In this current economic climate,

many psychology students are unaware of the career and employment opportunities in psychology. There

are six common career paths following a psychology degree. They include: outpatient and residential care, social and human services, human resources, therapy, teaching, and professional graduate schools (e.g. medicine, business, law, etc.). (Note that, in order to do therapy in the traditional sense, you will need at least a master’s degree.) To teach high school psychology, you must receive a teaching credential. Teaching at a higher level requires a graduate degree. There are also “less traveled” career paths. To read about some of these possibilities, visit http://www.apa.org/monitor/feb01/careerpath.html . For more details about the traditional career paths, go to http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Flats/5353/classes/careers.html or http://www.psywww.com/careers/. While many of these jobs require advanced education, there are a number of postitions for which a bachelor’s degree is adequate preparation. The Psychology Department website at

www.psychology.byu.edu provides a list of possible jobs in Utah County both for people working on undergraduate psychology degrees and for those who have completed degrees. Internships can be a way to increase your ability to land a job. The Psychology Internship and Tutoring office in 1001 SWKT specializes in helping students find internships. The experience not only help make connections with potential employers, but also provide a great way to hone existing skills and learn new skills including improving professional demeanor,

enhancing ability to work effectively in groups, increasing confidence, working independently, increasing problem solving ability, and

improving creative thinking and writing ability, to name a few. If you are interested in participating in an internship, contact the Psychology Internship and Tutoring Office (psychintership@byu.edu, 801-422-8952). If you are a former student and are interested in providing internships that would be beneficial to our current students, please contact Dr. Bruce Brown, Associate Chair of Student Issues at bruce_brown@byu.edu. Please share your comments and experiences with us about the path your BS degree has taken you by emailing psychology@byu.edu.

Chair’s Corner “Psychology Opportunities”

Inside This Edition:Chair’s Corner Page 1 Ron D. Kingsley Page 7Where are they Now? Jeffrey Case Page 2 Spotlight on China Page 7What’s New in Psychology? Page 4 Back in the Day Page 8Important Department Dates Page 5 Announcements Page 9Eating Disorders and the Brain Page 6 Contact Page 9

Volume 2 Issue 1 2010

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Internships provide a great way to hone existing skills and learn new skills, including improving professional demeanor...

Psychology Newsletter 2 Winter 2010 3

battalions. The first challenge of being a deployed psychologist is that our brigade was spread across 5 provinces of Iraq, populating between 10 and 20 outposts (always changing). While I was the lone behavioral health officer for the bri-gade, we received some additional augmentation from an Air Force Combat Stress detachment that was located on 2 of our larger outposts.

Day to day operations involved running an outpatient clinic (read: tent) on the largest of the FOBs where about half of the brigade resided. I also rotated each month to the outlying FOBs, traveling by Blackhawk helicopter or on the road in convoys. I was grateful for the improved security in Iraq as I was on convoys nearly every other week! I was also grateful for the mine-resistant vehicles.

Away from the large medi-cal center and the staff of 20 other providers, away from direct contact from supervisors, and away from my psych peer group, I had to grow up fast. At first, little things seemed to nearly overwhelm me. I almost panicked when I had to decide simple things like office hours. I’ve never had to decide on office hours!!! And then there were all of the policies and procedures that I had to develop, modify, and present to the leadership; it was a busy first month.

After setting up shop, I had to make my way around the brigade, meeting with brigade, battalion, and company-level leadership to “sell” my product. I had heard from those who had deployed before me that it would not be enough to sit in my office with a “Doctor Is In” sign in my window. I needed to sell myself.

What worked the best was to not only indicate that I would be there to care for the soldiers who would be classified as patients, but

that it was at least as important to offer services to those whom I would never see one-on-one. The Commanders bought into my dual model of treatment and prevention and allowed me to teach numerous psychoeducational classes to help reduce the number of patients who would eventually come in to see me.

After doing several rounds of classes, the Commanders started to trust me with their soldiers, and the soldiers saw me as being one of them and started to feel comfort-able coming to my clinic.

Maybe it worked too well, as I had several consecutive months of 160 patient hours each month. I saw patients up until about 3 hours before I boarded the Chinook he-licopter to head home. It felt good to be recognized for my efforts by my unit leadership as I was awarded an Army Achievement Medal for “having a positive attitude under [expletive] circumstances” and a Bronze Star for Meritorious Service.

