{"id":2613,"date":"2010-04-30T09:05:31","date_gmt":"2010-04-30T16:05:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=2613"},"modified":"2013-07-31T11:23:48","modified_gmt":"2013-07-31T15:23:48","slug":"psychologist-researches-our-remembrance-of-things-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=2613","title":{"rendered":"Psychologist Researches our Remembrance of Things Past"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Beth Fand Incollingo<\/em><\/p>\n

\"bireta\"
Tamra Bireta, Assistant Professor of Psychology<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When she looks back on her childhood, Tamra Bireta<\/strong> realizes her father must have been highly contagious.<\/p>\n

Though he worked in construction and had never been to college, he was fascinated by science and managed to infect her with the same bug.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can be anything you want to be, as long as it\u2019s a scientist,\u201d he would jokingly tell his daughter.<\/p>\n

So Bireta became one.<\/p>\n

The first in her family to go to college and a straight-A student there and in graduate school, Bireta joined the psychology department at TCNJ in 2006. An assistant professor, the 31-year-old conducts research here on how memory changes with age, and why.<\/p>\n

Her accomplishments have made her father proud.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of the people he works with don\u2019t have graduate degrees, but he likes to tell them I have a PhD,\u201d Bireta said. \u201cThey think it\u2019s pretty cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

Drawn to psychology since middle school but also to science and math, a wife and mother of three young girls who bikes to campus every day from her Ewing home, Bireta says she knew early on that the lab was the place for her.<\/p>\n

Rather than working directly with patients, she wanted to study the intricacies of memory, laying the groundwork for techniques that will help maximize people\u2019s ability to remember as they age.<\/p>\n

At TCNJ, she\u2019s making that contribution.<\/p>\n

A model of memory <\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThere seems to be a stereotype of aging that all memory gets worse, and that doesn\u2019t seem true,\u201d Bireta said. \u201cIn specific situations you see declines, and we hope this would help people design interventions to prevent those declines. If we know which areas get worse or better, we can find areas where older adults are stronger and get strategies to take advantage of their strengths.\u201d<\/p>\n

And while her work doesn\u2019t explore the reasons for dementia, Bireta added, \u201cstudying memory with healthy older adults gives a better idea of what is normal and what isn\u2019t, and can help us understand what kinds of changes to expect and which might signal a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

The study of memory involves examining factors that aid retention, the way memories are stored, how they\u2019re retrieved and what causes memory failures, Bireta said. In her lab<\/a>, with the help of TCNJ students and local volunteers over age 60, she tests theories put forth by experts in her field about which of those aspects change with age, and why.<\/p>\n

Most recently, Bireta has been exploring the \u201cassociative deficit hypothesis\u201d proposed by Moshe Naveh-Benjamin, which posits that older adults have more trouble than younger adults in making new associations\u2014such as a mental connection between a face and a name.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo far,\u201d Bireta said, \u201cthe theory has been successful in predicting some of the results we\u2019ve obtained.\u201d<\/p>\n

The kind of research Bireta conducts can be applied to real-world areas, such as marketing. The professor demonstrated that when, with student Brielle Simels \u201908<\/strong>, she published a book chapter explaining that younger adults have a better memory for unusual product slogans than for more typical ones. Printed in the book Applied Memory<\/em>, edited by Matthew Kelley, Bireta\u2019s finding supported the idea that advertisers should make their ads stand out.<\/p>\n

However, Bireta\u2019s work has also shown that older adults don\u2019t remember unusual information as well as their younger counterparts do.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would suggest that, if you were marketing a product towards older adults and tried to use (that strategy), you wouldn\u2019t necessarily see the benefit you\u2019d expect to see with younger adults,\u201d Bireta said.<\/p>\n

But the news isn\u2019t all bad when it comes to memory in older adults, the researcher said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome things get better,\u201d she said. \u201cGeneral knowledge increases across the life span, and vocabulary gets a lot better. When we give a vocabulary test, older adults nearly double the scores of younger adults. With any kind of well-learned skills or procedures, like card games or quilting, there is some research suggesting it does get better\u2014and that is a type of memory.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mentoring students <\/strong><\/p>\n

In her lab, Bireta is helped not only by student volunteers who act as subjects in her research, but also by students who aid her in conducting the studies. From freshman to seniors, the professor said, the students play an important contributing role.<\/p>\n

