Latest Issue of the MindBrainEd Think Tank + (ISSN 2434-1002) 5 MindBrainEd Bulletin V4i5 Think Tank Emotion May | Page 21

Member Spotlight:
Susan Meiki
Mail contact here
Website here
A) Tell us about yourself and your background.
I have been living in Japan since 1988. Before coming to Japan, I was an electrical
engineer with Nippon Electric Company (NEC) in New York and received my BS-EE
from Polytechnic Institute which is now under the New York University (NYU)
system. I became interested in visual cognition while teaching Japanese students and
noticed a difference in how I internalized visual information compared with the
students. After returning to New York to get a Master of Arts degree in TESOL at
NYU, I started teaching presentation skills to university students. I taught quite a few
courses over a period of eight years. In those courses, the students did peer
evaluations for the story, physical and visual message of a speech. My evaluation
almost always coincided with the students for the story and physical message.
However, I started to see a pattern of opposing evaluations for the visual message
(this includes the design of the presentation slides). I started to explore journals as to
why this was happening and could not find statistically significant, data-driven
research to support my findings. I brought my ideas for a research topic to
Hiroshima University and they accepted me into their PhD program.
From 2009 – 2015, I conducted research on the visual aspects of a presentation on
the retention of information and compared them cross-culturally. The visual aspects
included background color, font style and number of words on a slide. The two
cultures I compared were Japan and the U.S. I collected data from students in
universities around the New York metropolitan area and Hiroshima. I found very
interesting results, which lead me toward a path of cross-cultural cognition and
learning research. You can read about my results here.
B) How long have you been involved with the BRAIN SIG and why did
you join?
I have been a member since the 2016 JALT international conference after hearing a
presentation by Marc Helgesen and BRAIN SIG members. The presentation made
me realize that this Special Interest Group includes my research interests.
C) What are your Mind, Brain, and Education-related research interests
and how are you pursuing them?
I am pursuing the expansion of my research to include other Asian cultures.
Currently I am investigating funding opportunities. Classrooms are becoming more