Russell Church
Professor of Psychology:
Psychology
Phone: +1 401 863 2328
Phone 2: +1 401 863 2727
Russell_Church@Brown.EDU
The ability to estimate durations of time is an essential characteristic of animals and people that is required for rational decisions, accurate memory, association of events, and coordination of various components of behavior with each other and with environmental events. Research in my laboratory is being conducted with rats and human subjects. Four approaches to the study of duration discrimination have been employed: behavioral, mathematical, cognitive, and biological.
Biography
Russell Church is an experimental psychologist who studies learning, memory, and decision processes of animals. He has been a member of the Brown faculty since 1955 where his early research concerned studies of social learning and punishment. During the last 25 years he has concentrated on the ability of animals (rats and humans) to discriminate time intervals, and adjust their behavior to the temporal constraints of tasks. His research, which involves behavioral, neuroscience, and mathematical approaches, has been published primarily in scientific journals. Since 1957 his research has been supported continuously by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Science Foundation. He has served as President of the Eastern Psychological Association, the Society for Computers in Psychology, and two Divisions of the American Psychological Association. He is currently teaching courses to graduate and undergraduate students in experimental analysis of behavior and mathematical models of psychological processes.
Interests
The ability to estimate durations of time is an essential characteristic of animals and people that is required for rational decisions, accurate memory, association of events, and coordination of various components of behavior with each other and with environmental events.
Research in my laboratory is being conducted with rats and human subjects. Four approaches to the study of duration discrimination have been employed: behavioral, mathematical, cognitive, and biological. Understanding duration discrimination requires a knowledge of the relationship between stimulus conditions and temporal behavior, of mathematical models of timing and learning, of mental mechanisms (such as perception, memory, attention, decision), and of biological mechanisms (anatomy, pharmacology, and electrophysiology).
A mathematical timing theory accounts for performance in many timing tasks. These include tasks involving temporal discrimination and temporal performance. The results of such experiment have led to the development of more general principles of scalar timing and mathematical process models of temporal perception, memory, and decision. The predictions of the theory can be directly compared to the behavior of the animal with a Turing test.
Various biological manipulations (drugs and brain lesions) appear to have a selective influence on one or more of the mental mechanisms, and there are neural correlates of timing behavior.
Degrees
Ph.D. Harvard, 1956
Awards
a. Current grant:
1988-2008 Temporal discrimination learning (National Institute of Mental Health MH-44234)
b. Honorary Societies:
Fellow of Society of Experimental Psychologists, 1987
Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1969
Fellow of Division of Experimental Psychology, American Psychological Association (APA), 1966
Fellow of Division of Physiological & Comparative Psychology, APA, 1989
Fellow of Division of Psychopharmacology and Substance Abuse, APA, 1992
Fellow (and Charter Member) of the Association for Psychological Science
Member of the Psychonomic Society
c. Research Award:
The "Research Award" from the Comparative Cognition Society "in honor of outstanding contrtibutions to the study of cognitive processes in animals, March 24, 2006.
Affiliations
American Association for the Advancement of Science
American Psychological Association
Association for Psychological Science
Eastern Psychological Association
Psychonomic Society
Society for the Quantitative Analysis of Behavior
Society for Mathematical Psychology
Society for Comparative Cognition
Society for Neuroscience
Teaching
PY0120 (Experimental Analysis of Animal Behavior and Cognition) is a laboratory course on the prediction, control, and explanation of the behavior of animals in simple environments.
PY0202 (Quantitative Methods in Psychology) is a seminar on methods of analysis and models of psychological processes. Topics include signal detection theory, scalar timing theory, reaction time, and multidimensional sclaing. Appropriate computer techniques are introduced.
Funded Research
a. Current grant:
1988-08 Temporal discrimination learning (National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) MH-44234)
$1,221,125 for last five years
b. Completed grants:
1957-58 Experimental Studies of imitative behavior (NIMH M-1812)
1959-64 Behavior in competitive situations (NIMH MH-02902)
1964-71 Characteristics of a punishing stimulus (NIMH MH-08123)
1968-69 Thermal reinforcement (MH-16710)
1971-72 Purchase of a PDP-12 computer system (GB-20108)
1971-74 Suppression of a specific response by punishment (NIMH-19794)
1974-76 The role of contiguity in classical conditioning (National Science Foundation (NSF) GB-43208)
1976-79 Control processes in timing (National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) 23247)
1977-78 Development of pattern perception in problem solving (NIMH MH-30404)
1979-81 Properties of the internal clock (BNS-09834)
1982-87 Pharmacological effects on timing behavior (NIMH MH-37049)
1985-88 Temporal discrimination learning (NSF BNS-18293)
1988-08 Temporal discrimination learning (NIMH MH-44234)
1991-93 Categorical aspects of motor timing (NSF BNS-9110158)
1995-99 Categorical timing (NSF SBR 94-14104)
1999-02 Temporal pattern learning (NSF IBN-9816777 )
