Psychologist Awarded Seven-Year Grant to Study Memory

Contact: Philip Montgomery
Phone: (713) 831-4792

Psychologist Awarded Seven-Year Grant to Study Memory

The National Institutes of Health (NIH)
awarded a Rice University psychologist a seven-year grant to further
research on short-term memory deficits and their relationship to
language.

The NIH officially notified Randi Martin, a professor of
psychology, in early March that she received a Claude Pepper Award
from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication
Disorders, which grants up to three awards annually. The Pepper
award is the highest honor the institute bestows on a grant
recipient. She will receive about $700,000 over a seven-year period
to fund her research on short-term memory deficit.

Martin studies how the mind functions by examining the way
language breaks down after brain damage caused by strokes. She tests
patients’ memory, use of language and perception to understand
mental processes. Her research shows that some patients with short-
term memory deficits cannot learn new words. In the future, that
finding may affect therapy for some patients.

“It makes me feel great,” said Martin about receiving the award.”It is gratifying to know that you’re doing something that could
have some practical implication. It (practical implication) is also
reinforcing the idea that your theoretical approach is on the right
track.”

NIH granted Martin the award based upon her past productivity,
standing in the field and proposed future research. She has studied
short-term memory deficits for 11 years. Her peers recognize her as
an expert in the area.

“Randi Martin has established herself as one of the leading
people in the area of cognitive neuropsychology, one of the most
rapidly growing areas in psychology,” said David Schneider, chair of
the psychology department at Rice. “Her research is becoming widely
cited, and the Claude Pepper Award confirms the judgment of those of
us on the local scene that her work is both technically competent
and conceptually pathbreaking.”

Martin works with adult patients who are aphasics. Aphasic
simply refers to anyone who suffers from a language disorder after
brain damage. Martin’s patients were functioning normally until they
had a stroke or head injury. When brain damage affects language, not
all abilities are affected equally. For example, a patient may have
a good ability to understand the meaning of individual words but
might have difficulty understanding the grammatical structure of
sentences. Short-term memory is often affected.

“If you ask them (aphasics) to repeat a list of words, they will
give you back one word or two words, whereas normal people might be
able to give you five or six words on a list,” explained Martin.

For the next seven years, she will be further investigating
whether different types of short-term memory deficits have specific
consequences for comprehending sentences, producing sentences or for
long-term learning.

Rice University is an independent, coeducational, nonsectarian
private university dedicated to undergraduate teaching and graduate
studies, research and professional training in selected disciplines.
It has an undergraduate student population of 2,584, a graduate and
professional student population of 1,489 and a full-time faculty of
448.

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