Hiromi Masunaga

Experience

Associate Professor/Program Coordinator, MA in Education, Sep 2006 - Present
Option in Educational Psychology EDPAC, College of Education, CSULB

Assistant Professor/Program Coordinator, MA in Education, Sep 2002 - Aug 2006
Option in Educational Psychology EDPAC, College of Education, CSULB

Assistant Professor, Clinical Sep 1999 - Aug 2002
Learning and Instruction Rossier School of Education University of Southern California

Research Associate June 1997 - Aug 1999
Adult Development and Aging Department of Psychology University of Southern California

• Life-span Development of Human Cognitive Abilities
• Relationship between Expertise Development and Life-span Development of Human Cognitive Abilities
• Factors that Facilitate Development of Advanced Expertise
• Factors that Facilitate Optimal Learning

Horn, L.J., & Masunaga, H. (2006). A Merging Theory of Expertise and Intelligence. In K. A Ericsson, N. Charness, P.J. Feltovich, & R.R. Hoffman (Eds.), Cambridge Handbook on Expertise and Expert Performance (pp. 587-612). Cambridge University Press.

Morrison, E., Hitchcock, Harthill, M., Boker, J., & M., Masunaga, H. (2005). The On-Line Clinical Teaching Perception Inventory: A snapshot of North American medical teachers. Family Medicine, 37, 48-53

University

Academic Senate
Curriculum and Educational Policies Council
Teacher Preparation Committee

COLLEGE

Faculty Council
Chair (Fall 2005 – present), Faculty Council Budget Subcommittee
Nominations and Elections Committee
Graduate Committee

Department

Chair, Educational Psychology Search Committee
Secretary (Fall 2005-Spring 2006), Curriculum Committee
Department Advisory Committee
Facilitator/Chair, Program Evaluation Committee
Educational Psychology Program Coordinator

So far Dr. Masunaga's endeavors have resulted in significant findings on developmental changes in human intellectual abilities (Horn & Masunaga, 2000a, 2000b, 2006; Masunaga & Horn, 2001a, 2001b). However, to further advance our understanding on adult cognition, it is necessary that her future research will scrutinize relationships between the aging processes as they occur in the brain and as they are manifested in human behaviors. She has directed her research to build detailed models for linking observed changes in neural systems and observed patterns of aging changes of cognitive functioning. Such efforts will enable us to explicitly understand and explain “how and why” cognitive functioning changes with age. The acquired knowledge on the processes and the mechanism of cognitive aging will offer great promise for improving the lives of older individuals while building a solid basis for new interventions to help them maintain cognitive performance. It is important that the mechanism behind interindividual differences on cognitive aging be thoroughly investigated in this era when older adults constitute the most rapidly growing segment of the U.S. population.