Article archive / March 1, 2012
Originally published: . Volume 3, No. 7. Source pages: 11, 12.
Dr. Mary Williams-Brewer served the University of New Orleans for 29 years, including as Chair in 1993 to 1995 and Associate Chair from 1990 to 1993. She was professor to a generation of doctoral, masters, and undergraduate students, using her gift at making statistics and research understandable and meaningful. She followed a research program into vision and reading that spanned decades, achieving innovations in our understanding and treatments for dyslexia and ADHD. She was an imaginative, intelligent, and caring person who found time for her beloved husband James, and to assist in her church and community. Dr. Williams-Brewer passed away from lymphoma on May 30, 2011, at the age of 56.
Born in Syracuse, New York, Mary Williams earned her undergraduate at Syracuse University and completed her doctorate from State University of New York at Buffalo, where she worked with Dr. Naomi Weisstein. She went on to work with Dr. Bruno Breitmeyer at the U. of Houston’s visual cognition lab, and these research interests that shaped her career for a lifetime.
Colleague and friend, Dr. James Brown, U. of Georgia, who was an office-mate with Mary in graduate school, wrote in collaboration with Dr. James May, of UNO, and Drs. Breitmeyer and Weisstein, noted “Mary was always interested in high-level vision, which she explored with imagination, verve and originality. Her PhD thesis asked whether some higher-level variables in visual stimuli influenced the timing of metacontrast functions. She found beautifully regular variations of the functions with the degree of apparent depth and amount of connectedness.”
Mary followed this interest for the whole of her career, publishing “Asymmetries in metacontrast and motion in red/green isoluminant stimuli,” and “Effects of contrast and spatial frequency on bistable stroboscopic motion,” both in Psychonomic Society. Her work included book chapters “A wavelength- Specific Intervention for Reading and Disability,” in Vision and Reading, and “The Effects of Wavelength on Visual Processing and Reading Performance in Normal and Disabled Readers,” in Facets of Dyslexia and its Remediation. Her “Temporal processing deficits in specific reading disability,” in Applications of Parallel Processing in Vision, was published in the prestigious Elsevier’s Advances in Psychology Series.
In their article honoring her work, Mary’s colleagues wrote, “Dr. Williams' research focused on developmental disorders, especially developmental
dyslexia and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in childhood and adulthood. [Her] Specific topics have included visual processing deficits in dyslexia, the effects of stimulus contrast and wave- length on visual processing in dyslexia, interventions for dyslexia, attention processing deficits in dyslexia and ADHD, auditory processing and affective processing in ADHD, and ADHD symptomology in college students.”
Mary authored or coauthored over 70 articles, presentations, and invited addresses, including “The effects of spatial filtering and contrast reduction on visual search times in good and poor readers,” and “Effect of wavelength on performance of attention-disordered and normal children on the Wisconsin Card Test,” in Neuropsychology, with coauthors including Dr. Kevin Greve.
She presented at state, regional, national and international conferences, including the Michigan Dyslexia Institute Regional Conference, the Society of Research in Child Development, and the National Dyslexia Research Foundation Annual Conference. Traveling to Bern,
Switzerland, she presented, “The effects of wavelength on reading comprehension of dyslexic children, at the Rodin Remediation Committee Annual Conference. And she co- presented “Perceptual Effects of a Transient System Deficit in Disabled Readers,” at the XXIV International Congress of Psychology in Sydney, Australia.
Mary’s colleagues wrote, “The results of her program of research showed that dyslexic and ADHD individuals demonstrate timing deficits in the magnocellular visual system that disrupt basic visual processes such as contrast processing, higher level visual operations such as reading, and basic attentional operations such as selective and divided attention. A series of studies also led to the development of simple interventions, such as altering stimulus spatial frequency, contrast, and wavelength, which effectively compensate for the deficit in the magnocellular system and result in improvements in reading and attentional performance.”
And about her contributions to UNO, colleagues noted, “She was a mainstay of the department, helping to shape its development across the years before most current members of the department arrived.”
Mary was awarded several grants from the National Institute of Health, she worked with the Louisiana Find Work Program, (Strategies to Empower People Program), the Children’s Unit of the Southeast Louisiana Hospital, and the LSU Medical School, including evaluations for medical students. And she supervised practica for he UNO Psychology Department Clinic, for Oschner Child Development Center, and for LSU Department of Pediatrics. She also supervised students in the UNO Psychology Department Cognitive Development Clinic, and Substance Abuse Practicum, at the Southeast Louisiana Hospital Children’s Unit.
Dr. Williams-Brewer was a dedicated professor who helped guide over thirty thesis and doctoral projects with her students, and as committee chair numerous dissertations, including now Dr. Randal Graf’s “Cognitive belief subscriptions as indicators of health and lifestyle behaviors: Implications for applied psychology in health promotion.”
Mary was also closely connected with her church, Our Lady of Perpetual Help of Kenner, Louisiana, Legion of Mary, Catholic Daughters, and the Alter Society. “She was the kindest, most caring person I’ve ever known,” her husband, James shared with the Times.
“She is remembered by us as a spunky, enthusiastic and fun- filled vision researcher as well as a personal friend,” wrote Drs. Brown, May, Breitmeyer and Weisstein. “She always approached her activities with an infectious sense of adventure and understanding. Mary will be greatly missed.”
Dr. Mary Williams-Brewer. Photo courtesy of Mr. James Brewer.
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