We were gratified that student interest in psychology remained very strong. We continue to see large numbers of students enrolling in our introductory psychology course, along with sustained interest in the field thereafter. Next year we will have 67 junior majors, the largest number of psychology majors in a single class.
Once again our faculty demonstrated its strong commitment to scholarship reflected in the individual achievements described below, and in the supervision of fifteen senior honors theses. Following presentation to the department in May, all fifteen seniors were awarded honors. In addition, one other psychology major completed a thesis through the Neuroscience program. We note also that on the strength of their continuing commitment to research in graduate school, three seniors were elected to student membership in Sigma Xi.
The scholarly life of the department was also enhanced by our Class of 1960 Scholars Program. This program brought four eminent speakers to campus. The speakers and their topics are listed at the end of this section. A small group of students, selected by the faculty as 1960 scholars, read and discussed a selection of the prior work of each speaker, met with the speaker after the colloquium, and then attended dinner with the speaker.
This was a busy year for departmental governance. We were involved in hiring new faculty and in the continuation of plans for the science project. Our majors made substantial contributions to decisions in these two areas, and it is a pleasure to acknowledge their assistance. We were particularly grateful to the Psychology Students Liaison Committee (PLSC) who represented carefully and thoughtfully the interests of our majors. We thank the following PLSC members for their invaluable work: Akeela Ali, Andrea Burns, Lori Chelius, Christina Fong, Timothy Gustafson, Sheri McKay , Maria-Teresa Plantilla, Samuel Sommers and Jed White.
This year we bid farewell to two Visiting Assistant Professors, Maryann Martone and Maurice Levesque. Dr. Martone was here in the first semester and has returned to her postdoctoral position in the Department of Neurosciences at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Levesque, who was with us for the entire year, has accepted a position as Assistant Professor at Elon College. We thank them both for their tireless efforts on behalf of our students.
As we look forward to the coming year, we are pleased to welcome two new faculty members to the department. One is Dr. Kenneth Savitsky who joins us this July as an Assistant Professor. Dr. Savitsky is a social psychologist who is currently completing his Ph.D. at Cornell University this year. In addition to Dr. Savitsky, we welcome Visiting Professor Richard Henneberry who will teach courses in the neuroscience area. We are also very pleased to have the continuing services of two other members of the faculty. Dr. Gregory Buchanan, who was here this year as a Visiting Assistant Professor, has accepted an additional two-year visiting appointment and will teach courses in the clinical area during that period. Dr. Robert Kachelski, who was here during the second term this year, will continue as Visiting Assistant Professor next year teaching courses in the cognitive area.
Professor Phebe Cramer continued collaborative work on longitudinal study of defense mechanisms with Professor Jack Block, University of California, Berkeley. She also completed a five year term as Associate Editor, Journal of Personality. Dr. Cramer was appointed Special Editor for an issue of Journal of Personality on the topic of Defense Mechanisms. She continued her commitment on the Editorial Board, Journal of Personality Assessment and did occasional reviewing for Psychological Bulletin, Journal of Research in Personality , and Psychoanalytic Psychology. In December of 1996, Dr. Cramer gave an invited address to the Graduate Program in Psychology of New York University: "Recent Research on Defense Mechanisms." Dr. Cramer attended the Nag's Head Conference on Personality and Social Psychology in Highland Beach, Florida in June 1997 at which she presented the paper "Threat to Self: Identify & Identification." Additionally, she attended a workshop at the Nag's Head Conference on Structural Equation Modeling. Papers published include "Identity, Personality and Defense Mechanisms: An observer-based study," Journal of Research in Personality, 31, 58-77 (1997), and "Evidence for Change in Children's Use of Defense Mechanisms," Journal of Personality, 65, 233-247.
