Debra Titone Explained

Debra Titone
Occupation:	Professor and Canada Research Chair in Language & Multilingualism, McGill University
Citizenship:	Canada
Workplaces:	McGill University
Alma Mater:	New York University; Binghamton University
Awards:	Richard C. Tees Distinguished Leadership Award, Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour, & Cognitive Science (2019) Canadian Psychological Association, SWAP Feminist Mentoring Award (2017)

Debra Titone is a cognitive psychologist known for her research on bilingualism and multilingualism. She is currently a Professor of Psychology and a chair holder of Canada Research in Language & Multilingualism at McGill University.^{[1] [2]} Titone is a founding member and officer of the professional society, Women in Cognitive Science.^[3] She and her colleagues have written about gender disparities in opportunities, along with the advancement of women the field of cognitive science, with specific reference to Canada.^[4]

Titone is a Fellow of the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour and Cognitive Science (CSBBCS)^[5] and, in 2019, she received their Richard C. Tees Distinguished Leadership Award.^[6] Previous honors included the SWAP Feminist Mentoring Award from the Canadian Psychological Association, awarded to Titone in 2017.^[7]

Biography

Titone received her B.A., with honors in Psychology from New York University.^[8] She subsequently obtained her Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from the Binghamton University in 1995, where she was mentored by Cynthia Connine.^[9] With Connine, she conducted research on idiomatic expressions, focusing specifically on how individual word components influence idiom interpretation.^{[10] [11]}

Titone completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Brandeis University, supervised by Arthur Wingfield. With Wingfield, David Caplan, Gloria Waters, and others, Titone studied the impact of right-hemisphere brain damage^[12] and cognitive aging^[13] on sentence processing. During a subsequent postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School, Titone extended her research on language processing to individuals with schizophrenia, under the mentorship of Philip Holzman. Their results suggested the language atypicalities in schizophrenia may be due to faulty inhibitory control as opposed to a lack of sensitivity to contextual cues.^{[14] [15]} Other research focused on possible deficits in associative, relational learning in schizophrenia.^[16]

Titone is a member of the Executive Board of the Centre for Research on Brain, Language & Music at McGill University, Université du Québec à Montréal, Concordia University, and Université de Montréal^[17] and an associate member of the International Laboratory of Brain, Music, and Sound Research.^[18] Her research has been supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.^[19]

Titone's research program at McGill explores how people read, write, listen, and speak languages, possible advantages of bilingualism, and how the processing of multiple languages is different from monolingualism. Her work has aimed to characterize the diversity of language experiences that people have and how this diversity reflects the human brain's capacity for language.^[20] Titone's research on bilingualism, executive control, and aging suggests that bilinguals may experience multiple advantages in cognitive capacity as compared to monolinguals, which may stem from enhanced neurocognitive plasticity.^[21]

Representative work

• Baum, S., & Titone, D. (2014). Moving toward a neuroplasticity view of bilingualism, executive control, and aging. Applied Psycholinguistics, 35(5), 857–894.
• Gullifer, J. W., & Titone, D. (2020). Characterizing the social diversity of bilingualism using language entropy. Bilingualism: Language and cognition, 94(1), 1-18.
• Pivneva, I., Mercier, J., & Titone, D. (2014). Executive control modulates cross-language lexical activation during L2 reading: Evidence from eye movements. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 40(3), 787–796.
• Titone, D. (1998). Hemispheric differences in context sensitivity during lexical ambiguity resolution. Brain and Language, 65(3), 361-394.
• Titone, D., Libben, M., Mercier, J., Whitford, V., & Pivneva, I. (2011). Bilingual lexical access during L1 sentence reading: The effects of L2 knowledge, semantic constraint, and L1–L2 intermixing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 37(6), 1412-1431.

