Dr. Rachel Hull

Director of Undergraduate Advising & Honors
Instructional Assistant Professor
Ph.D. (Cognitive) Texas A&M University (2003)

Department of Psychology
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843-4235

Office: 260 Psychology Building
email: rhull@tamu.edu
Phone: (979) 845-7146
Fax: (979) 845-4727
Web: http://people.tamu.edu/~rhull

My primary area of interest is the neurobehavioral bases of language. In particular, my dissertation research with Dr. Jyotsna Vaid (Texas A&M) focused on the consequences of early exposure to one vs. multiple languages on the functional lateralization of language in the adult brain.

My postdoctoral research with Dr. Randi Martin (Rice University) investigated age-related and brain-trauma-induced changes in the frontal networks that support language, working memory, and executive functions.

Additional postdoctoral research with Dr. Heather Bortfeld (Texas A&M) concentrated on using an emerging neuroscience method (Near Infrared Optical Imaging, NIRS) for identifying differential cortical responses to speech perception and production in early bilinguals, late bilinguals, and monolinguals.

At present, in a continued collaboration with Dr. Bortfeld, I am using NIRS to investigate the differential effects of early language experience on the neural architecture of executive functions and working memory across the lifespan in monolinguals and multilinguals.

In addition, I am supervising my research assistant, Susan Koons, during her use of NIRS to collect data for her University Scholar’s thesis on the lateralization of cortical responses to audio-visual stimuli in monolingual and bilingual primary-school children.

Martin, R.C., Vuong, L. & Hull, R. (2007, Oct.). Impaired vs. preserved inhibitory processes in a patient with a semantic short-term memory deficit. Paper presented at the 45th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Aphasia, Washington DC.

Hull, R., Martin, R., & Hamilton, C. (2005, Mar.). The fractionation of inhibition and executive functioning. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the Place of Inhibition in Cognition, University of Texas at Arlington.

Hamilton, C., Hull, R., & Martin, R. (2005, Jan.). Semantic Short-term Memory Deficit and Domain-Specific Inhibition. Poster presented at the European Conference on Cognitive Neuropsychology, Bressanone, Italy.

Bortfeld, H., Smith, S., & Hull, R. (2003, May). Putting Conceptual Combination in Context. Poster, Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Society.

Hull, R., & Vaid, J. (2003, April). How does bilingualism matter? A meta-analytic tale of two hemispheres. Paper presented at the 4th International Symposium on Bilingualism, Arizona State University, Tempe.

2003: Texas A&M University Women’s Studies Program mini-grant
2002: College of Liberal Arts Outstanding Graduate Student, Texas A&M University
2001 – 2002: Texas A&M University and Barnes & Noble Academic Excellence Award
1998 – 1999: Texas A&M University Regents’ Fellow

1. Hull, R., Bortfeld, H., & Koons, S. (submitted). Establishing Cortical Responses to Speech Production Using Near-Infrared Spectroscopy.



2. Bortfeld, H., Hull R., Sappington, R., & Smith, S. (under revision). Making sense of conceptual combinations: On discourse dependent comprehension. Discourse Processes.



3. Hull, R., Martin, R.C., Beier, M., Lane, D., & Hamilton, A.C. (in press). Executive function in older adults: A structural equation modeling approach. Neuropsychology.



4. Hull, R., & Vaid, J. (2008). Bilingual laterality and the matter of degree. Neuropsychologia, 46, 1591-1593.



5. Martin, R. C., Vuong, L., Hull, R. (2007). Impaired vs. preserved inhibitory processes in a patient with a semantic short-term memory deficit. Brain and Language, 103, 169-170.



6. Hull, R., & Vaid, J. (2007). Bilingual language lateralization: A meta-analytic tale of two hemispheres. Neuropsychologia, 45(9), 1987-2008.



7. Martin, R.C., & Hull, R. (2007). The case study perspective on psychological research. In R. Sternberg, R. Roediger, & D. Halpern (Eds.), Critical Thinking in Psychology (pp. 90-109). New York: Cambridge University Press.

PSYC 107: Introduction to Psychology
PSYC 320: Sensation & Perception
PSYC 345: Cognitive Psychology

Link to Vita