Department of Psychology

About Dr. Meinz

Elizabeth (Betsy) Meinz is the undergraduate program director and an associate professor at SIUE.  She received her master’s and doctoral degrees in experimental psychology (with an emphasis in Cognitive Aging and a minor in Statistics) from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1998. Before coming to SIUE in 2002, she was an assistant professor of psychology at the State University of New York College at Cortland.  Her primary teaching assignments at SIUE include undergraduate research courses (Research Design and Statistics I & II, Capstone in Psychology) and Cognitive Psychology.  She also coordinates the undergraduate field study course. Dr. Meinz maintains an active lab of undergraduate research assistants, with whom she investigates individual difference variables that predict knowledge and skill.  For instance, recent projects have investigated the roles of experience, interests, general abilities, and existing knowledge in the acquisition of new knowledge, and in the acquisition of specific skills such as musical sight-reading and detailed memory for hands played in Texas Hold’Em poker.  Her work has been published in journals such as Memory and Cognition and Psychological Science.

Mentoring Expertise

Dr. Meinz is available to help students with a variety of career interests, especially those interested in pursuing fields of psychology with a strong research emphasis.

Representative Publications

• Hambrick, D.Z., Meinz, E. J., Pink, J. E., Pettibone, J. C., & Oswald, F.L. (2010). Learning outside the laboratory: Ability and non-ability influences on acquiring political knowledge. Learning and Individual Differences, 20, 40-45. 
• Meinz, E. J. & Hambrick, D. Z. (2010). Deliberate practice is necessary but not sufficient to explain individual differences in piano sight-reading skill: The role of working memory capacity.  Psychological Science, 21, 914-919.
• Hambrick, D. Z., Meinz, E. J., & Oswald, F. L. (2008). Individual differences in current events knowledge: Contributions of ability, personality, and interest. Memory and Cognition.
• Meinz, E. J., D'Amore-Krug, F., Gauen, B. L., Hart, C. L., Wier, G. R., Lanari, J. E., & Hurlbut, S. L. (2006). What do we, and should we call "older" people? Changes in age-related labels and their implications. Individual Differences Research, 4, 244-252.
• Ginn, S. L., & Meinz, E. J. (2004). A rush to judgment? A case of research ethics and design. National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science Case Collection. http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/projects/cases/ubcases.htm#psychology.
• Meinz, E. J. (2004). Experience-based attentuation of age-related differences in music cognition tasks. Psychology and Aging, 15, 297-312.