The stress of my job was fairly high, as concern for soldier safety remained the most salient issue to me, commanders, and the “Big Army.” The past year saw a sharp increase in suicides of soldiers in the Army. This led to a great deal of emphasis on suicide prevention. Hardly a month went by without a new mandate from Big Army on new classes that had to be taught and videos that needed to be watched. I have to say that risk concerns were only heightened by knowing that each of my patients had a loaded weapon at all times. It made my safety evalu-ations a bit more OCD-like—and

thoroughly documented. I feel like the campaign to in-

crease mental health awareness and suicidality was generally successful. I lost my first two patients right at the end of the deployment which highlighted the idea that all the best interventions and vigilance can’t fully eliminate the loss of life. It also illustrated some of the frustra-tion in working in this population, in that solider suicides don’t always follow civilian trends.

All in all, it was a good year with a great deal of professional growth. The foundation was laid in my training at BYU and further developed through the Army’s Clinical Psychology educational programs. I’m glad to be back with my family and living in Germany for the next two years (unless duty calls again). The next few years will hopefully bring on new challenges and assignments. Looking forward to it!

If any current students are in-terested in looking into the Army as a potential future employer, please feel free to contact me (rjeffrey.case@us.army.mil). I’d be glad to answer any questions. Thanks to all the students and faculty who helped to shape my development! p

The entrance to the Clinic in Iraq

Hello, fellow Cougars. It’s not been 4 years since I

left for my clinical internship, but I feel as though it was a lifetime ago.

I left Provo in June of 2006 for a clinical internship through the Army Health Professions Scholarship Program. My intern-ship match was at Madigan Army Medical Center in Ft. Lewis, WA. Before reporting for my internship, I completed Officer Basic Course at Ft. Sam Houston, near downtown San Antonio. The course lasted 3 months and included basic officer skills as well as what is referred to as basic warrior tasks. After a year of clinical internship, I stayed at Madigan for an additional year to complete my licensing require-ments for the state of Washington and receive additional training in

military psychology. My time in the medical center

was extremely challenging, stretch-ing me outside of my comfort zone. I enjoyed working with the young adult population that was as diverse as I could have imagined. I felt

confident in my clinical skills and more than up to the challenge of providing psy-chotherapeutic interventions. It really made me appreciate the strong clinical training that I received at BYU. (Thanks! every-one!).

One of the most chal-lenging aspects was balancing the needs of the soldiers whom I treated and the needs of the Army. This brought up numerous ethical challenges that were unique to this population (e.g., telling commander leadership that they don’t just get to know EVERYTHING – command-ers really hate to be told ‘no’).

Especially nerve-wracking was acting in the role of consultant to unit Commanders. At the begin-ning, the hat of “Subject Matter Expert” felt a bit awkward as I was a fresh intern who was telling vet-eran commanders my professional opinion. Over time, I learned to be confident in my clinical training, and to rely on my instincts. Eventually, I felt that I developed a good in-teractional style with career Army leaders.

From Ft. Lewis, I accepted my current as-signment as the behavioral health officer for the 172D Infantry Brigade stationed in Schweinfurt, Germany (located in northern Ba-varia). I moved to Ger-many in November 2008,

just four weeks before the brigade headed to Iraq (and less than 10 days after completing licensure). We hit the ground in Iraq just after Thanksgiving, settling on our For-ward Operating Base (FOB Kalsu) just SW of Baghdad, home sweet home for 12 months. We returned from Iraq this past November and are settling back into our routine in Germany.

I wanted to talk a bit about my time in Iraq, as this is probably the most unique experience that I’ve had in my life. Our brigade con-sists of approximately 4,500 soldiers and officers, broken down into 6

Where Are They Now? Dr. Jef frey Case

Sitting in Saddam’s old chair

Dr. Case on an outpost in Iraq

Dr. Jeffrey Case’s office in Iraq

Winter 2010 5Psychology Newsletter 4

Mike Lambert gave the keynote address in November 2009 at the Savoy Conference in London, Eng-land (pictured below). The confer-ence focused on evidence-based practices and policies in the United Kingdom’s National Health Service. Dr. Lambert’s talk ad-dressed tracking patient treatment response and using the data to improve psychotherapy outcomes.

