EAC Chair: Scott Sperling, PsyD
EAC Composition and Members
The Education Advisory Committee (EAC) fulfills the education mission of Division 40. The EAC serves in an advisory capacity to the Executive Committee of the Division and informs the Division membership of education-related issues and developments.
The Education Advisory Committee is composed of eight core Continuing Members as well as rotating Organizational Representatives from six training/professional organizations in neuropsychology spanning the doctoral, internship and post-doctoral level.
Goals of the EAC
NEUROPSYCHOLOGY AS A SPECIALTY
To promote the recognition of Clinical Neuropsychology as a specialty within APA with defined education and training requirements.
HOUSTON CONFERENCE GUIDELINES
To support and promote the implementation of the Houston Conference recommendations on Specialty Education and Training in Clinical Neuropsychology.
NEUROPSYCHOLOGY TRAINING
To facilitate training in clinical neuropsychology at all levels including doctoral, internship, post-doctoral, early career and continuing professional education and serves as a forum for communication and coordination among the various training organizations in clinical neuropsychology.
NEUROPSYCHOLOGY TRAINING PROGRAMS LIST
To maintain the Division 40 list of Training Programs that is updated annually to disseminate information about doctoral, internship and post-doctoral training programs in clinical neuropsychology.
ANST & TRAINING ADVOCACY
To serve an advisory role to ANST (Association of Neuropsychology Students in Training) and help sponsor education/training information sessions at APA and INS .
APA ECP & ECNPC
To serve an advisory role to Division 40’s representative to the APA Committee on Early Career Psychologists to facilitate efforts of clinical neuropsychologists at the early stages of professional development.
TRENDS IN EDUCATION & TRAINING
Continuing Members:
Organizational Liaisons:
Nina Hattiangadi Thomas (AITCN)
Amy Heffelfinger (APPCN)
Lucas Driskell (ANST)
Cady Block (ECNPC)
Glenn Smith (CNS)
Training Organizations:
Professional Organizations
Education and Training Guidelines
Entry-level Competencies in Clinical Neuropsychology
Taxonomy for Clinical Neuropsychology
For more information see Sperling, Cimino, Stricker, Heffelfinger, Gess, Osborn & Roper (2017) Taxonomy for Education and Training in Clinical Neuropsychology: past, present, and future, The Clinical Neuropsychologist, 31:5, 817-828, DOI: 10.1080/13854046.2017.1314017
Interested in Neuropsychology?
Search for Doctoral, Internship and Postdoctoral Residency programs in Clinical Neuropsychology using the Training Listing maintained by the EAC. Encourage your training director to keep program information up to date. Check out our tip sheets for applying to Clinical Neuropsychology Programs:
New TCN Article Provides a Concise Update on Current Trends in Neuropsychology Training
New Resource for Neuropsychology Trainees!
Congratulations to the 2019 Dissertation Award Winners!
Dissertation Title: Medication Adherence Functional Capacity in the Aging Population: Development of an Ecologically Validated Assessment
Mentor/Dissertation Chair:
Brief Bio: I am currently a 4th year doctoral student at Washington State University’s Clinical Psychology Program with a focus in neuropsychology. My current research centers on examining the interactive relationship between cognition and compensatory strategy use and their effects on functional capacity in healthy aging and clinical populations. Specifically, I am interested in developing efficient and ecologically valid functional assessments for identifying individuals at risk of medication nonadherence due to cognitive difficulties.
Project Description: Older adults, the largest per capita consumers of prescription medications, report “forgetting” as the most frequent reason for unintentional nonadherence (Campbell et al., 2016; Quato, Wilder, Schumm, Gillet & Alexander, 2016). A quick and ecologically valid functional assessment for identifying individuals at risk for cognitive-related nonadherence is desirable; however, no such measure exists. The objective of this work is to address limitations preventing medication nonadherence performance-based measures from being used as clinical tools. Specifically, my work aims to examine the ecological validity of published and experimental medication performance-based measures, which assess medication knowledge, management, prospective memory and compensatory strategies. The final aim of this work is to consolidate these measures into a robust and predictive measurement for medication adherence. A brief and ecologically valid performance-based measure for assessing cognitive-related medication nonadherence risk in older adults is expected to have a downstream impact on interventions (e.g., reducing the financial, time and staff burden of collecting outcome data), and national health outcomes (e.g., reducing disability and mortality).
Dissertation Title: The Predictive Utility of Different Measures of Intraindividual Cognitive Variability as an Early Marker of Cognitive and Functional Decline in
Older Adulthood
Mentor/Dissertation Chair: Matthew Calamia, Ph.D.
Brief Bio: I am currently a 3rd year doctoral student in the neuropsychology track at Louisiana State University in the Department of Clinical Psychology. My current program of research primarily focuses on the identification of early warning signs of cognitive and functional decline in older adulthood. Specifically, I am interested in examining cognitive variability as a marker of early cognitive decline and better understanding which factors may impact variability (e.g., emotional and health conditions).
Project Description: Within-person cognitive variability (IIV) is an emerging marker of neurological disturbance, especially with respect to cognitive aging and decline. Despite promising early findings, the majority of the current research focuses on examining reaction time variability in individuals with dementia using cross-sectional approaches (Bielak et al., 2010). The current study aims to extend the current body of research by examining IIV in three cognitive domains (i.e., reaction time, executive functioning, and memory) as predictors of future cognitive and functional decline in cognitively healthy individuals and those with mild cognitive impairment using a longitudinal approach. Further, the current project aims to better understand factors that may impact rates of IIV (i.e., anxiety and depression). Findings from this project could provide further evidence that IIV can be used in diagnostic differentiation even at earlier stages of cognitive decline as well as to inform and enhance early identification methods to better serve the growing older adult population.
Dissertation Title: Bottom-up and Top-down Interactions Between Emotion and Cognitive Control
Mentor/Dissertation Chair: Mara Mather, Ph.D.
Brief Bio: I am currently a 5th year graduate student in the clinical science program at the University of Southern California, specializing in neuropsychology and clinical aging. My research is broadly focused on understanding the effects of aging on cognitive and emotional processing using behavioral, neuropsychological, and neuroimaging techniques. Aside from this dissertation project, other research projects include understanding how aging influences optimism for the future, the nature of memory distortion and false memories, and emotion regulation.
Project Description: Recent evidence suggests that Alzheimer’s disease pathology begins in the locus coeruleus (LC) and may affect cognitive abilities even before clinically relevant symptoms begin to emerge (Braak & Del Tredici, 2012). The primary goal of this dissertation project is to examine how aging influences the structural and functional integrity of the LC. This project focuses on three distinct cognitive abilities dependent on the LC: 1) selective attention under varying degrees of cognitive load, 2) selective memory under increased cognitive load, and 3) select aspects of executive functioning. Results will deepen and broaden our understanding of how the LC modulates cognitive processing across the adult lifespan. These findings could provide insight into the type of cognitive impairments that emerge at the very earliest stages of Alzheimer’s disease.
