Keynote Speakers | APA 2025 Convention

Fostering Joy: Cherishing Intentional Moments of Connection in Interactions with Children with Disabilities

Colorado Convention Center, Four Seasons Ballroom 2-4

Psychologists from a variety of subdisciplines may find themselves supporting children with disabilities and their families. In this presentation, Dr. Szarkowski will introduce and describe Fostering Joy, a movement that includes professionals, parents/caregivers, and adults with lived experience being deaf or hard of hearing (and/or who have other disabilities). This movement aims to shift the focus in the provision of support for families and their children with disabilities away from addressing (assumed) grief and mitigating challenges, to embracing a mindset of. Examples of Fostering Joy in action will be provided and suggestions for incorporating a joy-focused mindset will be shared. Join us for an engaging, informative, and uplifting session!

Churn: The Psychological and Physical Stress that Divides Us and How We Can Overcome It

Colorado Convention Center, Four Seasons Ballroom 2-4

“Churn” is the stress we can all feel over how our identity (racial, sexual, sexual orientation, etc.) will affect our experience in the important, integrated settings of our lives—e.g., schools and workplaces. Its role in making it difficult for us to trust each other in these settings is explored. And, in offering a new route to better intergroup relations, strategies that both individuals and institutions can use to reduce churn and enable trust between identities are described.

Humans First: Putting AI In the Service of the Therapeutic Alliance

Colorado Convention Center, Four Seasons Ballroom 2-4

This session will examine the possibilities of using artificial intelligence, in support of the therapeutic alliance. With the advent of large language models, conversational agents are commonly positioned as inexpensive alternatives to therapy with a clinician. However, these agents have known limitations such as a sycophantic response style that can support externalization of responsibility and, in particularly damaging cases, collude with delusional thinking and encourage pathological behavior. Trained on publicly available data of questionable quality, these agents respond in a less nuanced way than a skilled therapist and cannot draw on emotional reactions in session to understand a patient’s relationship dynamics as a therapist is trained to do. Despite these limitations, AI does have abilities that could enhance a therapist’s work with a patient. Morris will describe an ongoing research collaboration exploring how therapists could leverage AI to gain a fuller understanding of patients’ daily lives and illuminate patterns that may help patients see new choices for themselves.