Obituary: Isidor Chein (1912-1981).

Presents an obituary for Isidor Chein. During his distinguished career Isidor Chein made significant contributions in many areas of psychology. He devoted himself especially to the study of four topics: attitude change in the context of intergroup relations, group identification among members of minority groups, the psychology of opiate addiction, and a philosophy of science for psychology. Following his death on April 18, 1981, a memorial symposium was held at the 1981 APA convention. In his comments, a colleague and close friend pointed to the quality that most of his friends and associates would agree best describes the essence of Chein's work. "If there is a single Word that I can use to characterize so complex an enterprise as Isidor Chein's psychological outlook," he said, "that word is humanism." Chein's legacy to psychology was indeed enriched by the centrality of this quality in his own life and career. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Theodore R. Sarbin (1911-2005).

Obituary [Theodore R. Sarbin; 1911-2005]. Theodore R. Sarbin died in his 95th year, fully engaged in his life as a psychologist until the end. Sarbin was born on May 8, 1911, in Cleveland, Ohio. He attended Ohio State University as an undergraduate, earning his bachelor's degree there in 1936. The next year he earned his master's degree from Western Reserve University. He received his doctoral degree in psychology from Ohio State University in 1941. Sarbin began his career as a research-oriented clinical psychologist, practicing first in Illinois and later in Los Angeles. His academic career was established at the University of California, Berkeley, where he served on the faculty from 1949 to 1969. Sarbin left Berkeley to join the faculty of the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1969. He continued there until his retirement in 1976. While gentle and controlled in manner, Sarbin made it his professional life work to challenge orthodox views in psychology. Sarbin described his own professional posture as "oppositional and nonconforming." In the course of his academic career, Sarbin received scores of honors. Included among his more than 250 professional publications are 6 books and another 6 edited volumes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Alfred Binet: A time of crisis.

"The fact that the 1st decade of his (Binet's) professional career encompassed failures and egregious errors of judgment and methodology should be, perhaps, comforting, and at least interesting and significant for all psychologists concerned with the history of the field." His most serious errors involved methodological controls in the field of hypnotic phenomena. His personal biases were rooted in his loyalty to the renown and reputation of Charcot and others of his distinguished colleagues. Specific professional conflicts with Bernheim are cited. Binet's appointment to a position in Beaunis's Laboratory in 1891 granted Binet "a place of some status and opportunity from which to forge a career." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dael Wolfle (1906-2002).

Obituary of Dael Wolfle (1906-2002). In the early part of his career, he contributed to mainstream experimental psychology in the learning tradition of his time. Wolfle then spent the middle years of his career as a science administrator, both in psychology and in the larger scientific community. At the end of his career, he returned to academia, where he fostered a sense of public service as a professor of public administration. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How does the mind work? Memorial address in honor of Jerzy Konorski.

Discusses the career of Jerzy Konorski and ways in which his work was continually and consistently directed toward an examination of how the mind operates. Konorski's early training as a physician, his work in Pavlov's laboratory, his interest in the work of Charles Sherrington, and his experience as director of the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology in Warsaw are examined. In the beginning, Konorski was a behaviorist, but later he showed an unabashed interest in "mental life." Eventually his work became known in the US; he made several visits here and even received grants from the National Institutes of Health. Emphasis is placed on how the work of Konorski and his "school" interdigitates with learning theory and research in this and certain other Western countries. (45 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Martin E. P. Seligman: 2006 Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions.

Presents the citation for Martin E. P. Seligman, who received the Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions "for a career spent charging creatively ahead of his field and then pulling his colleagues along." A brief profile and a selected bibliography, as well as the award address, Positive Psychotherapy (see record 2006-21079-029), accompany the citation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The road not taken: A false start for cognitive psychology.

"Psychology and History" was H. Münsterberg's presidential address at the 1898 American Psychological Association conference (see also PA, Vol 81:27847). After a short academic career in Germany, Münsterberg had accepted a chair at Harvard University. In his address, he presented to his American colleagues his conception of psychology as unitary science of the individual human mind. However, this conception that endeavored to import idealistic philosophy from Germany was skeptically received in America where pragmatism prevailed. Münsterberg adapted to his new environment. During the following decade, he incorporated into his theory what he had objected to before: purposive, social, and applied psychology. Yet, Münsterberg's initial conception was a sophisticated design for psychology as a cognitive science. In retrospect, it can be evaluated as a road taken much later. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The peregrinations of an applied generalist in government, industry, a university psychology department, and a business school.

