Brown, Dana Basnight, PhD

Name: Dana Basnight-Brown, Ph.D.

Areas of interest/specialization: cognitive science/psychology; cognitive and neurological components of multilingualism; emotion representation across languages; the interaction between language and culture; social cognition

Email: dbrown@usiu.ac.ke

Telephone:

Biography

Dr. Basnight-Brown is an Associate Professor of Psychology and the Director of the Centre for Cognitive and Developmental Research at USIU-A. Her primary research focuses on the cognitive processes surrounding human memory and language, particularly within the domain of multilingualism. She has a strong interest in cross-cultural cognitive science and issues that have a global influence. As a result, her impact globally was recognized by being the 2014 recipient of the APA International Psychology Division Early Career Professional Award (for “outstanding contributions to International Psychology”) and the APA Early Career Achievement Award (based on “scientific achievement and leadership in the field of psychology” from the international division). Her research experience also allowed her to be a recipient of the Mentor Fellowship for Early Career Scientists (funded through the National Science Foundation’s Perception, Action, and Cognition Program). Dr. Basnight-Brown has been invited to present her research in spoken sessions all over the world, including five continents and in more than one dozen countries. She currently serves as an Associate Director for the Psychological Science Accelerator, a globally distributed network of laboratories representing dozens of countries across six continents.

Academic Degrees

  • Ph.D. Cognitive/Developmental Psychology (2010)
  • The University at Albany, State University of New York
  • M.A. Cognitive Psychology
  • The University at Albany, State University of New York
  • B.S. Molecular Biology (minor in Psychology)
  • B.A. French (minor in Spanish)

