Advocacy Archive

Testimony on the
FY 2002 Budget of the National Science Foundation

Before the Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs, HUD, and Independent Agencies
Committee on Appropriations
U.S. House of Representatives

The Honorable James T. Walsh, Chair

March 21, 2001
11:00 am

Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee: Thank you for this opportunity to present the views of the American Psychological Society (APS) on the FY 2002 appropriations of the National Science Foundation (NSF). I am Alan Kraut, Executive Director of APS. We are a 15,000-member organization of scientists and academics, most of whom are located in colleges and universities across the country. Many members of the American Psychological Society are supported by NSF, and much basic research in our field could not exist without NSF funding.

Recommendation for FY 2001 NSF Budget

As a member of the Coalition for National Science Funding, APS supports the Coalition's recommendation of $5.1 billion for the National Science Foundation in FY 2002. This would be the second installment of the five-year plan to double the NSF budget. The increase that you and your colleagues in the Senate provided for NSF in FY 2001 was an important first step in offsetting the comparative underfunding that has been experienced in NSF's budget in the past several years. The scientific community is grateful for your support and it is our greatest hope that you will continue to support the much-needed expansion of NSF's budget.

Within the NSF budget, we ask the Committee to continue its history of support for behavioral and social science research at NSF. This Committee was instrumental in encouraging NSF to establish its Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) Directorate a decade ago, and over the years has directly encouraged many of the initiatives coming out of that directorate.

Before discussing specific activities of the SBE directorate, I first want to provide a brief overview of basic psychological research, to give you an idea of the scope and breadth of the field that I represent.

An Overview of Basic Psychological Research

APS members include thousands of scientists who conduct basic research in areas such as learning and memory, and the linked mechanisms of how we process information through visual and auditory perception. Others study decision making and judgement; mathematical reasoning; language development; the developmental origins of behavior; and the impact of individual, environmental and social factors on behavior. This basic psychological research conducted by APS members has implications for a wide range of applications, from the design of airplane cockpit control panels, to how to teach math to children; to how humans can best learn using technology; to the development of more effective hearing aids; to increasing workforce productivity; and to the amelioration of social problems such as prejudice or violence.

While this is a diverse range of topics, all of these areas of research are related by the notion that understanding the human mind and behavior is crucial to maximizing human potential. That places them squarely at the forefront of many of the most pressing issues facing the Nation, this Congress, and the Administration.

Turning now to the SBE Directorate, I'd like to highlight two programs, one in cognitive neuroscience, and one in child development. These initiatives exemplify SBE's essential leadership on the cutting-edge frontiers of research, and they illustrate the important work that will either languish or flourish, depending on the size of the increase for the NSF budget this year.

Cognitive Neuroscience Initiative

Basic behavioral science supported by SBE traditionally has included research in cognition, perception, language, development, emotion/affect, and social psychology. These have been funded primarily through its Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences. Recognizing the potential contributions of neuroscience to these and related areas, the directorate has added funds to these programs for the express purpose of bringing more neuroscience perspectives to bear on these topics — to map these psychological mechanisms onto the physical dimensions of the brain.

Theoretical work in behavioral science has greatly advanced our understanding of the basic mechanisms underlying memory, emotion, learning, and other psychological and cognitive processes. Now, with brain imaging and other non-invasive techniques, we are poised to confirm and extend these theories through studies of the living brain. Scientists from a range of areas will be able to test theories about normal brain functioning; assess the behavioral consequences of brain damage; and reach new levels of understanding of how the brain develops and matures, in terms of both structure and function.

This initiative will usher in a new era in cognitive and behavioral science research, one that has enormous implications for virtually all sectors of our society, including education, industry and technology, and health care. But reaching this new era depends on the basic science that only NSF can provide.

I should also note that NSF is providing larger and longer grants under this initiative, in recognition of the higher cost of conducting these kinds of interdisciplinary, technology-dependent studies. This new funding policy is an important development for behavioral science, in part because it reverses a previous trend toward smaller, shorter grants on average in behavioral science in comparison to the average grants in other disciplines.

Children's Research Initiative

Recognizing that a combination of perspectives -- cognitive, psychological, social, and neural -- is needed to fully understand how children develop and how they acquire and use knowledge and skills, the SBE directorate will support new interdisciplinary research centers that will focus primarily on integrating traditionally disparate research disciplines concerned with child development. Known as the Children's Research Initiative (CRI), this program will bring together such areas as cognitive development, cognitive science, developmental psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, anthropology, social psychology, sociology, family studies, cross-cultural research, and environmental psychology, to name only some of the relevant disciplines. Basic researchers from these areas will focus on problems that cannot be solved through single investigator studies. This initiative aims to enhance the content knowledge of the fields involved; build an intellectual infrastructure within and among disciplines; and build a program of research in relevant aspects of developmental, learning, and human sciences.

As with the cognitive neuroscience initiative, the CRI program illustrates the critical role NSF plays in creating and capitalizing on basic scientific opportunities that will have enormous implications for our nation's ability to realize the potential of all of its citizens.

The two initiatives I just described are in the Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Science. SBE's other main component, the Division of Social and Economic Sciences, also supports a substantial amount of basic psychological science. Examples of research topics being addressed in that division include: human dimensions of global change, group and individual decision making, risk management, and human factors. Research in these areas has the potential to increase employee and organizational productivity, improve decision making in critical military or civilian emergency situations, and inform the public policymaking processes across a range of areas. We ask the Committee to support this division's behavioral and social science research programs.

