Providence, R.I.--A psychology research poster by two Providence College faculty members received two honors at the recent 2009 National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology (NITOP) in St. Pete Beach, Fla.

Assistant professors of psychology Dr. Mary Harmon-Vukic and Dr. Christopher Bloom received the institute's Bernstein Award for their poster, "Teaching Habituation Effects with Zombies." The prize is given for the poster judged by the NITOP committee as the most humorous, creative, or original submission.

In addition, their poster was selected as the runner-up for the institute's Society of Teaching Psychology Award. The award is presented for the poster judged by institute faculty as best incorporating new or innovative content into psychology courses.

More than 300 teachers of psychology from colleges and high schools across the country participated in the institute, with 105 posters submitted for consideration. The 31st annual conference, which was held on January 3-6, was co-sponsored by the Association for Psychological Science and the University of South Florida Department of Psychology.

Harmon-Vukic's and Bloom's award-winning project incorporated both classroom work and their personal research interests.

"The poster described some pedagogical research into the best way to demonstrate a process called habituation," said Bloom, who specializes in the psychology of fear. "When a person is repeatedly presented with the same stimulus, the response decreases with each subsequent presentation. We used a couple of YouTube videos designed to scare people to demonstrate habituation for students in Introductory Psychology."

The demonstration involved two class sections, with one viewing the videos and the other hearing a lecture on habituation.

"We found that seven weeks after the presentation of the information, the group that had the demonstration performed significantly better on a word problem addressing habituation compared to the lecture group," said Harmon-Vukic.

"There is a strong push for active learning techniques in the classroom," added Harmon-Vukic, whose area of expertise is memory processing during reading. "However, few instructors know if the activities that encourage active learning truly facilitate memory performance. This study lends support to the notion that active participation in the learning process does indeed help students retain the material."

Harmon-Vukic and Bloom are in their first year as faculty members at PC. Harmon-Vukic received her Ph.D. in 2005 from the University of New Hampshire and previously was an assistant professor at Webster University in Missouri. Bloom received his Ph.D. in 2000 from Saint Louis University and previously served as an assistant professor at the University of Southern Indiana.

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