Professor George R. Goethals returned from leave and rejoined the Psychology Department as a full time member. After five years in the Provost's Office and the year of leave he has returned to teaching and research and to the Chair of the department starting July 1, 1997. During 1996-97, Professor Goethals taught a new course on leadership and resumed teaching social psychology for the first time since 1989. He continued his research on image-making in presidential debates with Professors Fein and Kassin and his research on students perceptions of fairness of college tuition charges. This research is part of the Williams Project on the Economics of Higher Education supported by the Mellon Foundation. His paper with Cynthia McPherson Frantz `91 called "Subsidy Shock: Reframing Judgments of College Sticker Prices" was published by the Williams Project as one of its Discussion Paper series. With Professor Laurie Heatherington, Goethals completed a revision of his Psychology of Adjustment text to be published by Allyn and Bacon. He also completed a revision of his social psychology text with three co-authors.
Professor Robert D. Kavanaugh completed his fifth year as department chair. He also continued his research on the development of imagination in young children, funded in part by a NATO collaborative research grant with Professor Paul L. Harris of the University of Oxford. In April, 1995 Professor Kavanaugh and his colleagues presented two papers on pretense and imagination at the Meetings of the Society for Research on Child Development: "A Longitudinal Study of Collaborative Pretend Play" with Faith Cinquegrana, `97, And "Adult Correlates of Childhood Fantasy" with Professor Marjorie Taylor of the University of Oregon. With Williams' colleagues Betty Zimmerberg and Steven Fein, Professor Kavanaugh edited the proceedings of the department's G. Stanley Hall Conference published in fall 1996 as "Emotion: Interdisciplinary Perspectives." Professor Kavanaugh also began work on a new area of research, the development of children's understanding of narrative, conducted in part through collaboration with a former Williams colleague Professor Susan Engel of Bennington College. He also continued to serve as an ad hoc reviewer for Cognitive Development and Developmental Psychology.
Professor Paul Solomon continued his research on diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer's disease with support from a number of organizations including continued funding of a $400,000 grant from the National Institute on Aging which funds the Memory Disorders Treatment and Diagnostic Center at Southwestern Vermont Medical Center where he serves as Co-Director. Dr. Solomon also received two new grants this year including a grant to study the anti-dementia compound metrifonate from Bayer Pharmaceutical Research ($300,000), a grant to study the anti-dementia compound Idebenone from Takeeda Pharmaceutical Development ($150,000). He continued work on research projects funded by Parke-Davis Pharmaceutical Research and Bayer Pharmaceutical Research. He was also awarded a $37,000 educational grant from the Janssen Research Foundation for continued development of the 7-Minute Screening Battery for Alzheimer's Disease. Dr. Solomon continued on the editorial boards of Psychopharmacology and Therapeutic Strategies with Older Adults. He reviewed manuscripts for more than a dozen journals and reviewed research grants for the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health (Human Development and Aging Committee). He continues to direct the Essel Foundation grant to the neuroscience program that funded a summer research program involving 10 Williams students. He also organized the second Essel Neuroscience Conference held in Williamstown in April. Dr. Solomon organized symposia entitled "Are there Drugs to Improve Memory" at the Memory Disorders Research Society in Cambridge, MA and the Winter Conference on Neuroplasticity in St. Lucia. He was also an invited participant in a session on "Hippocampus, Aging., and Memory" at the St. Lucia meeting. He presented a paper entitled "A Correlational Analysis of Five Commonly Used Measures of Mental Status/Functional Abilities in Patients with Alzheimer's Disease" at the 10th annual Scientific Poster Session of the Massachusetts Alzheimer's Disease Research Center in Boston. He was named to the Bayer Pharmaceutical Research Alzheimer's Disease Advisory Board that met in Los Angeles in March. He was named to the Pfizer/Eisai Alzheimer's Disease Educational Speakers Bureau. He was also named to the Janssen Research Foundation Alzheimer's Disease Advisory board. He presented paper entitled "Toward a 7-Minute Neurocognitive Screen Sensitive to Alzheimer's Disease" at the Janssen meeting in San Francisco in May and attended a second meeting in Vail, Colorado in March. He was named to the Alzheimers' Disease Continuing Education Advisory Board sponsored by Long Island Jewish Hospital which met in New York in May. He was an invited speaker at the European Neurological Association in Rhodes, Greece in June where he spoke about the 7-Minute Screening Battery for Alzheimer's Disease. In November he was the keynote speaker at the fall conference of the Western Massachusetts chapter of the Alzheimer's Association. He was co-keynote speaker at the Southern Vermont Chapter of the Alzheimer's Association in April, and Keynote speaker at the Annual meeting of the Northeastern New York Chapter of the Alzheimer's Association in June. Dr. Solomon gave more than 30 invited colloquia at medical centers, universities, and hospitals. In December along with Dr. William Pendlebury, Dr. Solomon published the Ciba clinical symposia entitled "Alzheimer's Disease." This publication was distributed to more than 140,000 physicians and medical students. Dr. Solomon continues to serve on the Board of the Western Massachusetts Alzheimer's Association. He was reappointed to the medical staff at Southwestern Medical Center. He was made a Diplomate in the American Board of Forensic Examiners.
