took a crack at reversing 100 years of bad translation usage and explained classical conditioning using the terms conditional and unconditional. He footnoted why he used conditional and not conditioned. Note that most English-language textbooks use the terms "unconditioned stimulus," "unconditioned response," and so on. This is due to a translation error from Pavlov's Russian to English. The better translation would be "conditional." You go, Jason! In all seriousness, Jason is onto something. We can all decide—right here, right now—to dump our use of conditioned and use conditional instead. Let’s talk about the unconditional stimulus, the unconditional response, the conditional stimulus, and the conditional response. We can footnote just as well as Jason can. We don’t need to continue to perpetuate a bad translation. Let’s honor Pavlov’s legacy by using his (properly translated) terminology. Who’s in? ... View more

What can cab drivers tell us about Alzheimer's Disease? Quite a lot, it turns out. London Cabbies' Brains Analyzed for Alzheimer's Research https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2021/11/01/london-taxi-driver-alzheimers-research/ ... View more

What if you ran a company where your employees are spending their days in their cubicles staring at computer screens in silence? What if you wanted your employees to interact face-to-face a little more? Would you be willing to give your employees free drinks to talk to each other? Here’s another creative example for the next time you cover operant conditioning. (Read more here.) Kokuyo, Co., a manufacturer of office supplies, installed a Suntory Beverage & Food company vending machine in one of their offices. While the vending machine behaves like other vending machines, it has one additional feature. If an employee grabs a buddy and they both allow the vending machine to scan their employee ID cards at the same time, the vending machine dispenses a free beverage to both employees. While there is no guarantee that those employees, with free beverage in hand, will have a conversation, it certainly provides the opportunity. The behavior: inviting a fellow employee to go to the vending machine with you. If you continue to make buddy trips to the vending machine, the positive reinforcement is a free beverage. If the behavior is occurring too frequently, the vending machine can be programmed to limit the hours when free beverages would be available, or it can be programmed to limit how many free beverages a particular ID can get in a specific time period. Maybe it can also be programmed so that a pair of IDs can only be used a certain number of times, and after that, you have to invite someone else? If you’d like, challenge your students to think about how the Kokuyo management would know if the vending machine was working to increase employee face-to-face interactions. What variables would students measure? And if the vending machine was not working as well as they would like, what else could the company do? Maybe put the vending machine in a space with a living room-type atmosphere, complete with comfy chairs? Do some beverages lend themselves better to conversation than others? For example, might a vending machine that dispensed coffee or tea be more effective at encouraging conversation than, say, one that dispensed energy drinks? Having taught many classes in two- to three-hour blocks for almost 30 years, I witnessed the short class breaks only occasionally leading to students talking to each other. Would such a vending machine outside the classroom increase interactions? What if the machine required, say, three student IDs to dispense a free beverage or snack? The cynical side of me wonders if that would lead to student ID theft? But then I suppose that wouldn’t last long because if Student A reported their ID missing, a quick scan of the vending machine’s data would show which other student used Student A’s ID at the machine.   In what other contexts can your students see value in having such a system? What else might be dispensed from a machine that students might find reinforcing? (Having reread that question, I’m not sure this is the best question to ask students. They’re your students; use your best judgment.) ... View more