External links

• Faculty home page
• Language and Multilingualism Lab

Notes and References

1. Web site: Canada Research Chairs Program announces new and renewed chairs for McGill Profs.
2. Web site: Debra Titone. 2020-11-15. Department of Psychology. en.
3. Web site: People Women in Cognitive Science. 2020-10-22. womenincogsci.org. 2012-12-15. https://web.archive.org/web/20121215050146/http://womenincogsci.org/people. dead.
4. Titone. Debra. Tiv. Mehrgol. Pexman. Penny M.. 2018. The status of women cognitive scientists in Canada: Insights from publicly available NSERC funding data.. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology. en. 72. 2. 81–90. 10.1037/cep0000150. 29902029. 49213057. 1878-7290.
5. Web site: Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour & Cognitive Science: Fellows. 2020-11-15. www.csbbcs.org.
6. Web site: Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour & Cognitive Science: Dr. Debra Titone. 2020-11-15. www.csbbcs.org.
7. Web site: SWAP Section: Past Awards – Canadian Psychological Association. 17 January 2018 . 2020-11-15. en-US.
8. Web site: Debra Titone, Ph.D., Lab Director. 2020-12-04. Language & Multilingualism Lab. en.
9. Web site: LinguisTree - Debra Titone Family Tree. 2020-12-08. academictree.org.
10. Titone. Debra A.. Connine. Cynthia M.. 1999-11-02. On the compositional and noncompositional nature of idiomatic expressions. Journal of Pragmatics. Literal and Figurative Language. en. 31. 12. 1655–1674. 10.1016/S0378-2166(99)00008-9. 0378-2166.
11. Titone. Debra A.. Connine. Cynthia M.. 1994. Comprehension of idiomatic expressions: Effects of predictability and literality.. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. en. 20. 5. 1126–1138. 10.1037/0278-7393.20.5.1126. 7931098 . 1939-1285.
12. Titone. Debra. Wingfield. Arthur. Caplan. David. Waters. Gloria. Prentice. Kristen. 2001. Memory and Encoding of Spoken Discourse Following Right Hemisphere Damage: Evidence from the Auditory Moving Window (AMW) Technique. Brain and Language. en. 77. 1. 10–24. 10.1006/brln.2000.2419. 11247653. 30472898.
13. Titone. Debra. Prentice. Kristen J.. Wingfield. Arthur. 2000. Resource allocation during spoken discourse processing: Effects of age and passage difficulty as revealed by self-paced listening. Memory & Cognition. en. 28. 6. 1029–1040. 10.3758/BF03209351. 11105529. 0090-502X. free.
14. Titone. Debra. Levy. Deborah L.. Holzman. Philip S.. 2000. Contextual insensitivity in schizophrenic language processing: Evidence from lexical ambiguity.. Journal of Abnormal Psychology. en. 109. 4. 761–767. 10.1037/0021-843X.109.4.761. 11196002. 1939-1846.
15. Titone. Debra. Holzman. Philip S.. Levy. Deborah L.. 2002. Idiom processing in schizophrenia: Literal implausibility saves the day for idiom priming.. Journal of Abnormal Psychology. en. 111. 2. 313–320. 10.1037/0021-843X.111.2.313. 12003452. 1939-1846.
16. Titone. Debra. Ditman. Tali. Holzman. Philip S. Eichenbaum. Howard. Levy. Deborah L. 2004-06-01. Transitive inference in schizophrenia: impairments in relational memory organization. Schizophrenia Research. en. 68. 2. 235–247. 10.1016/S0920-9964(03)00152-X. 15099606. 14016594. 0920-9964.
17. Web site: Debra Titone. 2020-11-15. CRBLM. en-US.
18. Web site: Debra Titone, PhD – Brams. 2020-11-15. brams.org.
19. Web site: Funding Sources. 2020-12-08. Language & Multilingualism Lab. en.
20. Gullifer. Jason W.. Titone. Debra. 2020. Characterizing the social diversity of bilingualism using language entropy. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. en. 23. 2. 283–294. 10.1017/S1366728919000026. 150591937. 1366-7289.
21. Baum. Shari. Titone. Debra. 2014. Moving toward a neuroplasticity view of bilingualism, executive control, and aging. Applied Psycholinguistics. en. 35. 5. 857–894. 10.1017/S0142716414000174. 146314651. 0142-7164.