The Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution to Psychology is an annual award that has been given by the
American Psychological Association
The American Psychological Association (APA) is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States, with over 133,000 members, including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students. It ha ...
since 1974.
It is given to outstanding research psychologists who are in the early stages of their career, defined as the first nine years after they receive their
Ph.D.
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...
Every year, the award is given to five psychologists, each from one of ten different areas of
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
:
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Animal learning
Animal cognition encompasses the mental capacities of non-human animals including insect cognition. The study of animal conditioning and learning used in this field was developed from comparative psychology. It has also been strongly influenc ...
and
comparative psychology
Comparative psychology refers to the scientific study of the behavior and mental processes of non-human animals, especially as these relate to the phylogenetic history, adaptive significance, and development of behavior. Research in this area addr ...
,
#
Developmental psychology
Developmental psychology is the science, scientific study of how and why humans grow, change, and adapt across the course of their lives. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to include adolescence, adult deve ...
,
#
Health psychology
Health psychology is the study of psychological and behavioral processes in health, illness, and healthcare. The discipline is concerned with understanding how psychological, behavioral, and culture, cultural factors contribute to physical health ...
,
#
Cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning.
Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which ...
,
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Psychopathology
Psychopathology is the study of abnormal cognition, behaviour, and experiences which differs according to social norms and rests upon a number of constructs that are deemed to be the social norm at any particular era.
Biological psychopatholo ...
,
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Behavioral
Behavior (American English) or behaviour (British English) is the range of actions and mannerisms made by individuals, organisms, systems or artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or organisms as well ...
and
cognitive neuroscience
Cognitive neuroscience is the scientific field that is concerned with the study of the biological processes and aspects that underlie cognition, with a specific focus on the neural connections in the brain which are involved in mental proces ...
,
#
Perception
Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system ...
and
motor control
Motor control is the regulation of movement in organisms that possess a nervous system. Motor control includes reflexes as well as directed movement.
To control movement, the nervous system must integrate multimodal sensory information (both f ...
,
#
Social psychology
Social psychology is the scientific study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people or by social norms. Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the r ...
,
#
Applied psychology, and
#
Individual differences
Differential psychology studies the ways in which individuals differ in their behavior and the processes that underlie it. This is a discipline that develops classifications (taxonomies) of psychological individual differences. This is distingui ...
.
This means that every two years, one psychologist from each area will receive the award.
Notable past winners
Former winners of the Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution to Psychology include:
*
David M. Buss
David Michael Buss (born April 14, 1953) is an American evolutionary psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, researching human sex differences in mate selection. He is considered one of the founders of evolutionary psychology.
Biog ...
(1989, personality)
*
Michael S. Fanselow
Michael S. Fanselow is an American psychologist, currently a Distinguished professor, Distinguished Professor at University of California, Los Angeles, specializing in learning and behavior and behavioral neuroscience, and is also a published autho ...
(1985, animal learning and behavior)
*
Martha Farah
Martha Julia Farah (born 30 August 1955) is a cognitive neuroscience researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. She has worked on an unusually wide range of topics; the citation for her lifetime achievement award from the Association for Psych ...
(1992, perception/motor performance)
*
Baruch Fischhoff (1980, methodological)
*
Angela Grippo
Angela J. Grippo is an American neuroscientist and health psychologist known for her research on stress, mood disorders, and cardiovascular disease. She is an associate professor of psychology at Northern Illinois University.
Grippo received th ...
(2012, health)
See also
*
List of psychology awards
This list of psychology awards is an index to articles about notable awards given for work in the fields of psychology, cognitive sciences and psychiatry.
List
See also
* Lists of awards
* Lists of science and technology awards
* List of me ...
References
American psychology awards
Awards established in 1974
American Psychological Association
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