Advocacy Archive
Testimony of ALAN G. KRAUT APS Executive Director
FY 1999 Appropriations for the National Science Foundation
Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs, HUD, and Independent Agencies of the
Committee on Appropriations
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
The Honorable Jerry Lewis, Chair
April 21, 1998, 10:15 am
Mr. Chairman, Members of the Subcommittee: It is a pleasure to appear here today to discuss the FY 1999 appropriations for the National Science Foundation. I am Alan Kraut, Executive Director of the American Psychological Society (APS). APS's 16,000 members are scientists and academics who conduct research on, among other things, the basic behavioral processes involved in perception (including the auditory and visual systems); memory; cognition and information processing; decision making; human development; emotions; and behavior in groups, to name just a few topics. In conjunction with my testimony, I am pleased to provide this Subcommittee with copies of a recent report, Basic Research in Psychological Science. This report, which was sponsored by NSF and written by a blue-ribbon panel of scientists, gives an overview of the scientific achievements that have occurred in many of the areas of study I just mentioned, and identifies promising directions for future research. I hope it will be of use to you in your consideration of NSF's mission and priorities.
As a member of the Coalition for National Science Funding (CNSF) APS asks this Subcommittee to support the Coalition's recommendation for NSF in FY 99, which is an increase of $344 million or 10 percent over its FY 1998 funding level. This increase would raise NSF's budget from $3.429 billion in FY 1998 to $3.773 billion in FY 1999.
Within the NSF budget, my remarks today will focus on the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) Directorate. I want to begin by thanking this Subcommittee for encouraging the establishment of this Directorate and in strengthening the Directorate over the past several years. This Subcommittee also was instrumental in helping NSF expand its Human Capital Initiative program, and we are grateful for your continued support.
The SBE Directorate as a whole is slated for a 15 percent increase in the FY 99 budget request for NSF, which would bring the Directorate's budget to $150 million. Within this, the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research (SBER) division, which houses most of the Directorate's research activities, is slated for a 16.2 percent increase, bringing the division to nearly $114 million for FY 99.
These increases signal NSF's strong enthusiasm for behavioral and social science research, and reflect both the progress and the potential of basic research in psychology and other disciplines. During my time today, I want to talk about some of the science supported by these funds, to give you a sense of the exciting initiatives that are underway in the Directorate in the hope that you will be as convinced as the scientific leaders at NSF are about the importance of maintaining a strong behavioral science research enterprise. My statement will naturally be focused on psychological science, but I know that you will be hearing from other SBE disciplines about their impressive accomplishments.
Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence
Research in Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence (KDI) is a NSF-wide priority for FY 99. Behavioral science is a cornerstone of the KDI effort. For example, under the KDI:
NSF-funded scientists at the University of Memphis are building an automated computer tutor that blends user-friendly dialogue with effective educational practices, recognizing that both of these aspects affect learning. In doing so, they are drawing on basic research by psychologists in comprehension and communications, as well as on work by computer scientists and educational psychologists.
At the University of California-Berkeley, NSF is funding a project called "From Sounding to Meaning," designed to increase our understanding of how the brain takes spoken language -- an audio signal -- and processes it into meaning. This project integrates techniques and concepts from psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, statistics, computer science, and electrical engineering into a theoretical framework for understanding spoken language.
Other examples in this area include developing simulations of complex knowledge-processing networks, and research on concept learning in humans and in artificial systems.
In FY 99, the recommended increase for SBER will support additional research on the processes involved in learning and creativity. We ask the Subcommittee to preserve this increase in order to ensure the continued vitality and productivity of the behavioral science component of the NSF-wide KDI.
Human Capital Initiative
Earlier I mentioned something called the Human Capital Initiative. Briefly, this is a national behavioral science research agenda that was first developed by representatives across the range of psychological science, from scientists studying basic brain and behavior, to those studying social and organizational processes. As the name implies, the unifying concept involves the development of human capital. More specifically:
The term "human capital" is familiar to many as a term that originated in economics. In the HCI, this term has been borrowed and broadened to reflect the view that human potential is a basic resource and that understanding the human mind and behavior is crucial to maximizing human potential. To achieve the goal of maximizing human potential, we need to know in scientific terms how people interact with their environment and each other how we learn, remember, and express ourselves as individuals and in groups and we need to know the factors that influence and modify those behaviors.
The HCI was embraced and expanded by NSF following several years' of encouragement from this Committee and from your counterparts in the Senate. The NSF HCI program owes a particular debt of gratitude to Mr. Stokes who together with Senator Mikulski provided essential funding for the program in its early stages. The HCI is just one more piece of Mr. Stokes' enormous legacy and for this and for his many other contributions to the improvement of the human condition we thank him, we will miss him greatly, and we wish him all the best in his retirement from Congress.
Today, the HCI is funded at $16 million, which supports behavioral and social science research projects that include multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches and partnerships with other NSF directorates. With your support, the HCI will be increased to $20 in FY 99. This increment will focus on children and learning.
Reorganization of NSF's Behavioral and Social Science Programs
Another sign that NSF's support for behavioral and social sciences is moving to another level is the pending reorganization of NSF's programs in these fields. Recently, it became clear that the intellectual momentum of the areas supported by the SBER Division was outstripping the Division's administrative capacities. In order to accommodate the explosive pace of discovery in the behavioral and social sciences and to promote partnership with other disciplines, the SBER is being restructured; it will be replaced by two separate Divisions, one in behavioral, developmental, and cognitive science, and one in social and economic science.
Under the leadership of psychologist Bennett I. Bertenthal, who heads the SBE Directorate, both of these divisions will be placing greater emphasis on connections with programs outside of the Directorate. In addition, both Divisions are conducting a systematic assessment of methodological and other cross-cutting scientific needs such as instrumentation, software, large-scale longitudinal surveys and data bases, centers and other mechanisms to facilitate collaboration, and other infrastructure requirements of the research disciplines within their purview. This infrastructure assessment and the SBE's increased investment in training are laying the groundwork for a new era of achievement in basic behavioral and social science researchers, and will be significantly enhanced by the proposed increase for SBE in FY 99.
Summary
Behavioral research represents some of the country's best science, and has the potential to increase our understanding of some of the Nation's greatest concerns, including literacy, productivity, international relations, technological advancement, cultural diversity, and the development of our human capital, to name a few. The critical role of this research and the fact that the field is poised for rapid expansion are reflected in the proposed FY 99 budget for NSF and in the current restructuring of the SBE Directorate. The Subcommittee's history of support for behavioral science is being rewarded with unprecedented scientific productivity. We ask that you preserve this momentum by approving the proposed increases for behavioral and social science research and for NSF more generally.
This concludes my statement. Thank you again for the opportunity to address the Subcommittee. I would be pleased to answer any questions.