Tina Sutton Headshot

Tina Sutton

Associate Professor

Department of Psychology
College of Liberal Arts
Program Director- Experimental Psychology MS

585-475-6773
Office Location
Office Mailing Address
Eastman Building Room 2305

Tina Sutton

Associate Professor

Department of Psychology
College of Liberal Arts
Program Director- Experimental Psychology MS

Education

BS, Union College; MA, Ph.D., State University of New York at Albany

Bio

Dr. Sutton is a Cognitive Psychologist and teaches a variety of courses including Cognitive Psychology, Graduate Cognition, Memory and Attention, Language and Thought, and Senior Capstone Proposal. She is the director of the Attention, Cognition, and Emotion (ACE) Lab in the Department of Psychology.  Her research focuses on the interplay between cognition and emotion, the impact of emotion on attention, and the science of learning. She currently serves as the Graduate Director for the MS Experimental Psychology Program.

585-475-6773

Personal Links
Areas of Expertise

Select Scholarship

Peer Reviewed/Juried Poster Presentation or Conference Paper
Sutton, Tina, Shanchieh Yang, and Isabella Totino. "The Role of Curiosity and Frustration in Cybersecurity Practitioner Behavior and Performance." Proceedings of the Association for Psychological Science. Ed. Shinobu Kitayama. Virtual Conference, IL: n.p..
McGurgan, Kevin, et al. "Graph Design: The Data-Ink Ratio and Expert Users." Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Visualization Theory and Applications. Ed. Jose Braz and Kadi Bouatouch. Virtual Conference, Portugal: n.p..
Altobelli, Matthew and Tina M Sutton. "Mood Congruent Visual Perception." Proceedings of the 2020 Annual Meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association, June 17-18, (Virtual Meeting). Ed. Bernard Beins. Boston, MA: n.p..
Williams, Abby and Tina M. Sutton. "Reading Emotion Words in Sentences: The Role of Valence and Arousal." Proceedings of the 2020 Annual Meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association, June 17-18 (virtual conference). Ed. Bernard Beins. Boston, MA: n.p..
Sutton, Tina M., Ryan Hildebrandt, and Roni Crumb. "State Dependent Learning and Note-taking Strategies." Proceedings of the 31st Annual Convention for the Association of Psychological Science, Washington DC May 23-26. Ed. Nathalie L. Rothert. Washington, DC: n.p..
Hildebrant, Ryan and Tina M. Sutton. "Investigating Emotion-label and Emotion-laden Words in a Semantic Satiation Paradigm." Proceedings of the 60th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Montreal, Canada, November 14-17th. Ed. Duane Watson. Montreal, Canada: n.p..
Condry, Kirsten, et al. "Improving Learning in Psychology Research Methods by Enriching Statistics Instruction and Promoting Positive Mindset." Proceedings of the Association for Psychological Science Convention. Ed. N/A. San Fransisco, CA: n.p..
Sutton, Tina, Andrew Herbert, and Dailyn Clark. "Valence, Arousal, and Dominance Ratings for Face Stimuli." Proceedings of the 58th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society. Ed. Aaron Benjamin. Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada: n.p..
Journal Paper
Crumb, Roni M., Ryan Hildebrandt, and Tina M. Sutton. "The Value of Handwritten Notes: A Failure to Find State-Dependent Effects When Using a Laptop to Take Notes and Complete a Quiz." Teaching of Psychology. (2020): 1-7. Web.
Sutton, Tina M., Andrew M. Herbert, and Dailyn Q. Clark. "Valence, Arousal, and Dominance Ratings for Facial Stimuli." Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 72. 8 (2019): 2046-2055. Print.
Sutton, Tina M. and John E. Edlund. "Assessing Self-selection Bias as a Function of Experiment Title and Description: The Effect of Emotion and Personality." North American Journal of Psychology 21. 2 (2019): 407-422. Print.
Sutton, Tina M. and Ciara Lutz. "Attentional Capture for Emotional Words and Images: The Importance of Valence and Arousal." Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology. (2018): 1-8. Print.
Bruce, Sheila, Tina Sutton, and Poorna Kushalnagar. "Levels of Emotion Valence and Arousal in American Sign Language." Journal of American Deafness and Rehabilitation Association. (2017): 21-33. Print.
Sutton, Tina M and Jeanette Altarriba. "Color associations to emotion and emotion-laden words: A collection of norms for stimulus construction and selection." Behavior Research Methods 48. (2016): 686-728. Print.
Sutton, Tina M. and Jeanette Altarriba. "Finding the positive in all of the negative: Facilitation for color-related emotion words in a negative priming paradigm." Acta Psychologica 170. (2016): 84-93. Print.

