In the news

Robert Goldstone

PBS Distinguished Professor Rob Goldstone received the 2024 Society for Experimental Psychology Howard Crosby Warren Medal for his work elucidating human cognition and learning on both individual and collective levels.

Goldstone’s research spans several domains of cognition, with a primary focus on exploring human learning. In the last five years, his laboratory has conducted research in three main areas: 1) collective behavior, 2) applying cognitive science to improving educational outcomes, and 3) developing and empirically testing models of how people learn to perceive and to categorize their world. In each area, he has spearheaded conceptual and technological breakthroughs relevant to both science and practice.

The Warren Medal recognizes “outstanding achievement in Experimental Psychology in the United States and Canada.” Previous PBS recipients of the award are Distinguished Professors Jerome Busemeyer, Rob Nosofsky and Rich Shiffrin.

PBS Professor Tim Pleskacs was named a 2024 Society for Experimental Psychology Fellow. Pleskacs is one of eight new fellows elected as members annually from among the leading experimental psychologists in North America.

PBS Professor Alexandra Moussa-Tooks received a 2024 Early Career Award from the Schizophrenia International Research Society.

PBS Professor Emily Fyfe was named a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science. Fellow status is awarded to APS members who have made sustained outstanding contributions to the science of psychology.

PBS Professor Tom Busey received a grant from the National Institute of Justice of over $600,000 to enable the criminal justice system to improve the accuracy of fingerprint comparisons, which are currently vastly overstated.

Sara Gibson stands with PBS Chair Mike Jones and the Newcomb-Garraghty Staff Recognition Award Photo by Jordan Morning

PBS Undergraduate Advisor Sara Gibson wins 2023 PBS Staff Award

Undergraduate advisor Sara Gibson was the 2023 recipient of the PBS Newcomb-Garraghty Staff Recognition Award. Sara is the longest standing member of the PBS advising team. Like all the other advisors, she works with hundreds of our majors, minors, and certificate students through their requirements every semester. In addition to this standard slate of work, Sara also keeps close track of our planned and current course offerings and enrollments for each semester.

This is no small task, and yet, as PBS Professor Jason Gold observes, “Beyond monitoring course offerings and enrollments, Sara is also a tireless advocate for the interests of our undergraduate students. She watches out for their needs like a hawk, always bringing attention to issues of fairness or problems with respect to how students are progressing through the curricula for their degrees.”

“I would not be overstating things,” he adds, “by saying that I literally would not have gotten through all of the complexities of steering the undergraduate program during Covid if it wasn’t for her calm, rational, and creative help.”

Gibson is the seventh PBS staff member to receive the award. Previous recipients include Lana Fish, Jesse Goode, Cherlyn Crees, Melissa Ritter, JeanneMarie Heeb and Roger Rhodes.

Priya Modak (second from left) stands alongside the other honorees from the Three Minute Thesis contest.

PBS graduate student Priya Modak achieved a third-place finish in Three Minute Thesis, an IUB campus event, for a three-minute explanation of her research on deep brain stimulation. The event challenges master’s and doctoral students at IU Bloomington to present a compelling oration on their research to a general audience in just three minutes. IU Bloomington hosts the annual 3MT each spring, joining over 900 universities worldwide that host their own 3MT events.

Ben Motz teaches one of his classes. Photo by Jordan Morning

PBS Professor Ben Motz is partnering with Arizona State University researcher Danielle McNamara, the recipient of a $3.75 million grant from the Institute of Education Sciences. He will join her in creating Active Learning at Scale, a flexible AI learning environment in which college students can learn course content and practice their skills through conversations with AI representatives of the reading material assigned in their classes. The research will take place at both IU and ASU with Motz as the IU principal investigator.

The focus of the research is INFLO, a computer program used in the world of finance, which enables its users, in place of reading long financial reports, to simply have an AI-generated conversation about the reports. McNamara envisions the possibility that students could likewise engage with their course material by asking questions of various texts and having a conversation about them by adapting the INFLO program to the classroom. The program could potentially be used with any course that has narrative content, from biology to psychology, economics and history, among others. To study the program’s usefulness, the researchers will randomly assign students to either work with the program or do traditional assignments. The research will be carried out in Terracotta, a platform for behavioral experimentation in online learning environments managed by Motz.

“You could have a conversation with a book chapter or maybe even a conversation with Napoleon,” says Motz.

PBS Professor Mary Murphy transforms decades of research on mindset theory and stereotype threat into a new book for general audiences, "Cultures of Growth: How the New Science of Mindset Can Transform Individuals, Teams, and Organizations." Mindset theory, she demonstrates, provides powerful insights into how we can build cultures that develop and enhance the abilities of all people, and this in turn, sets the stage for greater innovation, collaboration, wellbeing and productivity for individuals and organizations.