    Publications

  • Altarriba, J., Basnight, D. M., & Canary, T. M. (2003). Emotion representation and perception across cultures. In W.J. Lonner, D.L. Dinnel, S.A. Hayes, & D. N. Sattler (Eds.), Readings in psychology and culture, 4, 1-17.
  • Feldman, L.B., Basnight-Brown, D.M., & Pastizzo, M. (2006). Semantic influences on morphological facilitation: Concreteness and family size. Journal of the Mental Lexicon, 1, 61-84.
  • Basnight-Brown, D.M., & Altarriba, J. (2007). Differences in semantic and translation priming across languages: The role of language direction and language dominance. Memory & Cognition, 35, 953-965.
  • Basnight-Brown, D.M., Chen, H., Hua, S., Kostic, A., & Feldman, L.B. (2007). Monolingual and bilingual recognition of regular and irregular English verbs: Does sensitivity to orthographic similarity vary with language experience? Journal of Memory and Language, 57, 65-80.
  • Altarriba, J., & Basnight-Brown, D.M. (2007). Methodological considerations in performing semantic and translation priming experiments across languages. Behavior Research Methods, 39, 1-18.
  • Basnight-Brown, D.M., & Altarriba, J. (2007). Code-switching and code-mixing in bilinguals: Cognitive, developmental, and empirical approaches. In A. Ardila & E. Ramos (Eds.), Speech and language disorders in bilinguals (pp. 69-89). New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
  • Feldman, L.B., & Basnight-Brown, D.M. (2007). Origins of cross language differences in word recognition. In G. Jarema & G. Libben (Eds.), The mental lexicon: Core perspectives (pp. 129-158). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
  • Sutton, T., Altarriba, J., Gianico, J., & Basnight-Brown, D.M. (2007). Emotional Stroop effects in monolingual and bilingual speakers. Cognition and Emotion, 21, 1077-1090.
  • Feldman, L.B., & Basnight-Brown, D.M. (2008). The role of morphology in visual word recognition: Graded semantic influences due to competing senses and semantic richness of the stem. In E.L. Grigorenko & A. Naples (Eds.), Single-word reading: Cognitive, behavioral and biological perspectives (pp. 85-106). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
  • Feldman, L.B., & Basnight-Brown, D.M. (2008). List context fosters semantic processing: Parallels between semantic and morphological facilitation when primes are forward masked. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 34, 680-687.
  • Altarriba, J., & Basnight-Brown, D.M. (2009). An information processing approach to second language acquisition. In W.C. Ritchie & T.K. Bhatia (Ed.), New handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 115-136). Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
  • Altarriba, J., & Basnight-Brown, D.M. (2009). An overview of semantic processing in bilinguals: Methods and findings. In A. Pavlenko (Ed.), The bilingual mental lexicon (pp. 79-98). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.
  • Altarriba, J., & Basnight-Brown, D.M. (2009). Empirical approaches to the study of code-switching in sentential contexts. In L. Isurin, D. Winford, & K. de Bot (Eds.), Cross-disciplinary approaches to code-switching (pp. 3-25). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • Feldman, L.B., Kostic, A., Basnight-Brown, D.M., Filipovi Djurdjevi, D., & Pastizzo, M.J. (2010). Morphological facilitation for regular and irregular verb formations in native and non-native speakers: Little evidence for two distinct mechanisms. Journal of Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 13, 119-135.
  • Altarriba, J., & Basnight-Brown, D.M. (2011). The representation of emotion vs. emotion-laden words in English and Spanish in the Affective Simon Task. International Journal of Bilingualism, 15, 310-328.
  • Altarriba, J., & Basnight-Brown, D.M. (2012). The acquisition of concrete, abstract, and emotion words in a second language. International Journal of Bilingualism, 16, 446-452.
  • Basnight-Brown, D.M. (2014). Models of lexical access and bilingualism. In J. Altarriba & R. Heredia (Eds.), Foundations of bilingual memory (pp. 85-107). New York: Springer.
  • Basnight-Brown, D.M., & Altarriba, J. (2014). Number of translation differences in Spanish and Chinese bilinguals: The difficulty in finding a direct translation for emotion words. In S. Cooper & K. Ratele (Eds.), Psychology serving humanity: Vol. II. (pp. 240-251). New York, NY: Taylor & Francis.
  • Altarriba, J., & Basnight-Brown, D.M. (2015). Emotion word processing within and between languages. In J. W. Schwieter (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of bilingual processing (pp. 293-307). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
  • Basnight-Brown, D.M., & Altarriba, J. (2016). Multiple translations in bilingual memory: Processing differences across concrete, abstract, and emotion words. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 45 (5), 1219-1245.
  • Basnight-Brown, D.M., & Altarriba, J. (2018). The influence of emotion and culture on language representation and processing. In C. Faucher & T. Nishida (Eds.), Advances in culturally-aware intelligent systems and in cross-cultural psychological studies (pp. 415-432). New York: Springer.
  • Gichovi, F.M., Rono, R.C., & Basnight-Brown, D.M. (2018). Adaptation and efficacy of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-5) among learners in select primary schools in Embu County, Kenya. African Journal of Clinical Psychology.
  • Basnight-Brown, D.M., Altarriba, J., & Kazanas, S. (in press). Translation ambiguity in Mandarin-English bilinguals: Production effects across concrete, abstract, and emotion words. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism.
  • Roberts, D., Basnight-Brown, D.M., & Vydrin, V. (in press). Marking tone with punctuation: An orthography experiment in Eastern Dan (Côte d’Ivoire).Graph linguistics Series: Proceedings of the Grafematik Conference.
  • Basnight-Brown, D.M., & Manji, Y. (in press). Methods of emotion research: A review of quantitative and behavioural studies. In G.L. Schiewer, J. Altarriba, & N.B. Chin (Eds.), Handbook on language and emotion. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

    Courses Teaching

  • Statistics
  • Research Methods (with and without a lab component) *
  • Experimental Psychology
  • Neuropsychology*
  • Neuropsychopathology*
  • Memory and Cognition*
  • Cognition and Learning*
  • Psycholinguistics (Psychology of Language) *
  • Psychology of Human Communication*
  • Social Psychology
  • Developmental Psychology*
  • Personality and Affect
  • Foundations of Psychology (Introduction to Psychology)
  • History of Psychology and Systems
  • Research Practicum and Project
  • Independent Research Study
  • Social Media

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