Advocacy Archive

Testimony of ALAN G. KRAUT APS Executive Director
FY 2000 Appropriations for the National Science Foundation

Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs, HUD, and Independent Agencies of the
Committee on Appropriations
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

April 28, 1999

[Note: A similar statement was submitted to the U.S. Senate.]

Mr. Chairman, Members of the Subcommittee: It is a pleasure to appear here today to discuss FY 2000 appropriations for the National Science Foundation. I am Alan Kraut, Executive Director of the American Psychological Society (APS). APS's 15,000 members are scientists and academics who conduct research in cognition; memory; auditory and visual perception; decision-making; human development; emotions; and group behavior, to name just a few topics. To summarize the main points of my testimony:

  • As a member of the Coalition for National Science Funding, APS supports the Coalition's recommendation that the NSF budget be increased 15 percent in FY 2000.
  • We ask the Subcommittee to significantly increase the FY 2000 budget for NSF's behavioral and social science research divisions to support the reorganization of those divisions and to allow the initiation of programs in emerging areas such as cognitive neuroscience.
  • Disparities in the length and duration of NSF grants in behavioral and social science compared to other NSF grants mean that the behavioral sciences continue to be underfunded. We ask the Subcommittee to encourage the elimination of these funding disparities at NSF, recognizing this would require some "catch-up" funding for these disciplines.
  • We ask the Subcommittee to support the establishment of small grants at NSF specifically designed to sustain new investigators in the behavioral sciences at a critical junction in their career.

Mr. Chairman, I want to begin by expressing our appreciation for the substantial increase that Congress provided for NSF in FY 99. That increase has made a difference throughout the agency and particularly in the programs that I know best, those that support psychological science. It is our position that this general growth needs to continue at NSF in FY 2000. As a member of the Coalition for National Science Funding (CNSF), APS supports the Coalition's recommended 15 percent increase for NSF in FY 2000, for a total appropriation of $4.3 billion. The President's request this year is a 5.8 percent increase, but a substantial portion of that is in information technology. We support increased funding for information technology - this will benefit science as well as the public. However, it should not be at the expense of other areas which also provide essential scientific knowledge. The CNSF recommendation would allow a balanced distribution of increases in the FY 2000 budget.

Social and Behavioral Structure and Funding
I'll talk about some of the initiatives that are being funded in FY 99 in a moment, but first, within the context of NSF's overall budget, I'd like to discuss some of the agency's policies as they affect basic behavioral and social science research. For the past several years, this Subcommittee has strongly encouraged these areas at NSF. Your support was instrumental in establishing the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate -- known as SBE -- and later in strengthening it. You also were instrumental in helping the Directorate expand its Human Capital Initiative program. Most recently, this Subcommittee, along with your colleagues in the Senate, expressed strong support for the planned reorganization of SBE's single research division into two separate divisions. I am pleased to report that the final touches to this reorganization have now taken place, and the SBE directorate has a Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences Division, and a Social and Economic Sciences Division.

This reorganization will enable NSF to accommodate the explosive pace of discovery in the behavioral and social sciences and to promote partnership with other disciplines. There was just too much breadth and depth in these fields to be contained in one research division. However, the reorganization is just a beginning. Providing a critical mass of funding is the next step.

The President's budget request includes a 5.3 percent increase for NSF's behavioral and social science research programs, which would bring them to just over $106 million for FY 2000. We appreciate the proposed increase, but it is also clear that additional resources are needed if the two new divisions are to sustain the scientific momentum that led to the reorganization. We ask the Subcommittee to support a significant increase in the NSF budget for behavioral and social science research programs in the SBE directorate.

In addition, we are asking the Subcommittee to encourage NSF to increase the average amount and the duration of awards in the behavioral and social sciences. The average length of an award in the behavioral and social sciences is only 2 years, compared with the NSF-wide average of 2.7 years. Further, the average grant in these areas receives $20,000 less than the average NSF-wide grant. These disparities exacerbate the underfunding that NSF's behavioral and social science research experiences, both in terms of the number of grant proposals that are funded compared to the number submitted, and in comparison to overall budget levels in other areas of science. We ask the Subcommittee to encourage NSF to examine its support for these essential areas, and to stress that any plan to provide additional equity among the sciences will not be accomplished through a reduction in the number of awards made in these disciplines.

Young investigator mechanisms
The need to support the next generation of scientists is especially acute in basic research in the behavioral and social sciences. The underfunding of our fields has an impact beyond principal investigators whose proposals aren't being funded. It jeopardizes the supply of high-quality future investigators who would otherwise receive training under those grants. The beginning of an investigator's career is an important juncture; it is a time when a relatively new PhD should be collecting initial data and gaining experience that is often necessary to later compete for larger grants. In order to protect our "seed corn" investigators, we suggest that NSF use a mechanism such as NIH's B/START (Behavioral Science Track Awards for Rapid Transition) grants, which provide small amounts of funding specifically to sustain new investigators at that critical time in their careers. We ask the Subcommittee to encourage the establishment of small grants such as B/START at NSF for new behavioral and social science investigators.