Several members of Brent Slife’s research team (also work-ing with Dr. Jeff Reber) pre-sented papers at a joint symposium in February 2010 on biases against

theism in psychology. This team plans to test for these biases in their future research. Brent Slife also published several articles on the ideology of empiricism, the evalu-ation of case studies, and disciplin-ary critical thinking, as well as a book entitled, Taking Sides: Clash-ing Views on Psychological Issues.

Jared Warren and his Commu-nity-based Evaluation of Psychoso-cial Interventions with Children and Adolescents (CEPICA) lab had a very productive Fall. He had three papers published from research done in his laboratory that focused on the role of community violence in psychosocial outcomes and the identification of youth at risk for psychotherapy treatment failure. This research was published in top journals including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

Ed Gantt attended the annual American Psychological Associa-tion conference in Toronto, Can-ada in August and presented two papers at the meetings. One of the papers he co-authored with Brent Melling and the other with Sam Downs who are graduate students

in the Psychology Department. The papers dealt with current research that assesses alternative approaches to psychological re-search and a critical evaluation of evolutionary forms of explanation in psychology. Dr. Gantt also par-ticipated in two symposia at BYU sponsored by the Wheatley Institu-tion in October and November. In these symposia, Ed Gantt (along with his co-author, Dr. Richard N. Williams) proposed a possible LDS response to the challenges of the New Atheism and extended a call for psychology to commit itself to a more careful exploration of the question of Human Nature and the possibilities of Human Aspiration.

Mark Allen is partnering with the Diagnostic Imaging Center of Intermountain Medical Center in Murray, Utah to use the func-tional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) neuropsychological assess-ment protocols for routine clinical use. Dr. Allen has developed fMRI versions of many standard neurop-sychological measures. Intermoun-tain Medical Center has the largest volume of imaging patients in Utah and is the flagship center for the entire Intermountain Healthcare

What’s New in Psychology?

Dr. Michael Lambert

Faculty Achievements Fall 2009

(IHC) system. Dr. Allen recently co-authored two important papers on the neural correlates of symptom validity testing that were recently published. He received a $10,000 grant from the BYU Religious Studies Center with Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad to study the neural correlates of God as a social sup-port.

Scott Steffensen used the funding from a College ORCA

MEG award to take 5 undergradu-ate students and 4 graduate stu-dents to the Society for Neurosci-ence meeting in Chicago. All of the students were presented their research findings in 5 posters related to human and animal stud-ies on addiction. Research in Dr. Steffensen’s lab is dedicated to the characterization of critical brain substrates involved in drug de-pendence. Four of the five posters involved electrophysiological and behavioral studies or addiction in rodents.

The remaining study involved EEG studies in human subjects that will serve for controls for future addiction studies. The students were able to interact with other leading scientists in their field. The Neuroscience Society meeting was attended by more than 30,000 scientists. It was a very productive meeting in beautiful downtown Chicago. The picture to the left shows some of the BYU students at one of the posters presented at the meet-ing. p

What’s New Continued. . .

From left to right: Psych grad student Jung Jae Park, neuroscience undergrads JD Wilco and Caitlin Askew, Psych grad student Devin Taylor, neuroscience undergrad James Millward and post-bac Micah Hansen

March 30 Psychology Forum, Dr. Dan Bauer, UNC-Chapel Hill, 3:00 p.m. 3380 WSC

April 8 Mary Lou Fulton Research Conference, 9-11:50 and 2-3p.m. WSC

April 15 Faculty Retreat – Aspen Grove 8:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

April 22 Commencement

April 23 FHSS Convocation - Marriott Center 2:00 p.m.

Impor tant Depar tment Dates:

Psychology Newsletter 6 Winter 2010 7

Eating disorders are char-acterized by an extreme

overreliance on body shape and weight in self-definition and self-evaluation, and by abnormal eating habits in which there is either insuf-ficient or excessive food intake to the detriment of physical and emotional health. The causes of eating disorders are multifactorial and not completely understood. Eating disorders are common and are estimated to affect five to ten million females and one million males in the United States. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is the leading treatment for eating disor-ders, achieving higher response and remission rates than any other form of treatment for eating disorders.

