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Hilary Stebbins

Associate Professor University of Mary Washington

  • Fredericksburg VA

Dr. Stebbins researches college student sleep patterns and circadian rhythms.

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2 min

The House passed the Sunshine Protection Act on July 14, 2026, reviving the national debate over whether the U.S. should adopt permanent daylight saving time, return to permanent standard time, or keep the twice-yearly clock change altogether. The bill now heads to the Senate. At the University of Mary Washington, Dr. Hilary Stebbins, Associate Professor of Psychological Science, studies the chronobiology and sleep patterns of college students, research that can help inform exactly this debate: how does shifting the clock affect cognitive performance and behavior, no matter which system we land on? Dr. Hilary Stebbins is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychological Science at the University of Mary Washington. She is an expert on sleep deprivation, circadian rhythms, and dopamine function, and how each affects cognitive performance and behavior. View her profile Stebbins doesn't take a side in the policy debate. Her focus is chronobiology, how sleep patterns and circadian rhythms affect college students' cognitive performance and behavior. But that science speaks directly to the choice lawmakers are weighing: any shift, whether it's permanent daylight saving time, permanent standard time, or sticking with the current system, creates a temporary mismatch between our internal clock and the outside world, and it takes the body time to catch up. "One of my past teams found that as people report higher levels of sleepiness, they show higher dopamine function and also have more difficulty controlling impulsive actions." — Dr. Hilary Stebbins, Associate Professor of Psychological Science, University of Mary Washington Stebbins leads a year-long undergraduate research team (PSYC 491/492) each year, and in 2018 a team of her students won the Virginia Association for Psychological Science's award for best undergraduate paper for their research on sleep deprivation. Interested in discussing chronobiology, sleep patterns, or the science behind the debate over permanent daylight saving time, permanent standard time, or dopamine and behavior? Click on the icon below and connect with Dr. Hilary Stebbins, Associate Professor of Psychological Science at the University of Mary Washington, for expert insight into sleep research and its real-world stakes.

Hilary Stebbins

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Biography

Hilary E. Stebbins, Associate Professor of Psychological Science, earned her B.S. (2001) in psychology from Mary Washington College and her Ph.D. (2007) from Brown University in experimental psychology with a focus in cognitive neuroscience. Her dissertation work focused on dissociating explicit and implicit memory and category learning systems in aging populations as well as patients with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Disease. Since that time she has published and presented work on attentional mechanisms aiding emotional face processing. Her current research interests focus on the cognitive effects of sleep deprivation, especially those related to individual differences in dopamine function.

Dr. Stebbins is a member of several professional organizations, including the Association for Psychological Science, the Society for Neuroscience, and the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. Furthermore, she is an active member of the UMW chapter of Phi Beta Kappa and served as President of the Kappa of Virginia Chapter in 2016.

In addition to her work with independent research students, Dr. Stebbins typically teaches classes related to biological psychology including Psychopharmacology, Cognitive Neuroscience, and Biological Psychology. She also teaches research and process classes such as Research Methods in Psychology, Research Seminar in Biological Psychology, and a Freshman Seminar on the Science of Sleep.

Areas of Expertise

Sleep Deprivation
Emotional Face Processing
Dopamine Function
Attentional Blink
Category Learning

Education

Brown University

Ph.D.

Experimental Psychology (Cognitive Neuroscience)

2007

Mary Washington College

B.S.

Psychology

2001

Affiliations

  • Association for Psychological Science
  • Society for Neuroscience
  • Cognitive Neuroscience Society
  • Phi Beta Kappa

Media Appearances

UMW Psychology Students Claim Top State Awards

EagleEye  online

2019-05-30

According to Associate Professor Hilary Stebbins who supervised the research, Jacobs’ findings suggest that the performance of evening types was impaired in the morning, which might be related to higher morning cortisol levels. “These findings have implications when we consider what we expect from our students, who are heavily skewed towards being evening types, in the morning,” said Stebbins.

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UMW Psychology Students Claim Top State Award

UMW Voice  online

2018-04-27

The winning UMW team, under the tutelage of Associate Psychology Professor Hilary Stebbins, spent a year studying the relationship between sleep deprivation and impulsive actions.
[...]
“Usually when we think about sleep deprivation, we think about people pulling ’all-nighters,’” said Stebbins, who notes that type of sleep deprivation is rare.

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The Sound of Success

University of Mary Washington News  online

2017-11-07

As she conducted her own study, examining the perceptions of people with both cochlear implants and hearing aids, she referred to the notes she’d hauled across the country. Thick with information about data collection, ethics, presentation and more, the lessons she’d learned in UMW Associate Professor of Psychology Hilary Stebbins’ research methods class “came up over and over again.”

“She’s an extraordinarily driven student,” Stebbins said of Funkhouser. “She doesn’t just take every opportunity, she goes out and finds opportunities to do really impressive things.”

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Event Appearances

“I’m Tired, but Ambitious”: How Lower Reported Sleep Duration Affects Perception of Task-Oriented and Interpersonal Traits in College Students

30th APS Annual Convention  San Francisco, CA

2018-05-23

Growth Mindset and Positive Expectations about the Future: The Relationships Among Mindset, Self-Efficacy, Self-Compassion, and Optimism

29th APS Annual Convention  Boston, MA

2017-05-24

Social Anxiety but Not Rejection Sensitivity Affects Emotional Expression Identification

29th APS Annual Convention  Boston, MA

2017-05-24

Articles

Spontaneous eye blink rate mediates the relationship between sleepiness and impulsivity to negative stimuli

Biological Psychology

2021

Previous studies have demonstrated that sleep deprivation results in a negativity bias, especially in the context of impaired response inhibition. In the present study we investigated spontaneous eye blink rate (EBR), a correlate of dopamine function, as a mediator of the relationship between subjective sleepiness and impulsivity toward negative stimuli on a Go/NoGo task. Participants rated their sleepiness on a number of measures including the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS), the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (KSS) and subscales of the Chronic Sleep Reduction Questionnaire (CSRQ). The findings revealed that EBR mediated the relationship between sleepiness as measured by the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (KSS) and commission errors on negatively valanced stimuli. These findings suggest that reduced inhibition in responding to negative stimuli can be found as a function of subjective sleepiness and that changes in dopamine function may be one contributing factor explaining this relationship.

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The influence of stimulus sex and emotional expression on the attentional blink

Emotion

2015

Past studies have demonstrated that angry faces used as the first target (T1) in an attentional blink paradigm interfere with processing of a second, neutral target (T2). However, despite research that suggests that the sex and emotional expression of a face are confounded, no study has investigated whether the sex of a stimulus might interact with emotional expression to influence the attentional blink. In the current study, both the sex and emotional expression of a T1 stimulus were manipulated to assess participants' ability to report the presences of a subsequent neutral target. Although the findings revealed limited evidence to support an interaction between sex and emotion, both the sex and emotional expression of the T1 stimulus were found to independently affect reporting of T2. These findings suggest that both emotional expression and stimulus sex are important in the temporal allocation of attentional resources to faces.

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