Currently Teaching

PSYC-223
3 Credits
This course examines how people perceive, learn, represent, remember and use information. Contemporary theory and research are surveyed in such areas as attention, pattern and object recognition, memory, knowledge representation, language acquisition and use, reasoning, decision making, problem solving, creativity, and intelligence. Applications in artificial intelligence and human/technology interaction may also be considered.
PSYC-430
3 Credits
This course is intended for students in the cognitive track. This course reviews current research in the areas of memory and attention. This course will consider such memory topics as: classic theories of memory, Baddeley’s model of working memory, in-formation processing, implicit and explicit memory, principles of forgetting, developmental changes in memory, skill memory, autobiographical memory, eyewitness memory, and the neural bases of memory. Attention topics covered in this course will include: Selective and divided attention, search and vigilance, signal detection theory, and neural correlates of attention.
PSYC-431
3 Credits
This course is intended for students in the cognitive track. This course examines the structure of human language and its relationship to thought, and surveys contemporary theory and research on the comprehension and production of spoken and written language. In addition, we will discuss categorization, representation of knowledge, expertise, consciousness, intelligence, and artificial intelligence. Topics on language and thought in non-human animals may also be covered. Part of the cognitive track for the psychology degree program.
PSYC-501
3 Credits
This course is intended for students in the psychology major to develop experimental research expertise and put into practice some of what is learned in Research Methods I and II. Students will explore topics of interest for further research in psychology. They will develop one research idea that could either form the basis for a senior project in psychology or is a valid test of a research idea. Students will be supervised by the course instructor as they develop a research question, conduct a literature review, write the introduction, and examine questions about control, validity and reliability. This course will culminate in a research proposal. Students going on to Senior Project in Psychology can use this as a proposal course and must find their faculty adviser for senior project before they finish this course. Students who are not planning for Senior Project will practice writing a proposal and the related skills required to critically examine an advanced topic in Psychology.
PSYC-510
3 Credits
This course is intended for students in the psychology major to demonstrate experimental research expertise, while being guided by faculty advisors. The topic to be studied is up to the student, who must find a faculty advisor before signing up for the course. Students will be supervised by the advisor as they conduct their literature review, develop the research question or hypothesis, develop the study methodology and materials, construct all necessary IRB materials, run subjects, and analyze the results of their study. This course will culminate in an APA style paper and poster presentation reporting the results of the research. Because Senior Project is the culmination of a student’s scientific research learning experience in the psychology major, it is expected that the project will be somewhat novel, will extend the theoretical understanding of their previous work (or of the previous work of another researcher), and go well beyond any similar projects that they might have done in any of their previous courses.
PSYC-550
0 Credits
Practicum open to psychology students. Gives the student first-hand experience in the field of psychology working on research that matches the student's career objectives. Students are closely supervised by a faculty member, developing relevant skills and learning how to do research first-hand. May count for the equivalent of the psychology co-op experience with prior approval and sufficient time commitment. (3rd or 4th year status). Prerequisites PSYC-101, -250, -251. Credit 0 (F, S, Su)
PSYC-712
3 Credits
This course will survey theoretical and empirical approaches to understanding the nature of the mental processes involved in attention, object recognition, learning and memory, reasoning, problem solving, decision-making, and language. The course presents a balance between historically significant findings and current state of-the-art research. Readings that have structured the nature and direction of scientific debate in these fields will be discussed. The course also includes discussions of methodology and practical applications. Students will have opportunities to develop their research skills and critical thinking by designing research studies in cognitive psychology.
PSYC-751
0 Credits
The guiding principle of Graduate Research Seminar is that it provides students the opportunity to begin examining potential thesis topics during the student's first semester in the program. The course will involve faculty presentations of their research offered weekly through the semester.
PSYC-753
3 Credits
The Thesis courses will vary widely but will fulfill the work plan agreed by the student and the thesis adviser. The guiding principle of the Thesis course is to complete the thesis research proposed in Thesis Proposal. The Thesis course consists of carrying out the thesis research, including collection and analysis of data, and completion and public defense of the thesis document for partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree.
PSYC-754
3 Credits
This is a project-based course for students enrolled in the MSc Experimental Psychology non-Thesis track focusing on discipline-specific scientific communication skills in the area of Psychology. The capstone course will provide students the opportunity to combine and incorporate knowledge and skills learned in prior coursework and experiences and demonstrate their ability to apply this knowledge in various assignments. A variety of written projects (white paper, focused literature review, and a resume) and an oral presentation will be required and should allow students to demonstrate proficiency in the Program.