Elisabeth Hollister Sandberg, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of Graduate Psychology Curriculum
A. B. (Psychology), A. M. (Cognitive Psychology), Ph.D. (Developmental Psychology) University of Chicago; Postdoctoral Fellowship, Harvard University.

Specialty Area

Health Psychology-Communication & Learning, Developmental Variability in Children’s Cognitive Development.

I have a series of ongoing projects concerning the information-giving behaviors of health care providers.  We are exploring the limits of patient memory for verbally presented medical information, how memory varies across different medical populations, and what techniques facilitate memory for critical medical information.

Also employing cognitive psychology as a tool in medical settings, I collaborate with researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital who are using basic principles of learning and reinforcement to augment their efforts to shape the safety and efficiency behaviors of medical professionals.

My other primary line of research is in the field of cognitive development; specifically the development of spatial representation and planning skills in early and middle childhood.  Current projects include microgenetic analyses of the development of map building skills, social modeling and linguistic instruction as potential facilitators of map orientation skills, and developmental variability in spatial decision making strategies.

Selected Publications

Hirsch, P. & Sandberg, E. (2008). Developmental Variability in Completing a Complex Spatial Decision Making Task. Manuscript in preparation.

Sandberg, E.H., Paul, D., & Sandberg, W.S. (2008). A controlled study of the effects of patient information-elicitation style on clinician information-giving during a medical consultation.  Manuscript submitted for publication.

Sandberg, E.H., Sharma, R., Wiklund, R., & Sandberg, W.S. (in press). Clinicians consistently exceed a typical person’s short term memory during preoperative teaching. Manuscript submitted for publication. Anesthesia & Analgesia.

Sandberg, E.H., Paul, D., & Sandberg, W.S. (2008). A controlled study of the effects of patient information-elicitation style on clinician information-giving during a medical consultation.  Manuscript submitted for publication.

Sandberg, W.S., Sandberg, E.H., Seim, A.R., Anupama, S, Ehrenfeld, J.M., Spring, S.F. & Walsh, J.L. (2008). Real-time checking of electronic anesthesia records for documentation errors and automatically text messaging clinicians improves quality of documentation. Anesthesia & Analgesia, 106, 192-201.