Drs. Diane Spangler and Mark Allen are conducting a longitudinal study of the neurocognitive aspects of eating disorders and investigat-ing how cognitive-behavioral ther-apy may work to change disrupted processing of body-related stimuli. One part of the study used func-tional MRI (fMRI) to examine brain function in young women with and without eating disorders in order to investigate how persons with eating

disorders process body im-age related informa-tion as compared

to those without such disorders.In this study, individuals with

and without eating disorders under-went functional brain imaging before starting cognitive behavioral therapy and again at the completion of cogni-tive behavioral therapy, around five months later. During the fMRI scan the individuals were shown images of bodies ranging in size, accompanied by social cues suggesting either that their own bodies were overweight (far from the social ideal) or thin (close to the social ideal).

Drs. Spangler and Allen found that suggestions of being overweight evoked significant activation in the medial prefrontal cortex compared to suggestions of thinness, both for women with and without eating disorders.

One function of the medial prefrontal cortex is self-reflective thought. For women with eating disorders, however, the location of this brain activity occurred not only in the medial prefrontal cortex, but in a sub-region called the anterior cingulate gyrus, which is known to be involved in processing emotional stimuli and controlling emotional responses.

The difference in activation be-tween controls and patients is shown in the figures above. The figure on the left shows the control group, with activation in dorsal medial prefron-tal cortex. The figure on the above shows the eating disorder group,

with activation in the anterior cingu-late gyrus.

The findings of this research support cognitive-behavioral theo-ries of eating disorders which posit that those with eating disorders form representations of the self in which information about body image (i.e., body shape) is overemphasized and overrepresented in connection with other information about the self, and is associated with greater emotional arousal. The findings of the Spangler and Allen study support the theory that in eating disorders there is an over-dominance of body-image representation which takes on an additional highly emotional status, as indexed by strong activation in the anterior cingulate gyrus.

Drs. Spangler and Allen are currently analyzing data from post-treatment scanning sessions. These data hold the exciting promise of determining whether or not cogni-tive-behavioral therapy can reduce or eliminate the processing bias seen in eating disorders, and whether or not treatment outcome or relapse can be predicted based upon a patient’s neurocognitive profile.

For more information about eating disorders see the National Eating Disorders Association(http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/) or The National Institutes of Health Eating Health information on eat-ing disorders (http://health.nih.gov/topic/EatingDisorders). p

Mark Allen and Diane Spangler conduct a study of neurological aspects of eating disorders

WHEN THE BODY IMAGE DOMIN ATES: Eating Disorder s and the Brain

These scans show that the group with an eating disorder has activation in the anterior cingulate gyrus

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Permission to print this artwork was given by the artist, Ron Kingsley, a clinical psych alumnus. He combines art with humor to create inspirational and comical cartoons. To submit your own articles or artwork to the psych newsletter, email psychology@byu.edu.

The Templeton Foun-

dation has selected Brent Slife to be part

of a small delega-tion of four US researchers to

mentor several important Chinese academic faculty members how to do meaningful psychology-of-religion research. The traditional oppression of religion in China has resulted in a fairly primitive level of this type of research, at least by US standards. The main task of the US delegation is to collaborate

on writing a psychology of religion text in Chinese. The meeting in March is only the introduction to this collaboration. The Chinese (some 20 or so scholars) will also be coming to the U.S. on at least two occasions. The U.S. group will be headed to China again in the early Spring of next year. p

Psychology of Religion Research

Spotlight on China

I have been interested in parent-child relationships

since I was an undergrad in China, so I have always wanted to do some research about this topic in China.

I was so appreciative that Choose to Give (C2G) funds helped me accomplish my data collection. My thesis is about adolescent-parent relationships in China, and I was able to finish collecting data from my home country. The most excit-ing thing is that the expense of this research would not have been pos-sible for me to pay for on my own, but since it was sponsored by the

C2G funds I was able to complete the research last summer. I am working on the data analysis now, and will try my best to make this study worth the financial support I was given.

I want to express my extreme gratitude for the opportunity the C2G funding afforded me.

