Allison Fitch Headshot

Allison Fitch

Assistant Professor

Department of Psychology
College of Liberal Arts

585-475-2416
Office Location

Allison Fitch

Assistant Professor

Department of Psychology
College of Liberal Arts

Bio

Dr. Allison Fitch is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology in the College of Liberal Arts. Prior to joining the faculty at RIT, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Boston University, and received her PhD in Developmental and Brain Sciences from the University of Massachusetts Boston. 

Dr. Fitch is a developmental cognitive neuroscientist. Her research focuses on the inter-relationships between the developing visual cognitive system and language acquisition. She is particularly interested in questions that expand our understanding of how joint attention contributes to language acquisition, and the relationship between early language experiences and low-level visual attention mechanisms. She primarily addresses these questions in infant and toddler populations, particularly deaf children acquiring American Sign Language.
 

585-475-2416

Select Scholarship

Journal Paper
Fitch, Allison, Nilam Thaker, and Zsuzsa Kaldy. "The role of redundant verbal labels in 8-and 10-month-olds’ working memory." Infant Behavior and Development. (2021): 101617. Web.
Lieberman, Amy M., Allison Fitch, and Arielle Borovsky. "Flexible fast‐mapping: Deaf children dynamically allocate visual attention to learn novel words in American Sign Language." Develomental Science. (2021): 1-15. Web.
Fitch, Allison, Sudha Arunachalam, and Amy M. Lieberman. "Mapping Word to World in ASL: Evidence from a Human Simulation Paradigm." Cognitive Science 45. 12 (2021): e13061. Web.

Currently Teaching

PSYC-101H
3 Credits
A state-of-the-art survey of major subfields in psychology and the scientific study of behavior and mental processes. Topics include: a critical evaluation of psychological science; neuroscience and behavior; sensation and perception; learning; memory; thinking, language, and intelligence; motivation and emotion; personality; psychological disorders and therapy; and social psychology. The course focuses not only upon understanding the behavior of the individual, but also upon understanding how the individual acts within groups and reacts to group membership. Besides textbook reading, students will read and discuss current publications on the topics we explore, including examination of the scientific method (including validity and reliability) employed in published studies.
PSYC-251
3 Credits
This course will serve as an advanced research methods course in psychology, and will build on the foundational knowledge presented in Research Methods I. Topics and tasks for this course include designing single and multi-factor experiments, interpreting correlational research, completing statistical analyses appropriate to design, completing and analyzing an IRB application, understanding observational and survey research, and presenting results in APA style. This is a required course for all psychology majors, and is restricted to students in the psychology program.
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-540
1 - 4 Credits
This course is for students involved in a faculty-led laboratory research experience in psychology that can be considered original in nature. Note that this course cannot be used in place of the co-op requirement. This course is graded as pass/fail only. This course can be taken as 1-4 credits. Each credit is worth 37.5 hours of research during the semester (examples include testing human or animal subjects in the lab, participating in lab meetings, presenting research at conferences, working on a publication, etc.).
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-752
3 Credits
The Thesis courses will vary widely but will fulfill the work plan agreed by the student and the adviser. The guiding principles of the Thesis Proposal course are to initiate thesis research including selecting a thesis advisor, choosing and defining a topic, surveying relevant research literature, and planning the research. To complete the course, the student will successfully submit and defend a thesis proposal, which is a detailed and complete plan of the thesis research. The thesis proposal should include exhaustive review of relevant literature, statement of the student's thesis, formulation of hypotheses, operational definitions of independent and dependent variables, and a detailed procedure for carrying out the research. The proposal may also include a section on anticipated results with a detailed plan for analysis of data.
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.

In the News