Conference Awards

Congratulations to all of our conference award winners!

Wondering how to be considered for a conference award? Please see the current conference announcement for information on eligibility, and to check out other opportunities available to graduate and postdoctoral students!

2006

John B. Carroll Award for Research Methodology

Elliot M. Tucker-Drob	Cris Rabaglia	Jeffrey E. Pink

Biosketches:

Elliot M. Tucker-Drob is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Psychology, and a member of the Salthouse Cognitive Aging Lab, at the University of Virginia.  He is also a National Institute on Aging trainee in quantitative modeling and a graduate fellow of the International Max Planck Research School: LIFE.  Elliot’s research interests are concerned with the development and decline of cognitive abilities across the lifespan.  He is particularly interested in mechanisms, processes, and constructs that may be involved in, or help to mitigate, the cognitive deficits associated with advancing adult age.

Cris Rabaglia received her bachelor’s degree in Cognitive Science from the University of Virginia in 2005.  She has been a member of the Salthouse Cognitive Aging Lab since her second year at UVA.  In order to further pursue some research questions she had begun to investigate during her undergraduate work, she decided to stay on working as research coordinator of the Cognitive Aging Lab for another year before applying to graduate school.   Her research interests include language use, individual differences in language use, changes in linguistic ability across the lifespan, and the relationship between language and other cognitive abilities.  She plans to enter a doctoral program in the fall of 2007 to pursue a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology.

Jeffrey E. Pink is a first-year cognitive psychology Ph.D. student at the University of Virginia, under the advisement of Timothy Salthouse.  He received his B.S. in psychology from Michigan State University, where he did research with Zach Hambrick assessing the joint contributions of cognitive abilities and non-abilities in individual differences in knowledge acquisition.  Jeff’s current research interests concern age-related effects on various aspects of cognition, including working memory and fluid abilities.

ISIR Templeton Prize for Best Student Paper

Greg Park

Biosketch:

Greg grew up in Columbus, Ohio and received his undergraduate degree from Case Western Reserve University, majoring in psychology and philosophy. He stayed at Case, working as a research assistant with the Western Reserve Twin Project, until entering graduate school in 2005. He is currently a PhD student at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN, where he works primarily with the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY). His research interests include the relationships between creativity, cognitive abilities, and personality, talent development, and evolutionary psychology.

2005

John B. Carroll Award for Research Methodology

Nicole Harlaar

Biosketch:

Nicole Harlaar is a PhD student at the Institute of Psychiatry, London, UK. She is interested in the nature and mechanisms that mediate genetic and environmental risk factors for cognitive and learning disabilities and in trying to piece together how these processes change through the school years. Currently, she is examining these issues in a population-based longitudinal study of twin children in the UK Twins Early Development Study (TEDS).

Representative Publications:
Harlaar, N., Butcher, L. Butcher, L., Meaburn, E., Craig, I. W., & Plomin, R. (2005). A behavioural genomic analysis of DNA markers associated with general cognitive ability in 7-year-olds. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 46, 1097-1107.

Harlaar, N., Dale, P. S., & Plomin, R. (2005). Telephone testing and teacher assessment of reading skills in 7-year-olds: II. Strong genetic overlap. Scientific Studies of Reading, 9, 197-218.

Harlaar, N., Dale, P. S., & Plomin, R. (2005). Correspondence between telephone testing and teacher assessments of reading in 7-year-olds: II. Strong genetic overlap in a sample of 2660 twin pairs. Reading & Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 18, 401-423.

ISIR Templeton Prize for Best Student Paper

Jelte M. Wicherts

Biosketch:

As an undergraduate student at the Psychology Department of the University of Amsterdam, Jelte Wicherts was interested in so many psychological topics that he decided to specialize in none of these topics and focus on research methodology and psychometrics instead. This enabled him to develop a broad view on psychology, which remains with him to this day. Under the supervision of Don Mellenbergh and Harrie Vorst, Jelte wrote his Master's thesis on the equivalence of mood and personality questionnaires across different administration methods. After receiving his Master of Science degree (cum laude), Jelte started a PhD project at the Psychological Methods group of the University of Amsterdam. This project, supervised by Conor V. Dolan, is aimed at applying structural equation models to intelligence test performance. A particular aim of this project is to more fully understand the nature, causes and implications of the Flynn Effect, or the secular increase in intelligence test scores over the years. Furthermore, Jelte's research interests include the effects of stereotype threat on test performance, structural equation modeling, the understanding of group differences in test scores (measurement invariance), and the relation between experimental and differential psychology. Currently he is a student member of the International Society for Intelligence Research (ISIR), the Interuniversity Graduate School of Psychometrics and Sociometrics (IOPS), and of the Psychometric Society. He has supervised several undergraduate research groups and has taught undergraduate courses in research methods, structural equation modeling, and academic writing. In the summer of 2006 he hopes to complete his doctoral dissertation.

Representative Publications:
Wicherts, J.M., Dolan, C.V., & Hessen, D.J. (2005). Stereotype threat and group differences in test performance: A question of measurement invariance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89.

Wicherts, J.M. (2005). Stereotype threat research and the assumptions underlying analysis of covariance. American Psychologist, 60, 267-269.

Wicherts, J.M., Dolan, C.V., Hessen, D.J., Oosterveld, P. Baal, G.C.M. van, Boomsma, D.I., & Span, M.M. (2004) Are intelligence tests measurement invariant over time? Investigating the nature of the Flynn effect. Intelligence, 32, 509-537.

2004

John B. Carroll Award for Research Methodology

Wendy Johnson

Biosketch:

Wendy Johnson grew up in Tacoma, Washington, the eldest of three daughters of a civil engineer and psychologist/special education teacher. She graduated from Occidental College in Los Angeles, California, with a degree in mathematics. She spent several years as a commercial insurance underwriter and consulting pension actuary in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and then settled down as a consulting casualty actuary for Coopers and Lybrand in San Francisco. She married Glenn Evans in 1989, and they had a daughter and son. With Glenn, she founded Pacific Actuarial Consultants in 1991, and they maintained this actuarial practice together until 2001. In 1995, however, Wendy began to study psychology at San Francisco State University, and obtained a Master's Degree in Developmental Psychology there in 1999. She entered the doctoral program in the Psychology Department at the University of Minnesota in 2000, and completed her degree there in 2005. She pursues research involving the structure and nature of general intelligence and special mental abilities, personality structure and development, antecedents of individual and sex differences in academic achievement, antecedents of later-life health and psychological well-being, and contributions of cognitive ability to later-life outcomes, with particular emphasis on understanding the underlying transactions between genetic and environmental influences.

Representative Publications:
Johnson, W. & Bouchard, T. J. (2005). The structure of human intelligence: It is verbal, perceptual, and image rotation (VPR), not fluid and crystallized. Intelligence, 33, 393-436.

Johnson, W., Bouchard, T. J., Krueger, R. F., McGue, M., & Gottesman, I. I. (2004). Just one g: Consistent results from three test batteries. Intelligence, 32, 95-107.