Social and Behavioral Science Initiatives

The remainder of my testimony describes specific initiatives at NSF that are being funded in the current year. These illustrate the important work in my own field, psychological science, that is being supported by NSF's behavioral and social science programs, and how this work is combined with many other disciplines. By expanding NSF's capacity in these areas, you would be allowing much more of this kind of work to be done. The increase we are requesting will allow NSF to increase the number of grants funded under these initiatives, plus the agency will be able to launch additional initiatives in FY 2000.

Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence
Research in Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence (KDI) is an NSF-wide priority for FY 2000 and is funded by all six NSF research directorates. Behavioral science is a core area of the initiative, which is using interdisciplinary research to examine such phenomena as learning and memory, social cognition, human-computer interactions, and visual and auditory perception. This initiative involves research in areas ranging from neuropsychology to cognitive science to social and developmental psychology.

Of the nearly 700 research proposals received by the KDI program, 40 were funded, and of those 40, about a quarter included a significant cognitive, behavioral or psychological science aspect. Here are some examples of projects on which psychological scientists are serving as principal investigators:

  • At the University of Pittsburgh, investigators on a KDI project called Computational Models and Coordinated Neuroimaging of Learning and Cognitive Function will be mapping human brain function and developing computational models of brain structures involved in human cognition.
  • In Virtual Environments and Behavior, a KDI project at the University of California, Santa Barbara, scientists will be using immersive virtual environment technology (IVET, a state-of-the-art research tool which creates illusory physical and social surroundings) in four areas of basic research: education and learning, visual perception, spatial cognition and social psychology. Among other things, they will study social interactions in virtual environments and how people develop natural interactions under virtual circumstances. IVET is already invaluable to many areas of psychological research, and one primary goal of the project is to expand the use of IVET in social psychology research.
  • In a KDI project at Michigan State University, titled Sequential Decision Making in Animals and Machines, investigators from cognitive psychology, computer science, and zoology will be examining issues that cut across biological and artificial intelligence, yielding knowledge that will be relevant to many disciplines.
  • In a project with the complicated title of Segmental and Prosodic Optical Phonetics for Human and Machine Speech Processing, psychologists and others from the House Eye Institute at UCLA will be studying fundamental issues in visual speech perception and optical speech synthesis. Specifically, they will be characterizing optical speech signals and examining how optical speech characteristics relate to acoustic and physiologic speech characteristics.

Enhancing Infrastructure for the Social and Behavioral Sciences
In social and behavioral science, the term "infrastructure" refers to large, innovative and long-running projects that involve data bases, technology, some longitudinal research, and other resources useful across a wide base of scientific inquiry. NSF has historically supported several important infrastructure initiatives in the behavioral and social sciences. In FY 99, the SBE launched a new infrastructure initiative that among other things will capitalize on the expanding capabilities of the World Wide Web to bring data, researchers and experimental facilities together electronically in arrangements that are being called "collaboratories." These collaboratories will enable scientists from different geographical locations to jointly conduct real-time controlled experiments and to share the use of expensive experimental equipment. More generally, it allows a greater number of scientists to be involved in, and gain results from, research in progress. Other infrastructure activities will involve large-scale surveys, electronic databases and archives that can be accessed through the Web, and interdisciplinary research centers that develop innovative methods of collaborative research activity.

The FY 99 round of proposals have been received, and since the review process is under way we don't yet know what specific proposals will be funded. But I am sorry to report that with the current level of funding, $3 million, only a very few of the 100 proposals received -- perhaps as few as 4 or 5 -- will be funded under this infrastructure initiative.

Child Learning and Development
Another initiative to be funded in FY 99 is in the area of child learning and development. This multidisciplinary competition will support research that increases our understanding of cognitive, social, and biological processes involved in learning, with particular emphasis on new theories and methods for studying learning and child development. Specific issues to be addressed include: the development and transfer of knowledge in specific subject areas; the effects of peer relationships, family interactions, and other social factors on learning; the impact of family, school and community resources on learning and development; and the role of demographic and cultural characteristics in learning and development. A minimum of $2 million will be available for this initiative in FY 99, and it is anticipated that 15-20 of the 60 proposals received will be funded.

Cognitive Neuroscience
I would also like to briefly highlight an area where NSF is seeking to increase its activities. The emerging field of cognitive neuroscience combines behavior and biology in a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding the mind. The result is a new approach to unraveling the complexities of mental processing and the underlying biological intricacies. Drawing on theoretical advances in cognitive science and technological advances in brain imaging, this field has significant implications for our understanding of memory, learning, perception, emotion, of virtually any brain-based behavioral process. Cognitive neuroscience has potential applications in education generally, and in diagnosing and treating learning disabilities and assessing cognitive ability in cases of disease and trauma, among other things.

NSF is in an excellent position to expand and strengthen the field of cognitive neuroscience. We ask the Subcommittee to support the development of a cognitive neuroscience initiative at NSF and to provide new funding in FY 2000 to help launch a program in this area.

This concludes my statement. Thank you again for the opportunity to address the Subcommittee. I would be pleased to answer any questions.