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Halpern attended the University of Pennsylvania for undergraduate study. She started out as an engineering major but switched after she took an introductory class in psychology. That class made her realize that psychology was addressing all of the important topics in life. In this class a text by Gregory Kimble and lectures by her professor Henry Gleitman came together to cement her love of the subject. After her undergraduate work, Halpern received a master's degree from Temple University as well as a second master's and a doctorate from the University of Cincinnati (Halpern, 1998).
The summer between her sophomore and junior years of college Halpern worked with severely disturbed children and adults at the Elwyn Institute. She also married a law student named Sheldon Halpern. She says both had a tremendous impact on her life. She and her husband eventually adopted interracially. They adopted a son named Evan Stuart and a Daughter named Joan (Jaye) Abby. Their son is a dentist in Inglewood, California and their daughter is about to go off to college (Halpern, 1998).
Halpern has also had a lot of success in her career. In 1994 she was awarded a Fulbright to Moscow University in Russia where she was the first American to teach classes in psychology. While over in Russia she became aware of the Western myopic view psychology. The next year the Rockefeller Foundation provider her and a Russian colleague with a working retreat in Bellagio, Italy. While there she worked on a comparative approach to both points of view. This led to an edited text, States of Mind: American and Post-Soviet Perspectives on Contemporary Issues in Psychology. Her interest in international psychology was furthered when she had the opportunity to teach critical thinking at the Instituto Technologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterey in Mexico (Halpern, 1998).
Halpern has also served as president of the American Psychological Association's (APA) division 2, The Society for the Teaching of Psychology. She exhibited leadership on a project that examines the definition of scholarship in psychology. She brought together a diverse group of academic psychologists to create a document outlining a model of research and stresses scholarly activity related to teaching. This article is expected to have a major effect on the way academic departments of psychology evaluate research (Halpern, 1998).
Her interest in teaching can be seen in the professional activities she participates in and awards she has received. She was on the editorial board of the Journal of Educational Psychology as well as the Journal of Experimental Psychology. She was also president of Division 1 and serves on the Graduate Record Examination Technical Advisory Committee. She is also a faculty member for the on-line learning site Psychplace and was president of the Western Psychological Association. In 1997 she was awarded APA's Distinguished Career Contributions to Education and Training award (Halpern, 1998).
Halpern has written an article on cognitive gender differences, and believes that differences between males and females are not disappearing. She says that despite findings to the contrary, "large and reliable differences" are still present in the upper levels of mathematics ability on the PSAT and SAT. She does not agree with the findings on verbal ability either for three reasons. One is that reliance on samples of high school students to address the issue has resulted in underestimating the female superiority in verbal abilities. Also, she says the use of high school students has created trends in verbal and spatial tests that are "artifacts caused by changing composition of the high school population." Finally, Halpern says that the questions asked on these types of tests don't assess the areas in which gender differences are found (Halpern, 1989).
Halpern says that there are changes in the high school population not considered by earlier studies. She says that these studies acknowledge that the differences are most apparent at the upper levels of the math section of the SAT. They also recognize that the SAT is only taken by the subset of the population; college bound juniors and seniors. They fail to recognize, however, that sex ratios in high school dropout rates starting as early as eighth grade have been changing. These changes are reflected in any test based on high school students (Halpern, 1989).
Halpern also argues that there is a higher incidence of learning disabilities in males than females. Stuttering, a hindrance to the production of fluent speech, is much more of a problem for males than for females. There are three to four times more male stutterers than female stutterers. The ability to produce fluent speech is not assessed on standardized tests such as the SAT. Also, males are more like to have dyslexia, a severe reading disability. Individuals with this problem do not take standardized tests and often do not attend regular high school classes (Halpern, 1989).
Halpern also believes that visual-spatial abilities are not assessed in earlier studies. The difference in ability depends on the type of test given. Tests involving the rapid mental rotation of figures show the largest gender differences. Tests that involve spatial perception and visualization show the smallest gender differences. Halpern says the largest differences are found on tests in which time is a dependent variable. Halpern says that this difference on Space Relations subtest may also be due to the change in sex ratios in high school. Earlier studies had speculated that the less language ability a person has the higher spatial ability he has. Many of the students who drop out of high school do not have very good language skills. If the studies are correct, these students may have very high spatial ability (Halpern, 1989).
Halpern strongly believes that a decrease in cognitive gender differences depends on the type of test given, and who is being tested. She says the most important determinant is achievement. The more females take upper level mathematics classes the better their test scores will be. The same may be said for spatial ability. Halpern says efforts should be made to encourage all individuals to develop their cognitive talents and not worry so much about the norms (Halpern, 1989).
In a related article Halpern talks about the dangers of using standardized tests to determine what colleges students get into, or if they even get into college at all. She believes that it is not a good way to sort students, because they are different in many ways along different dimensions. She feels that other factors should be considered as well, such as opportunity. Children living below the poverty level have not had as many chances as wealthy children. They have not had as many books in the home, and probably did not go to the best high schools (Halpern, 2000).
