For 15 years, UNM’s Associate Vice President for Research Michael Dougher has worked with his students to examine the role of stimulus relations and semantic networks they believe underlie human cognition learning and memory. They have studied the effect on clinical disorders such as depression and anxiety. For that work, Dougher has received an award from the American Psychological Association.
Photo: Associate Vice President for Research Michael Dougher
The Don Hake Award for Translational Research for work that bridges the basic/applied continuum of behavior analysis was given to Dougher at the association’s national meeting in Boston.
As part of the event, Dougher delivered an invited talk, “Stimulus Relations: False Memories and Clinical Implications.” He and his students have spent the past decade and a half trying to identify experimentally behavioral processes that underlie language and certain cognitive phenomena.
Dougher and his students used basic laboratory work to identify processes that can account for development of fearful reactions to events that have never been associated with aversive stimulation or even directly encountered. The work clarified behavioral processes responsible for cognitive distortions that characterize depression and stimulate memory distortions and errors.
“It’s nice that the work was recognized, but it has been a real team effort, and the students did the heavy lifting,” Dougher said.
Media Contact: Karen Wentworth, (505) 277-5627; e-mail: kwent2@unm.edu
Posted by scarr at August 26, 2008 01:27 PM