(Faye) Mengfei Cai, Psychol-ogy MS (August 2010). p

Choose to Give Helps Student Do Research in China

Psychology Newsletter 8 Winter 2010 9

New Alumni Networking through the FHSS College:

In the near future, former students will have the opportunity to hear about department and college news through the alumni site. Students can register their name, post information,

BYU Psychology Department1001 SWKTProvo UT 84602

Phone: (801) 422-4287Email: psychology@byu.edu

Psychology Announcements

Production Director, Mona HopkinsFaculty Publicity, Scott Steffensen, Michael LarsonManaging Editor, Karen ChristensenAssistant Editor, Elizabeth NortonDesigner, Miriam GibsonCopyeditors, Staley Carter, Jenny Gibson

Tell Us YoUr sTories!Send an email to psychology@byu.edu with information about yourself:Where are you now?What are you doing?What are some of your accomplishments?

BE a part of our network and provide internship opportunities to undergraduate students

VOLUNTEER to answer student questions about your field

DONATE your time and resources to improve psychology education at BYU

and catch up on BYU. Look for specif-ics in the next department newsletter.

Are you a Grad Student looking for funding for your Thesis or Dissertation?

You can apply for research funding through the department.

$500 available for thesis costs.•$1,000 available for dissertation •

For information on how to apply, contact Karen Christensen at karen1@byu.edu.

Psych Association Fundraiser

To Be Announced

Come Support Psych Association by attending their fundraising event this semester. More details about the date and location will be provided soon!

HOW TO GET INVOLVED EMAIL psychology@byu.edu for more information

Disconnection Between Explicit & Implicit Beliefs

One of my BYU Psychology memories is of the implicit

association test...I recently took a test that tells me

that I have a “strong automatic pref-erence for Young compared to Old,” meaning that I like younger people more than older people. 35% of respondents are just like me. A mere 14% of people have no preference. The instructions said that the test was for entertainment purposes only, but I cannot help recognizing a thread of truth in the results. The test began with a disclaimer that I may not agree with the results—the subtext being that I might find out things about myself that I would not like.

In the past I have taken versions of the test that tell me I prefer thin to fat (shallow), I prefer women at home, men at work (sexist), and that I prefer Euro-pean Americans to African Ameri-cans (racist). Of course, I happen to recognize that these preferences are fairly accurate, though their par-enthetical inter-pretations are not. The results do not disturb me in the least.

My implicit beliefs almost mirror my explicit beliefs. That is to say, the beliefs that influence my actions are what I say they are, and this is demonstrated in my behav-ior. A lot of people are similar to me. However, there are times when people say one thing out loud, but in-ternally believe another thing. Often

this is done purposefully for the sake of propriety or to fit in with a crowd. However, there are other times when we de-scribe ourselves one way, and though we believe it is true, our actions say otherwise. This represents a disconnect between our explicit and implicit beliefs. Included in this are the times when we insist that we are one way. “I’m not jealous, I’m not, I’m not!” in an attempt to convince ourselves it is true, even though our actions say something different.

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is designed to bring out these implicit thoughts. The IAT is a simple sorting task that measures response times to determine preferences. For example, for the test I recently took, I sorted young faces and old faces. I also sorted words with positive and negative connotations. Then I sorted

them together: positive words and old faces together, negative words and young faces together. Afterwards the pairings were switched and I sorted again. The differences in response times determined the results—and how they were inter-preted.

The inge-nious thing about the system is that it is quite dif-ficult to manipu-

late the timing of your answers to make the results fit your beliefs. The test measures milliseconds of differ-ence between response times, and too much hesitation results in invalid test results.

Despite this, the IAT is not foolproof. The IAT is sensitive to priming or making a per-son’s attitudes briefly change because of exposure to positive or negative stimuli (but that could be an entire article in itself ).

I could say a lot more about IAT’s and the research behind them, but it would be a poor substitute for experi-ence. If you would like to try the IAT go to https://implicit.harvard.edu/im-plicit/demo/. It is completely free and I found it to be an enjoyable experi-ence that I have shared with family, friends, and coworkers. You might be surprised to find out what your implicit thoughts really are. p

Written by alumnus, Brendan Row-lands (MS, ’09)

Attention Psych Alums:We want your input for our newsletter! Please send topics, events, places, memories, and experiences from your time as a BYU Psych student.

Go to https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/

It is completely free and I found it an enjoyable experi-ence that I have shared with family, friends, and cowork-ers. You might be surprised to find what your implicit thoughts really are!

Try an IAT for yourself!

Back in the Day... Memories from your BYU Experience