Social Sciences Department
Psychology Program
231-591-2751 meraltopcu@ferris.edu
Ph. D. in Psychology,
Major: Cognitive Psychology
Minor: Developmental Psychology
Dissertation: Capacity limitations and talker voice
processing.
M. A. in Psychology,
Thesis: Talker
normalization, rehearsal and the representation of voice in short-term memory.
B. S. in Psychology,
Valedictorian,
President's
Honor List,
Middle East Technical University, 1984-1988.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Assitant Professor
Psychology
Program,
Duties include:
·
teaching Introduction to Psychology,
Physiological Psychology
Graduate Teaching Assistant &
Instructor
Department
of Psychology,
Duties include:
·
teaching Introduction to Psychology,
Cognitive Psychology, Psychology of Perception, Research Methods, Psychology of
Women and Parent Child Interaction, Psychology of Personality
·
conducting class experiments and
maintaining experimental equipment including computer hardware and software
·
administering exams and grading papers
required for the writing intensive section of the courses
·
tutoring students
·
supervising junior teaching assistants
Course Development: Undergraduate
Laboratory Project, 1994
In
this project computerized laboratory facilities were developed for use in
undergraduate perception and cognition teaching laboratories under Dr.
Mullennix's supervision.
Duties included:
·
designing and testing experiments
·
programming experiments using Micro
Experimental Laboratory (MEL) program
·
preparing instructions and data
collection forms
RESEARCH
EXPERIENCE
ACTIVE
study,
Duties include:
·
research coordination
·
administering tests and interviews
·
data collection, analysis and database
construction
·
supervision of research staff
·
manuscript and grant writing
Spirituality and
Cancer study,
Emotion and Cognition
study,
Duties included:
·
research coordination
·
data analysis and database construction
·
manuscript and grant writing
Graduate Research Assistant
Smoking and Cognition
study,
Speech Perception
Laboratory,
Duties included:
·
research coordination
·
designing and running experiments
·
administering tests and interviews
·
data collection, analysis and database
construction
·
supervision of undergraduate student
assistants
PUBLICATIONS AND
PRESENTATIONS
Brown, D. R. & Topcu, M. (in press). Willingness to participate
in clinical treatment research among older African Americans and Whites. The Gerontologist.
Topcu, M. (2000). Capacity limitations and talker voice
processing. Unpublished
dissertation,
Kilbey, M.M., Mullennix,
J. W., Fisicaro, S., Farnsworth, L. M., Topcu, M.
& Torrento R. (2000). Cognitive descriptors predict nicotine
dependence. Problems of Drug Dependence
1999, L. S. Harris, (ed) NIH Publication No. 00-4737,
Kilbey, M. M., Mullennix,
J. W., Fisicaro, S., Torrento,
R., Farnsworth, L. M., & Topcu, M. (1999).
Factor Structure of Smoking Related Words: A comparison of SOW and SCQ-A
Predictions of Nicotine Dependence.
Poster presented at the 107th Annual Meeting of the American
Psychological Association,
Bernstein, S. E., Zorzi, M., & Topcu, M. (1999). Vowel and
Consonant Activation in
Topcu, M., Mullennix, J. W., Bakalis, T., Stauch, M., & Trajcevski, T.
(1996). Talker variability effects on spoken word
recall: Encoding or rehearsal? Paper presented at the 1996 meeting of the
Acoustical Society of America,
Mullennix, J. W., Johnson, K. A., Topcu-Durgun,
M., & Farnsworth, L. M. (1995). The perceptual
representation of voice gender. Journal
of the Acoustical Society of
Topcu-Durgun, M. (1995). Talker normalization,
rehearsal and the representation of voice in short-term memory. Unpublished masters
thesis,
Topcu-Durgun, M., & Mullennix, J. W. (1993). The effects of a continuous distractor task on encoding of voices into memory. Paper presented at the 1993 meeting of the
Midwestern Psychological Association,
Mullennix, J. W., Johnson, K. A., & Topcu, M. (1991). Context effects in the perception of personal
information in the speech signal. Paper
presented at the 121st meeting of the Acoustical Society of America,