Debra Titone | |
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Citizenship | Canada |
Occupation(s) | Professor and Canada Research Chair in Language & Multilingualism, McGill University |
Awards |
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Academic background | |
Alma mater | New York University; Binghamton University |
Academic work | |
Institutions | McGill University |
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]
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.[9] 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.[9] 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 schizophenia.[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.[17] 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]