The Northern Centre for Research
on
Aging and Communication

Dana R. Murphy Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Psychology

B.A., Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas
M.A., Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas
Ph.D., University Of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA

Dr. Murphy's Website: http://nipissingu.ca/faculty/danam/

     Dr. Dana R. Murphy of Nipissing University’s Psychology department and head of the Northern Centre for Research on Aging and Communication, is studying the cognitive and auditory factors influencing the ways in which older adults understand and remember spoken language.

     Dr. Murphy’s work, Spoken Language Processing among Adults: Contributions of Cognitive and Auditory Factors, looks at how age-related hearing loss and changes in cognitive function affect speech and language comprehension.

     Dr. Murphy was awarded an equipment grant as well as a four-year, operating grant in 2002 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) to conduct this research.  Continuous support from Nipissing University has also been vitally important to this continuous research effort.

     Student volunteers can participate in a variety of research projects related to communication and aging.  All testing is completed in a sound attenuating chamber in order to ensure that extraneous noise does not influence the results of the testing procedure.

Publications:

Guerreiro, M. J. S., Murphy, D. R., & Van Gerven, P. W. M. (2010).  The role of sensory modality in age-    related distraction: A critical review and a renewed view. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 975-1022. doi: 10.1037/a0020731

Mitchell, D. B., Brown, A. S., & Murphy, D. R. (1990). Dissociations between procedural and episodic memory: Effects of time and aging. Psychology and Aging, 5(2), 264-276.

Murphy, D. R., Craik, F. I. M., Li, K. Z. H. & Schneider, B. A. (2000).  Comparing the Effects of Aging and Background Noise on Short-term Memory Performance. Psychology and Aging, 15, 323-334.

Murphy, D. R., Daneman, M., & Schneider, B. A. (2006). Why do older adults have difficulty following conversations? Psychology and Aging, 21(1), 49-61.

Murphy, D. R., McDowd, J. M., & Wilcox, K. A. (1999): Inhibition and aging Similarities between younger and older adults as revealed by the processing of unattended auditory information. Psychology and Aging, 14, 44-59.

Murphy, D. R., Schneider, B. A. & Bailey, H. (2010). Channel capacity for absolute identification of tonal duration: The effects of age. Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics,72, 788-805.  Please see Erratum

Murphy, D. R., Schneider, B. A., Speranza, F., & Moraglia, G. (2006). A  comparison of higher order auditory processes in younger and older adults. Psychology and Aging, 21(4), 763-773.

Parker, S., Murphy, D. R., & Schneider, B. A.  (2002). Top-down gain control in the  auditory system: Evidence from identification and discrimination experiments. Perception and Psychophysics, 64, 598-615.

Schneider, B. A., Daneman, M., & Murphy, D. R. (2005). Speech comprehension difficulties in older adults cognitive slowing or age-related changes in hearing? Psychology and Aging, 20(2), 261-271.

Schneider, B. A., Daneman, M., Murphy, D. R., & Kwong See, S. (2000).  Listening to discourse in distracting settings: The effects of aging. Psychology  and Aging, 15, 110-125.

Van Gerven, P. W. M., & Murphy, D. R. (2010). Aging and Distraction by Irrelevant Speech: Does Emotional Valence Matter? Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 65B, 667-670. doi:.1093/geronb/gbq048