Assistant Professor Steven Fein conducted research on stereotypes and prejudice, attributional processes and suspicion across cultures, and social influences on perceptions of political debates. This research was conducted in India (with Williams colleague Assistant Professor Jean Bacon), Israel, Saudi Arabia, France, and in the U.S. This research resulted in four papers accepted for publication during the year. Dr. Fein was invited to present papers about his research on suspicion at the 1996 Conference of the Society of Southeastern Social Psychologists, Virginia Beach, Virginia, in November, and at the 1997 Conference of the American Psychological Society, Washington, DC, in June. Dr. Fein also delivered a talk at the University of Connecticut in September. Dr. Fein was selected to be the secretary-treasurer of the Society of Personality and Social Psychology. Dr. Fein also served as a consulting editor of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and served as a reviewer for several psychology journals. Dr. Fein was the principal advisor for three senior honors theses, and the secondary advisor for three additional senior honors theses. Dr. Fein supervised the research of two students during the summer as part of the Bronfman Summer Science program, and supervised the independent research projects of six students during the academic year.
Assistant Professor Elliot Friedman continued research into sickness behavior as well as abnormal immune function in a rat model of depression. In the fall Dr. Friedman attended the annual meeting of the International Society for Neuroimmunology, a tremendously successful gathering of American and European scientists interested in brain-immune system interactions. He served as ad hoc reviewer for the journals Brain Behavior and Immunity, American Journal of Physiology, and International Journal of Immunopharmacology. Dr. Friedman gave an invited talk entitled "Humor and Health" at the Sweetwood Continuing Care Community in Williamstown. Also, Dr. Friedman gave a Bronfman lunch presentation on his research into the impact of the immune response on sleep patterns in rats. On the classroom front, Dr. Friedman developed a new course in his area of expertise, Health Psychology. This course examined the extent to which one's health can be influenced, positively or negatively, by the way one thinks, behaves, and responds to life stressors. Finally, Dr. Friedman supervised an Independent Study project on "Stress in Emergency Medical Technicians."
Associate Professor Laurie Heatherington traveled to West Africa (Cote D'Ivoire and Ghana) in the summer of 1996, where among other activities she met with local mental health professionals and visited traditional healers. During the year, she continued her research on cognition in family relationships and family therapy, and on gender and self-presentation of achievement. With Robin (Gaul) Coulehan (Williams `86) and M. L. Friedlander, she presented "Transforming Narratives: A Therapeutic Change Event in Constructivist Family Therapy" at the Society for Psychotherapy Research Conference, Amelia Island, Florida, and with Heather Weston and Paul Boxer (both Williams `94) she presented "Children's Attributions About Family Conflict" at the American Psychological Association Convention, Toronto, Canada. She published a chapter, "The Events-Based Approach to Couple and Family Therapy Research," with Leslie Greenberg and M.L. Friedlander, in Research Methods in Family Therapy (Guilford, 1996). She also finished co-authoring a textbook, The Psychology of Adjustment, 3rd ed. with her colleagues Professor George Goethals and Steve Worchel, from Texas A & M University. Dr. Heatherington served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy and Psychotherapy Research, with ad-hoc reviewing for Sex Roles and the Journal of Counseling Psychology. Professor Heatherington served as a program evaluation consultant to the Berkshire Center for Families and Children (Pittsfield, MA) on a post-adoption services grant, and on the Board of Directors of the Gould Farm (Monterey, MA), a treatment center/working farm serving people with major mental illness. In June 1996 Dr. Heatherington was awarded a grant from the Radcliffe Research Support Program to support her project "Marital Interaction and Marital Dissatisfaction: An Integrative Study of Relational Central, Cognitive Constructions, and Emotions" at the Henry A. Murray Research Center.
