Sumeyra Tosun, Ph.D

Sumeyra Tosun, Ph.D

Assistant Professor

Biography

Dr. Sümeyra Tosun is an assistant professor of the Department of Psychology. She received her B.S. in Psychology from Mersin University, Turkey. She obtained her M.Sc. in Forensic Psychology from Prairie View A&M University and her Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from Texas A&M University specializing in Psycholinguistics. She also holds a graduate certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies from Texas A&M University. She worked as an assistant professor in Turkey and as a research professor in South Africa before taking a position in MEC. She currently teaches Statistics for Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Brain and Behavior, Experimental Psychology, and Theories of Learning. She also serves as a faculty advisor of the Psychology Club. Her research interests include examining the relationship between language and thought, how spoken language influences thinking style and mind regarding evidentiality, the organization of bilingual speakers’ mind, the production and appreciation of humor and figurative language, influence of handedness and reading-writing direction on perception specifically spatial representation of objects and scenes and, gender and culture. She has several publications in peer-reviewed journals, one of which was awarded as APA/Psi Chi Edwin B. Newman Graduate Research Award.

Publications

Tosun, S., & Filipovic, L. (2022). Lost in translation, apparently: Bilingual language processing of evidentiality in a Turkish-English translation and judgment task. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. doi.org/10.1017/S1366728922000141

Tosun, S. (2022). Perception of fairness in household labor division: The effect of gender values, relationship dynamics, and culture. Society. doi.org/10.1007/s12115-022-00661-8

Tosun, S., & Vaid, J. (2018). Activation of source and stance in interpreting evidential and modal expressions in Turkish and English. Dialogue and Discourse, 9 (1), 128-162.

Tosun, S., Faghihi, N. & Vaid, J. (2018). Is an ideal sense of humor gendered? A cross-national study. Frontiers Psychology. doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00199

López, B. G., Vaid, J., Tosun, S., & Rao, C. (2017). Bilinguals’ plausibility judgments for phrases with a literal vs. non-literal meaning: The influence of language brokering experience, Frontiers Psychology. doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01661

Pritchett, L., Vaid, J., & Tosun, S. (2016). Of black sheep and white crows: Extending the bilingual dual coding theory to memory for idioms, Cogent Psychology, 3, 1-18.

Hull, R., Tosun, S., & Vaid, J. (2016). ‘What’s so funny? Modelling incongruity in humour production, Cognition and Emotion. doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2015.1129314

Tosun, S., & Vaid, J. (2016). Making a story make sense: Does evidentiality matter? Applied Psycholinguistics, 37(6), 1337-67.

Tosun, S., & Vaid, J. (2014). What affects facing direction in human facial profile drawing? A meta-analytic inquiry. Perception, 43, 1377-1392.

Tosun, S., Vaid, J., & Geraci, L. (2013). Does obligatory linguistic marking of source of evidence influence source memory? A Turkish/English investigation. Journal of Memory and Language, 69(2), 121-134.

Vaid, J., Rhodes, R., Tosun, S., & Eslami, Z. (2011). Script directionality affects depiction of depth in representational drawings. Social Psychology, 42(3), 241-248.

Tosun, S., Vaid, J., & Geraci, L. (2010). ‘Meryem reportedly missed her flight’: Cognitive implications of the Turkish evidential. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.

Vaid, J., Chen, H.C., & Rhodes, R., & Tosun, S. (2010). Handedness and hand used differentially affect object facing. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.