Sunday at APS: In the morning there were just way too many symposia to choose from... including one about alien abductions (!) which I absolutely would love to have attended, but for the fact that there was also a symposium about impulsivity, which is a major area of interest of mine. As one of the presenters noted, there are at least 18 DSM psychiatric disorders (as currently defined) that have "impulsivity" as a diagnostic criterion. And yet the concept itself is poorly defined, and certainly not well understood. Such common (and dissimilar, in many ways) problems as: attention deficit disorder; antisocial personality disorder; substance use disorders; borderline personality disorder; and many others share this core feature, which has to do with behaving in a manner that appears not to be well thought-out; engaging in behavior that is often harmful or troublesome, either to the individual or to others (or both).
One of the presenters, Dr. Joshua Miller, seems to be closing in on a very workable way of defining the various aspects of the family of entities that we call "impulsivity," using the five-factor model of personality (FFM). I am a big fan of the FFM, and as I mentioned in my post from yesterday about the upcoming DSM-V manual of psychiatric diagnosis, I think it will continue to provide us with (at least) a significant part of a good framework for understanding the full range of human personality, and symptomatic dysfunction, in cognitive, behavioral, and emotional realms.
Later in the morning I went up to the symposium about blogging in the world of academic and research psychology, a subject in which I have an obvious interest. It was really wonderful that Greta and Dave Munger, the folks from Cognitive Daily, were on the panel of presenters (they were also kind enough to come by Ian's and my poster on Friday!).
And after that I had just plain had enough, and went for a long walk with my camera. I went out onto Navy Pier and ate a Chicago-style hot dog (very, very good) and then looped back over to State Street, then circled through Millenium Park (where a symphony was practicing! wonderful!), and then brought my very tired feet back to the hotel room. A very nice day, and a fantastic conference. And tomorrow, back home!
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