Dr. Margot Sullivan

Biography: Margot Sullivan is an Assistant Professor of Psychology (Limited Term Faculty). Margot completed her PhD at York University in 2018, and has worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the Memory and Decision Processes Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University since 2019. During her graduate studies she used a variety of behavioural and neuroscience methods, including event-related potentials (ERPs) and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI), to examine how cognitive control processing changes with aging, language experience, and mild cognitive impairment. Margot’s research in the Memory and Decision Processes lab has looked at the effect of emotional arousal on risky choices in healthy younger and older adults using pupillometry and eye tracking, as well as age differences in the temporal dynamics of motivated attention.

She previously taught Introduction to Psychology and Psycholinguistics at York University. Margot is currently teaching PSY102 (Intro I), and PSY654 (Cognitive Psychology). 

Selected Peer-Reviewed Publications:

Sullivan, M. D., Huang, R., Rovetti, J., Sparrow, E. P., & Spaniol, J. (2021). Associations between phasic arousal and decisions under risk in younger and older adults. Neurobiology of aging, 105, 262–271. doi: 10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2021.05.001

Bialystok, E., Dey, A., Sullivan, M. D., & Sommers, M. S. (2020). Using the DRM paradigm to assess language processing in monolinguals and bilinguals. Memory & Cognition, 48(5), 870–883. doi: 10.3758/s13421-020-01016-6

Sullivan, M. D., Anderson, J. A. E., Turner, G. R., & Spreng, R. N. (2019). Intrinsic neurocognitive network connectivity differences between normal aging and mild cognitive impairment are associated with cognitive status and age. Neurobiology of Aging, 73, 219–228. doi: 10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2018.10.001

Sullivan, M. D., Prescott, Y., Goldberg, D., & Bialystok, E. (2016). Executive control processes in verbal and nonverbal working memory: The role of aging and bilingualism. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 6:1/2,147–170. doi:10.1075/lab.15056.sul

Sullivan, M. D., Janus, M., Moreno, S., Astheimer, L., & Bialystok, E. (2014). Early stage second-language learning improves executive control: Evidence from ERP. Brain and Language, 139, 84–98. doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2014.10.004