The career of an applied psychologist, in measurement, industrial/organizational psychology, consumer behavior, and evaluation research, is chronicled from his undergraduate education through his position as a business school professor. This biographical odyssey compares a variety of employment settings; traces the major influences on his career; provides a commentary on applications, research, and scholarship in a business school setting vs a psychology department; and offers a synopsis of his interests and activities as he moves into his status as an emeritus professor. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Norman S. Endler (1931-2003).

Remembers the life of Norman S. Endler, Distinguished Research Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Psychology at York University. Endler passed away as a result of a brain tumor in Toronto on May 7, 2003. The author recalls Endler's life and career, highlighting his contributions as a pioneer in espousing an interactional view of personality. Norm is best known for his interactional model of personality, especially as applied to anxiety, stress, and coping (e.g., Endler, "Interactionism: A Personality Model, But Not Yet A Theory" in M. M. Page (Ed.), Nebraska Symposium on Motivation 1981: Personality-Current Theory and Research, 1983). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Abram Amsel (1922-2006).

Presents an obituary for Abram Amsel who died on August 31, 2006, at 83 years of age. Abram Amsel's academic career spanned the second half of the 20th century, during which time he made seminal contributions to the theory and research of reward-schedule effects in mammals. In the first 20 years of his career, Amsel's behavioral research and theory of "frustrative nonreward" established aversive emotional consequences of nonreward as potent influences on behavior when certain reward schedules are in effect. During the next 30 years, he continued to pursue questions related to reward-schedule effects but this time from the perspectives of ontogeny and behavioral neuroscience. His work resulted in a much deeper understanding and a broader conceptualization of reward-schedule effects that he eventually came to characterize as "dispositional learning and memory." Amsel held several professional roles in his field. He was a member of the governing board of the Psychonomic Society (1973-1978) and the founding editor (1972-1976) of the Society's journal Animal Learning & Behavior (now Learning & Behavior). He also served as consulting editor for the Journal of Experimental Psychology (1964 -1969), editor of Psychonomic Science (1971-1972), and member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Psychophysiology (1982-1988). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Consciousness, social heredity, and development: The evolutionary thought of James Mark Baldwin.

James Mark Baldwin is one of the most important and least known early American scientific psychologists. Drawing inspiration from Charles Darwin and other evolutionists of the period, Baldwin developed a biosocial theory of psychological development that influenced both Jean Piaget and Lev S. Vygotsky; and he proposed a mechanism relating learned adaptations in the individual to phylogenesis (frequently termed the "Baldwin effect") that is of considerable interest to those currently modeling processes of learning and evolution. After a brief introduction to Baldwin's career, this article describes the intellectual context within which his evolutionary thinking developed. Three of his most important contributions are then discussed: his theory of individual adaptation or learning, his concept of "social heredity," and his articulation of the "Baldwin effect." The article concludes with a brief evaluation of the contemporary importance of Baldwin's ideas. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Obituary: Hardy Culver Wilcoxon (1921–1996).

Memorializes Hardy Culver Wilcoxon, who constituted a significant link to the early history of experimental psychology. He worked as a research assistant to both C. L. Hull and C. I. Hovland, developing early and lasting interests in learning theory and in comparative psychology. This combination of scientific interests is reflected in his first 2 publications: "Spatial Orientation in the White Rat," which he published with Roland Waters (1948) and "A Preliminary Determination of the Functional Relationship of Effective Reaction Potential to the Ordinal Number of Vincentized Extinction Reactions," published with R. Hays and Hull (1950). He continued to pursue work in comparative psychology and learning for the remainder of his career. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

1986 CPA award for distinguished contributions to psychology as a science.

The 1986 recipient of the Canadian Psychological Association's Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology as a Science is Dr. Ronald Melzack, Professor of Psychology at McGill University. Throughout his distinguished and prolific research career, Dr. Melzack has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of pain. Through careful experiment and innovative theory he has shown that the phenomenon of pain can be understood only in terms of the interaction between physiological processes, mental states, and social beliefs. He is perhaps best known for his "gate control" theory of pain, formulated in conjunction with Patrick Wall in 1965, which provides a theoretical basis for this interaction and which has exerted an immense influence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

David Shakow: Distinguished Professional Contribution Award.

