I’ve been associated with the Cognitive Science program at Simon Fraser University for several years. Earlier this month, I became Adjunct Professor of Cognitive Science there.

I have an active research program at SFU which is summarized on my SFU home page. Most of my foreground projects at the moment investigate the information processing mechanisms underlying sleep onset and insomnia. They are collaborations with excellent sleep research psychologists at various universities:

• I am currently co-authoring a theoretical and applied paper on sleep onset and insomnia with Nancy Digdon at MacEwan.
• Prof. Nancy Digdon and I are also preparing a study to compare the cognitive shuffle with a cognitive treatment from insomnia.
• Prof. Julie Carrier, Dr. Jessica Massicotte-Marquez (both at Université de Montréal) and I are preparing a study to compare the cognitive shuffle with a folk treatment for insomnia.
• Dr. Les Gellis (at Syracuse) and I are preparing a study to compare the cognitive shuffle with cognitive refocusing (another cognitive treatment for insomnia).

The cognitive shuffle (including serial diverse imagining), apart from being a potent treatment for insomnia, is also meant to demonstrate that cognitive science can be used to design very targeted, drug free, easy to use, interventions to enhance well being and cognitive productivity. By “cognitive science” I don’t just mean “dry” information processing. It includes affect and self-regulation. It is both informed by and informs neuroscience. What makes science “cognitive science” is the information processing metaphor and reverse engineering of the mind.

The concept proved here is one that I first alluded to in my Ph.D. thesis in 1994. In fact, we are using an enhanced version of the theory I presented in my ph.d. thesis.

Thus, my research contributes to several fields of psychology: mainly cognitive psychology, affective psychology, educational psychology, and sleep psychology. My research is deliberately designed to marry fundamental theory about, and to derive applications in, self-directed learning and “clinical” psychology, per my SFU web pages.

But the names don’t matter. As Karl Popper said:

there are no subject matters but only problems and our desire to solve them.

Speaking of which, I’ve gotta run.