This year Professor Saul Kassin presented colloquia at Dartmouth College, Auburn University, and Bloomsburgh University. Dr. Kassin continued to serve as a consulting editor for Law and Human Behavior, reviewed manuscripts for several other journals, and reviewed grant proposals for the National Science Foundation. He attended the 1996 Annual Meetings of the American Psychological Association in Toronto and the Society of Experimental Social Psychology in Sturbridge. Dr. Kassin also served as a trial consultant in a number of criminal cases.
Professor Anjali Thapar conducted research on implicit and explicit memory, the false memory syndrome, and the development of memory ability and cognitive functioning over the life span. She supervised three senior thesis students: Michelle Adams, Lori Chelius, and Stephanie A. Nelson. Dr. Thapar also supervised two summer research students as part of the Bronfman Summer Science program and the research project of one independent study student. She served as Consulting Editor for the journal, Memory and Cognition, and as an ad hoc reviewer for the Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning, Memory, and Cognition and Psychonomic Bulletin and Review. Dr. Thapar organized the Annual Summer Conference in Cognitive Psychology co-sponsored by Williams College and the State University of New York at Albany which took place on July 29-30 at Williams College. In July 1996 she presented a paper, "The False Implicit Memory Effect," at the First Annual Summer Conference in Cognitive Psychology co-sponsored by Williams College and the State University of New York at Albany in Williamstown, MA. In October 1996, she attended the annual meeting for the Memory Disorders Research Society in Cambridge, MA. In November 1996, she presented a paper, "Effects of Level-of-Processing on Response Bias," at the annual meeting of the Psychonomic Society in Chicago, IL, and in May 1997, she attended the annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association in Chicago, IL.
Associate Professor Betty Zimmerberg continued her research on the effects of prenatal alcohol exposure on brain development, funded by a grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism of the NIH. She also received an National Science Foundation grant, "Multimedia Neuroscience Education," to support the development and evaluation of neuroscience-related animated and interactive multimedia teaching materials that will be made available on the World Wide Web. In June 1996, Professor Zimmerberg attended the annual meeting of the Research Society on Alcoholism in Washington, D.C., where she chaired a symposium entitled "The Role of Neurosteroids in Alcohol-related Behaviors: New Studies from the Laboratory and Clinic." At this meeting, she also presented two papers, "Alcohol and the Neurosteroid Regulation of Stress Response: Developmental Factors," and "The Effects of Prenatal Alcohol Exposure on Thyroid Hormone Levels in Brown Adipose Tissue." In August 1996, she presented a colloquium on "Neurosteroids and Stress Response" in the Department of Anatomy at the University of British-Columbia, Vancouver, BC. At the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Washington, DC. in November, 1996, Professor Zimmerberg and Eric Fish `96, presented research entitled "Effects of the Neuroactive Steroid Allopregnanolone on the Sexual Behavior and Ultrasonic Vocalizations of Male Rats." In March 1997, Professor Zimmerberg was invited to give a colloquium in the Department of Psychology at Indiana University/Purdue University in Indianapolis on "Neurosteroids and Stress Response in Fetal Alcohol Syndrome." In April 1997, she gave an invited address on the interactions between alcohol and neurosteroids at the international "Hormones and Behavior" conference at Breckenridge, Colorado. She reviewed grants for the Neuroscience Review Group of the National Institutes of Health, and the Patrick and Catherine Weldon Donaghue Medical Research Foundation. She also reviewed journal articles for Brain Research, Psychopharmacology, Alcohol, Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research; and Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior. Professor Zimmerberg, with neuroscience faculty at other New England liberal arts colleges, organized and served on the steering committee of a new professional society, N.E.U.R.O.N. (Northeast Under/Graduate Research Organization for Neuroscience). At this society's first annual meeting at Trinity College in Hartford, in May, 1997, she and thesis student Dana Critchell `97 presented research entitled "Do Neurosteroids Differentiate the Divergent Stress Response of Selectively Bred Rats?"