Mara Mather facts for kids

Mara Mather is a professor who studies how people change as they get older. She teaches about gerontology (the study of aging) and psychology (the study of the mind) at the USC Davis School of Gerontology. Her work looks at how our feelings and stress can change our memory and how we make choices. She is the daughter of a famous mathematician, John N. Mather.

Mara Mather's Research Career

Mara Mather is well-known for her studies on how emotion affects memory. She worked with Laura Carstensen and Susan Charles. They found something called the positivity effect in older adults. This means older people tend to pay more attention to positive things. They also remember positive information better than negative information. This is different from younger adults.

Understanding the Positivity Effect

You might think this effect happens because older brains are not as good at handling negative information. But Mara Mather's research shows this is not true. Her findings suggest that older adults use smart strategies. These strategies help them stay happy and feel good. So, the positivity effect helps them maintain their well-being.

How Emotions Shape Memory

Mara Mather has also looked into how strong feelings (arousal) change our memory. She created a model called the arousal-biased competition (ABC) model. This model helps explain many different ways emotions affect memory. It can even explain effects that seem to contradict each other.

The ABC model suggests that strong feelings lead to "winner-take-more" and "loser-take-less" effects in memory. This means that important information gets remembered even better. Less important information might be forgotten or suppressed. What counts as "important" can be decided in two ways. It can be something that naturally stands out (like a loud noise). Or it can be something that fits your goals (like remembering where you put your keys).

Older theories couldn't explain all the different ways emotions affect memory. The ABC model fills this gap. It helps us understand why we remember some emotional things clearly and others less so. Mather and her team also developed a theory about how a brain system (the locus coeruleus-noadrenaline system) works. This system can boost how the brain processes important information. At the same time, it can reduce how the brain processes less important information.

Other Research Projects

Mather's research also includes other interesting topics. She has studied how older adults understand positive things. She also looks at how stress affects decisions made by older adults. Her work also explores how men and women make decisions differently when they are under stress.

Honors and Awards

Mara Mather has received many important awards for her work:

• National Institute on Aging K02 Career Development Award
• Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology from the American Psychological Association
• Richard Kalish Innovative Publication Award from the Gerontological Society of America
• Excellence in Teaching Award from the UC Santa Cruz Committee on Teaching
• Springer Early Career Achievement Award in Research on Adult Development and Aging
• Margret Baltes Dissertation Award in the Psychology of Aging from APA Division 20
• American Psychological Association Dissertation Research Award
• National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship
• Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Fellowship

Selected Publications

Here are some of Mara Mather's important published works:

• Mather, M. (2007). Emotional arousal and memory binding: An object-based framework. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2, 33-52.
• Mather, M., Gorlick, M. A., & Lighthall, N.R. (2009). To brake or accelerate when the light turns yellow? Stress reduces older adults' risk taking in a driving game. Psychological Science, 20, 174-176.
• Mather, M., & Sutherland, M.R. (2011). Arousal-biased competition in perception and memory. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6, 114-133.
• Nashiro, K., Sakaki, M., & Mather, M. (2011). Age differences in brain activity during emotion processing: Reflections of age-related decline or increased emotion regulation? Gerontology.
• Sakaki, M., Niki, K., & Mather, M. (2011). Updating existing emotional memories involves the frontopolar/orbitofrontal cortex in ways that acquiring new emotional memories does not. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 23, 3498-3514.
• Mather, M, & Lighthall, N.R. (in press). Both risk and reward are processed differently in decisions made under stress. Current Directions in Psychological Science.