Halpern has also written an article about how students are not applying what they learn in the classroom to the real world. As an example she says that a short story about women was read to two groups of undergraduate students. The only difference was that at the end, one group read that Betty was now a lesbian. A week later, students who had read the extra line remembered that Betty had never dated men, even though both groups read that she had dated some men. Their beliefs about the world had affected how they remembered the story (Halpern, 1997).
Halpern argues that because of this, it is important to incorporate an understanding of how people organize knowledge and represent it internally. It is also important to understand how these representations resist change when new information is encountered. Halpern says that cognitive psychology provides models of learning that can help achieve this (Halpern, 1997).
One way Halpern says teachers can accomplish this is to stop thinking of students as blank slates with no prior knowledge. They have knowledge that may need to be edited, updated, and revised. To do this, teachers need to understand their beliefs and design instruction to expose the errors explicitly and make the benefits of the new information obvious. Teachers must also be flexible in their teaching methods to accommodate different students and what they already "know" (Halpern, 1997).
Halpern says that application of cognitive principles can begin at the beginning of each semester. The professor can ask students what they believe about the subject to be studied. She says this will help students realize they have preconceived ideas about the world. Throughout the semester the professor can give examples from the real world to reinforce old ideas or give credibility to new ones. At the end of the semester the professors can once again ask students about their understanding of the subject to show them how their current understanding differs from their previous understanding. Halpern says that having students reflect on their knowledge both past and present will increase the chances that they will internalize what they have learned in class (Halpern, 1997).
Halpern has also done a lot of research on left-handedness as a marker for decreased survival fitness. Several studies have shown that the number of left-handed people in the population decreases as they age. One study even showed that 15% of respondents younger than twenty, 5% of people in their 50's and above, and 0% in their 80's and above were left-handed. That is a steep decrease as people grow older (Halpern, 1991).
Halpern gives two possible reasons for this finding. One is that left-handed people learn over the years to become right-handed because of societal pressure. Most tools, equipment, furniture, traffic patterns in museums and stores are geared towards right-handed people. Also, everyday items such as scissors, gear shifts, ice-cream scoops, rulers, pencil sharpeners, etc. are made to accommodate right-handed people. Left-handed people may be forced to do things with their right hands because of this, leading them to be right-handed as they grow older (Halpern, 1991).
Also, parents and teachers may directly put pressure on students to conform to the societal norm of right-handedness. There are strong cultural preferences against left-handedness in many societies. At the time when the 80 year old in the study were growing up, attitudes toward left-handedness were very negative. Halpern gives an example of a headline from 1922 that says, "Left-handedness is cured among pupils (Halpern, 1991)."
Another explanation for the disappearance of left-handed people in the older age groups is that they are no longer alive to be measured. Halpern says there are several things to consider for this explanation. Males are much more likely than females to be left-handed. There is between-sex variability in age of death due to war mortality. There are also gender-related deaths such as different occupational hazards, smoking practices, and alcohol consumption as well as biological biases that show males have a reduced immune system responsivity (Halpern, 1991).
For her study Halpern chose baseball players listed in the Baseball Encyclopedia because they met the desired requirements. They had handedness measures during early adulthood. This was important because environmental pressures would not have fully taken affect. The baseball players were also healthy at the beginning of the study. The players were then divided into handedness groups determined by the hand they used to throw and bat. If they used their right hand for both with little switching, they were strong right-handed. The same is true for players who used their left hand for both (Halpern, 1991).
Halpern and her colleagues looked at the distribution properties for both. She found that at the far end of the age spectrum the oldest surviving left-handed player was 91 years old, and the oldest surviving right-handed player was 109 years old. More than 2.5% of right-handed players survived to the age of 90 compared with less than 0.5% of left-handed players. She used the Moses Test of Extreme Reactions to assess the validity of these findings. The test confirmed that right-handers were more likely to live longer than left-handed players. The results are still significant when the oldest and youngest 5% were taken out of the sample (Halpern, 1991).
Form this study Halpern concluded that left-handers are at increased risk because of a developmental or pathological irregularity. These dysfunctions combined with increased environmental risk put the left-handed individual at increased risk. Halpern says the risk is continuous leaving the left-hander "slightly less able to cope with physiological and environmental assaults (Halpern, 1991)."
Diane Halpern has devoted her career to helping students gain the education they need to be successful. She has studied cognitive gender differences and whether or not they are really disappearing. She has also done a lot of work on learning in the classroom and helping students apply what they learn to the real world. All of her efforts have earned her several awards such as the Award for Distinguished Teaching in Psychology. Her interest in education can be seen in the professional activities she chooses to participate in such as serving as president of division 2 of the APA.
Dr. Halpern was recently elected to serve as the President of the American Psychological Association in 2004. She will be only the tenth woman to serve as president of this major professional organization.