\u201cUndergraduates here can collaborate on research at a level normally reserved for graduate students, because we have no graduate students,\u201d she said. \u201cThat moves up undergraduates into those roles, and prepares them well for graduate school.\u201d<\/p>\n

And many do go that route.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast week, one of my students, [senior] Kaitlin Reiman<\/strong>, found out she\u2019d been accepted to a graduate program she was really excited about,\u201d Bireta said, \u201cand I don\u2019t know who was more thrilled\u2014her or me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once her students have moved on, Bireta sometimes experiences another proud moment: an e-mail saying, \u201cI\u2019m using what you taught me now\u2014I\u2019m so glad you taught me that.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the professor\u2019s dedication to her students, her accessibility, and support for their research that makes her so integral to their success, Reiman said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know that I personally would not have decided to pursue graduate school or my chosen career path\u2014to be a psychology professor\u2014if it weren\u2019t for Dr. Bireta \u2018s encouragement, and I plan to model my own future classes after her engaging, informative and humorous style,\u201d Reiman said. \u201cShe has really become a very important part of my undergraduate experience, and I very much look forward to a continued relationship with her post-graduation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finding TCNJ <\/strong><\/p>\n

When Bireta first noticed an online posting for her job at TCNJ, she had never heard of the school. But she was \u201cimmediately impressed,\u201d she said, \u201cby the quality of the students, the statistics for entering freshmen, retention rates and how happy students are here.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Bireta read further and learned that the College wanted not strictly researchers, but faculty members who thoroughly enjoyed their time in the classroom, she was hooked.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe times I had the opportunity to teach as a grad student, I just loved it,\u201d she said, \u201cand I wanted to be somewhere where they valued teaching and scholarship, so TCNJ was a really good fit for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Originally from West Palm Beach, Florida, Bireta earned her Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Florida in 2001. She went on to earn her master\u2019s degree in cognitive psychology at Purdue University, staying at the school to complete her doctorate in the same subject, with a minor in gerontology.<\/p>\n

She chose Purdue because researchers there, including the three who would become her advisers\u2014James S. Nairne, Ian Neath, and Aimee M. Surprenant\u2014were doing work in an area of memory that interested her.<\/p>\n

Socially, moving from Florida to West Lafayette, Indiana, where Purdue is located, was quite a change for Bireta. Strangers were surprisingly friendly there, she said, stopping to chat when they saw her Florida license plate and asking what she planned to do in Indiana.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter a while I changed to conform to that,\u201d she said, \u201cso then I moved here to New Jersey and it was a major culture shock. I\u2019d go to Home Depot and I\u2019d be walking down the aisle and strike up a conversation, and people would look at me somewhat horrified that this stranger was talking to them. I realized that, in New Jersey culture, I was the one being strange.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cultural effects <\/strong><\/p>\n

Coincidentally, the same concept\u2014that culture affects behavior\u2014has long factored into Bireta\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

While some aspects of memory do deteriorate with age\u2014the ability to concentrate on multiple ideas simultaneously, recalling the source of information, and remembering to do something at a certain time\u2014it\u2019s often a person\u2019s expectations about aging that harm his memory the most, Bireta said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn other cultures,\u201d she said, \u201cpeople don\u2019t have negative stereotypes of older adults (as losing their memory), and when you give the same tests there, their deficits are very mild compared to what you see here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking ahead, Bireta says she\u2019s excited about studying a concept related to her current work: the idea that older adults can make new associations more successfully when the information is more emotional\u2014such as the ability to remember which person in a group exhibited a certain facial expression.<\/p>\n

Along the way, she says, she\u2019ll continue to appreciate the role she\u2019s playing in her chosen field. \u201cMost people find that memory is just intrinsically interesting, so it\u2019s rewarding to know that some of my work will contribute to that body of knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reprinted by permission of <\/em>The Times<\/a> of Trenton <\/a>\u00a9 201<\/em>0.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Assistant professor of psychology Tamra Bireta studies the intricacies of memory, laying the groundwork for techniques that will help maximize people\u2019s ability to remember as they age. “There seems to be a stereotype of aging that all memory gets worse, and that doesn\u2019t seem true,” says Bireta.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":2620,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,17,34,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-in-focus","category-may-2010","category-on-campus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}