Professor Patalano's research focus is the scientific study of adult human reasoning and decision making behavior. She is interested in how decisions are made, how and why people vary in their decision making strategies, how underlying cognitive and motivational mechanisms give rise to differences, and ultimately how to improve decision making. She is also interested in category use in reasoning, including how categories support inference in judgment and decision making, and in the use of principles of cognitive psychology to inform education. She uses a range of empirical research methods including laboratory behavioral tasks, neuroscience methods, and mathematical models.  Her research receives funding from the National Science Foundation.  Professor Patalano teaches courses in human cognition, judgment and decision making, concepts and categories, and introductory statistics.

Prior to coming to Wesleyan, Professor Patalano served as a research fellow at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and at the Institut National de la Santé and de la Recherche Médicale in Paris, France.  She earned her B.A. in Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences from Brown University and her Ph.D. in Psychology with a speciaization in Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of Michigan.