The Science of Learning

Another core area of interest at NSF is the science of learning. This field draws from a variety of research topics across psychology, such as brain and behavior, learning, memory, perception, social psychology, development, and so on. We have the knowledge base and a critical mass of scientists to help solve the educational and learning issues that have been identified by the government as high priorities. But getting that knowledge into the classroom is going to require a multi-disciplinary, multi-agency effort. The basic challenge is this: How can we apply and extend our knowledge of how people think, learn, and remember to improve education?

In early March, a diverse group of psychologists and other scientists and educators met at Kellogg West conference facilities on the campus of California State Polytechnic University at Pomona, to address this and similar questions about the problems and possibilities of linking the science of learning to educational practice. More specifically, our focus was on using science to improve learning in the university and beyond. The conference was supported by the Spencer Foundation, the Marshall-Reynolds Trust, California State University, San Bernardino and APS. Several representatives of NSF attended the meeting, as did Cal Poly President Robert Suzuki, a member of NSF's National Science Board and chair of the Board's Committee on Education and Human Resources.

It was agreed that although researchers know what cognitive, psychological, and social factors affect learning, this knowledge too often has not been put to use in the classroom or in industrial training settings. In fact, it would be difficult to design an educational model that is more at odds with current research on human cognition than the one that is used in most colleges and universities in the United States. For example, virtually all college science and math courses, especially at the introductory level, involve a lecture where a lone professor mostly talks (and writes on the board or on overheads) and the student takes notes. This is a satisfactory arrangement for learning if the desired outcome is to produce students who can repeat or recognize the information presented, but one of the worst arrangements for promoting in-depth understanding. We need instructional designs that maximize transfer to the real world, enhance critical thinking abilities, and encourage the habit of life-long learning.

The ultimate goal of the initiative that began with the March conference is to develop new models of learning that will help pave the way for our educational system to become more global, more integrative, more diverse, and more flexible. One step in reaching this goal will be the development of a research agenda that identifies critical questions that can advance the science of learning and provide help in solving national educational problems.

More generally, the science of learning is a topic that cuts across many areas at the Foundation, from Education and Human Resources to NSF's Workforce Initiative. For example, the Foundation has been planning a program of Centers for the Science of Learning under the cross-cutting 21st Century Workforce initiative. But these centers are in jeopardy in FY 02 unless adequate funding is provided. A delay in this and similar programs would mean a delay in the nation's ability to respond to the urgent, technology-driven need for new ways of training and education at all levels of learning.

We ask this Committee to monitor and support NSF's efforts to bring the science of learning to bear on the nation's educational needs. The expanded budget we recommend for FY 02 will allow NSF to capitalize on the growing momentum surrounding this issue both at NSF and in the field.

Public Understanding of Science

NSF has made public understanding of science one of its science education priorities. We applaud NSF's leadership in this area, and we believe that the success of these efforts will be enhanced by focusing on examples from behavioral and social science research. These sciences have unique potential to increase science literacy because of their intrinsic relevance to daily life. That is, in addition to promoting understanding of questions in physics and math, NSF could also be promoting scientific understanding by showcasing how processes of learning and remembering take place, or the scientific validity of certain organizational management structures in industry, or any one of a hundred other areas of NSF support in social and behavioral science.

Public understanding of psychological science is also a priority at the American Psychological Society. Last year we launched a new journal, Psychological Science in the Public Interest, which presents reports modeled after those generated by the National Research Council. Developed by panels of distinguished scientists, these reports focus on issues where psychological science can contribute to our understanding of topics of national importance. The first issue described ways to improve diagnostic decision-making over a wide range of situations using techniques from psychological science. Scientists have developed rigorous statistical procedures that have enormous potential to increase the accuracy and usefulness of such diverse applications as detecting breast cancer; improving weather forecasts; analyzing structural flaws in airplanes; and possibly even predicting violence.

The second issue of PSPI assessed the validity of popular psychological tests such as the well-known Rorschach and other projective tests, finding that the tests have limited value despite their widespread use in everything from diagnosing mental disorders to determining which parent gets custody in a divorce. Upcoming reports will address such questions as: Does class size matter? Do herbal remedies improve memory or intelligence? Does SAT coaching work?

To ensure that PSPI reports will reach the widest possible audience, we have been working with Scientific American to develop articles for the magazine that will be based on the studies published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest. We also are working with nationally-known newspapers and radio and television networks to reach an even wider audience. Our reports recently have been featured in the New York Times, on National Public Radio, and in many other outlets. I would be pleased to provide you with copies of the PSPI reports and their Scientific American counterparts, or you can view them on our website at www.psychologicalscience.org.

NSF is helping to support this initiative through a small grant that is allowing the PSPI editorial board to evaluate and refine its review and vetting processes, and is enabling the dissemination of the research reports to a broader audience.

In closing, I want to note that building and sustaining the capacity for innovation and discovery in the behavioral and social sciences is a core goal of the National Science Foundation. We ask that you encourage NSF's efforts in these areas, not just those activities I've described here, but the full range of activities supported by the SBE directorate and by NSF at large. As one example, NSF Director Rita Colwell has announced that a major new initiative will be launched in the behavioral and social sciences in FY 2003. Your support in FY 2002 will help NSF lay the groundwork for this long-overdue emphasis on these sciences.

Thank you again for the opportunity to appear before you to present our recommendations. I would be pleased to answer questions or provide additional information.