Recognizes the receipt of the American Psychological Association's 1976 Distinguished Professional Contribution Award by David Shakow. The award citation reads: "In a career that spans almost five decades, his activities reflect his abiding concern with psychology's historical antecedents, his leadership in creating a training model for clinical psychology that would retain the unique quality that characterizes a psychologist, and his research contributions in the psychological study of schizophrenia. David Shakow by his imagination, by his influence on his many students--graduate and postdoctoral--as teacher and mentor, by his dedication to important scientific studies, by his advocacy of the coordinate role of researcher and practitioner for the clinical psychologist, and by his broad knowledge and commitment to humanistic values has indeed made a distinguished contribution to professional psychology." A biography and a listing of the recipient's scientific writings are also included. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Frederick Duane Sheffield (1914–1994): Obituary.

Memorializes Frederick Duane Sheffield and his work, which reflected a lifelong commitment to the contiguity theory of learning under the tutelage of E. R. Guthrie. His published experimental work and interactions with colleagues and students during his career at Yale are highlighted. Sheffield is remembered for his 1951 Psychological Review article, "The Contiguity Principle in Learning Theory," in which he defended and expanded Guthrie's views, and for his criticism of the need and drive-reduction theories that dominated Yale in the 1940s. In 3 experiments in the early 1950s, he showed that neither need nor drive reduction was necessary to induce learning. The findings were interpreted as showing that it was the onset of stimulation, not the reduction in drive or need, that was reinforcing. This became broadly known as Sheffield's drive-induction theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Robert G. Crowder (1939–2000).

Memorializes Robert George Crowder, a psychologist in the tradition of American psychology, who spent his entire career at Yale University. Crowder became famous in 1969 when he and J. Morton proposed a theory of precategorical storage (PAS; or echoic memory) that elegantly accounted for memory phenomena such as the modality effect and the suffix effect. Other milestones of his career in empirical psychology are described here. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Michael C. Roberts: Award for Distinguished Contributions to Education and Training in Psychology.

Presents a citation for Michael C. Roberts, who received the Award for Distinguished Contributions to Education and Training in Psychology "for his dedication to the education, training, and mentoring of psychologists from undergraduate study through professional career." Accompanying the citation are a brief profile and a selected bibliography, as well as Roberts' award address, entitled Essential Tension: Specialization With Broad and General Training in Psychology (see record 2006-21079-027). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Fred L. Strodtbeck (1919-2005).

This obituary is about Fred L. Strodtbeck, who was a professor emeritus of sociology and psychology at the University of Chicago. Fred began his faculty career at Yale, moving to Chicago in 1953, where he remained continuously except for one year at the University of Michigan and another year at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto, California. Although identified as a social psychologist, throughout his career Fred was fully engaged in the challenging interdisciplinary perspective propounded by the Department of Social Relations. Fred took pride in the accomplishments of his many students. His tutelage was emotional as well as intellectual, as he was mindful of those two dimensions that informed so much of his small-groups work. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Obituary: Harold William Stevenson (1924-2005).

Presents an obituary for Harold William Stevenson (1924-2005). Early in his career, Harold helped launch the field of children's learning. Beyond researching the role of rewards in children's learning, he researched their learning of probabilities and of central versus incidental content, as well as their learning from filmed displays--all still fundamental research topics. Contemporary scholars know Harold best for his studies of educational achievement and learning in Japan, China, and the United States, summarized in his book The Learning Gap (1992). Scientifically comprehensive and clear, this research had a great impact on public debate about education both in the United States and abroad. Harold's work caused many Asian educators to reevaluate their own educational systems and to go beyond a concern with improving what was "wrong" to realizing what was "right" and what they could offer to education in the West. The work was featured in prominent media worldwide. Harold often commented that there were two keys to scientific productivity: hard work and building strong relationships in one's family. The fruits of Harold's hard work and strong relationships will flourish for years to come. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Jerome Kagan.

Jerome Kagan is recognized for his achievements in psychology. This article provides a citation explaining his accomplishments, a biography and a selected bibliography. The citation is as follows: "For scientific leadership of the highest order, for a research career marked by never-failing zest and creativity, and for findings that have helped us understand the constant vs. the changing in the human personality, the early organization of mind and temperament, and the formation of ideas about the self. As much as any American, Jerome Kagan has led the great growth of developmental psychology in our time. He has been an inspired textbook writer and teacher. He has brought our scientific findings, mixed with his own special vision and wisdom, to the service of social programs and policies for children." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)