I was married in January of 2001 and live in Greensboro.  My wife is also a scientist.  We don't have children or pets.  I am an uncle, though, thanks to my brother Michael and his wife Jill.  Their two children are Keira and Liam Delaney.

My father is a retired manager who used to work at IBM, and my mother is a freelance artist/photographer who has attracted some interest for her photographs of cancer survivors, especially survivors of breast cancer. On my father's side, my grandmother Helen Delaney played a pivotal role in getting 911 service in the Hudson Valley and still serves as their coordinator. She also is involved in water planning in the community and numerous other activities.  My grandfather Frank Delaney was the general manager of the IBM Kingston site. On my mother's side, my grandfather Peter worked in a factory all his life. His wife was a Candee, a family with a long history in rural Connecticut, where they owned a large farm until very recently.

My Life Story

I was born in the Catskill Mountains of New York, along the Hudson River (near Woodstock). It's a beautiful part of the country known for its skiing, Macintosh apples, and its rich artistic tradition. Starting in 8^th grade I moved to Rome, Italy, and attended the American Overseas School of Rome for three years. I then attended Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, thinking that I wanted to study mathematics and become a code breaker for the government. I'd always been interested in mathematics, and so this was a logical direction for me to go. The only snag in this otherwise perfect plan was that I quickly discovered that I hated being a math major.  Though I liked mathematics as a tool for other things, I found I didn't enjoy doing "pure math" without any connection to science. 

I would never have become a psychology major if not for the intervention of Joe Beck, who kept telling me about a class called "cognitive psychology" where, he insisted, they studied thinking and not how to fix people's personal problems. One day, after much pestering, I agreed to sit in on one of the lectures in that class, which was taught by Dr. Ken Kotovsky. Though I don't remember what the lecture was about, I remember being absolutely fascinated by it, and so I was particularly surprised when Joe leaned over and whispered to me: "I'm really sorry, Pete. That was the worst lecture we've had all year. Usually it's really interesting..." At that point I began to suspect I had a new career.

I became interested in issues in skill and memory, working under the direction of my mentor Dr. Lynne Reder. The paper we wrote together appeared a few years ago in Psychological Science. I also began doing some work on problem solving, which has always been my first love, under the direction of Dr. Ken Kotovsky and the late Dr. Herbert Simon (who won the Nobel Prize in economics). 

The next big change for me came when I was thinking about where to apply for schools. I used to go to the library every chance I got and just sit there, reading books and articles that looked interesting to me. In flipping through one journal, a paper caught my eye that just looked, even after a brief glance, like something I had never seen before in a cognitive journal. The figures in the paper and the title were unique (it's called "The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance"), and the paper was fascinating. The primary author was Dr. K. Anders Ericsson, who I recognized from his work on verbal reports with Herbert Simon. After reading that paper, I began getting everything I could that he'd written, and tracked him across the country until I figured out what university he was at. I submitted an application to Florida State University, got in, and spent six hard years in graduate school there.  Anders taught me how to think like a cognitive psychologist and invested a lot in my future.  I also learned a lot at FSU from Dr. Colleen Kelley, who co-authored a 2004 paper with Dr. Lili Sahakyan and I, and from Dr. Neil Charness.  I also learned quite a bit about behaviorism and teaching from Dr. Jon Bailey.

In 2000, I was hired by the University of Florida's psychology department.  I moved to UNCG in 2005 so that my wife and I would both have jobs at the same university, and to work with some excellent people here.

Interests

I like languages and travel.  I've been all over the USA, and visited Australia, Canada, France, England, Switzerland, Egypt, Armenia, Russia, and hope to soon go to Ireland and the Czech Republic.  I speak passable Armenian, and a bit of French and Italian.

I read a lot and rather widely.  In non-fiction, I read a lot of history.  In fiction, I read a lot of science fiction, though not exclusively.  My favorite SF writers are Greg Egan, Philip K. Dick, Theodore Sturgeon, Lucius Shepard, Elizabeth Hand, and Vernor Vinge (not necessarily in that order).  My favorite mainstream writers are Dave Eggers, J. D. Salinger, Erich Maria Remarque, Eric Segal, and Martin Cruz Smith.  

I play a lot of Civilization IV.  Way too much, in fact.