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My name is Anne Yilmaz and I’m a researcher at UC San Diego doing basic memory science in the Wixted Lab. I hold a Ph.D in Experimental Psychology with Specialization in Anthropogeny, an M.A. in Experimental Psychology, and a B.S. in Psychology. 

This site is meant to chronicle professional milestones. It is (admittedly) infrequently updated, but you can access my CV from the menu above, and can see my most recent posts below.

If you’re looking for something specific, there is a navigation menu at the bottom of this page. Click the “+” to view it. From there, you have the option of perusing content by category (e.g. Psychology, CARTA, Univ. of Oregon, etc.) or using the search bar to find a post. The site is not optimized for mobile, but I hope you find your way regardless.

Thanks for visiting!

-A.Y.

 

Response bias modulates the confidence-accuracy relationship for both positive identifications and lineup rejections in a simultaneous lineup task

Psychology, UC San Diego, Wixted Lab

A paper of mine was just published in Applied Cognitive Psychology. This paper investigates why the confidence-accuracy relationship (CAC) for lineup rejections is often flat (while the relationship between confidence and accuracy for postiveIDs is much stronger). Specifically, this paper looks at the role of response bias in terms of restricting the range of memory signal strengths associated with a particular decision. Range restriction for particular decision may lower the ability to detect a possible relationship given a particular level of confidence due to a reduction in sensitivity.

Cognitive Foundations: Memory in Context

Psychology, Resources, Teaching & Talks, UC San Diego

Cognitive Foundations is an open-source, collaborative textbook edited by Dr. Celeste Pilegard. Last fall, she brought me onto her team as a subject matter expert in order to revamp “Chapter 6: Memory in Context” in preparation for the release of the second edition of the textbook. I did a lot of revising of the current material (nearly all of it overlapped with the material I taught in my PSYC 144 Memory & Amnesia course) and did a good amount of original writing as well.

Preprint: The Scientific Principles of Memory vs. The Federal Rules of Evidence

Psychology, UC San Diego, Wixted Lab

We released a preprint of our paper, “The Scientific Principles of Memory versus the Federal Rules of Evidence,” on Open Science Framework. The manuscript was submitted for publication about a week ago.

Preprints, although citable, have neither been accepted/denied for publication nor have they undergone the peer-review process. It is expected that published manuscripts will differ from the original preprint—sometimes even in major ways (although that is never the hope). We decided to make our submitted manuscript available in this modality due to the expressed interest from those outside of our field.

This paper explains how memory contaminates, when memory is reliable, and how the current interpretation of the Federal Rules of Evidence (as it relates to eyewitness identification) may actually exacerbate the problem of irreparably contaminated evidence being used in the courtroom.

GSPA Travel Grant Award

Psychology, UC San Diego, Wixted Lab

The UC San Diego Graduate & Professional Student Association granted me a $300 award for travel to the annual conference for the Association of Psychological Science in May. At this conference, I’ll be presenting on how response bias — not to be confused with suggestibility — is likely responsible for the flat confidence-accuracy relationship that is typically exhibited for lineup rejections. More information on this presentation can be found on this previous post.

National Eye Institute Early Career Scientist Travel Grant

Psychology, UC San Diego

The Vision Sciences Society (VSS) and National Eye Institute (NEI) awarded me their $1,000 NEI Early Career Scientist Travel Grant for the upcoming VSS conference in May in St. Pete Beach, FL.

Undergraduate, doctoral, and post-doctoral researchers who are first-author presenters on a conference abstract were eligible for the award. A subcommittee of the VSS Board of Directors determined winners based on the scientific quality of the submitted presentation and by other criteria set by the National Institutes of Health.

I will be presenting a modeling paper that addresses the underlying decision variable that the brain uses when rejecting a set of familiar objects (e.g., in this case, faces). My latest post on the VSS conference talks about my poster session more in depth.

Future Associate-In Position and SGTS Program Acceptance

Psychology, Teaching & Talks, UC San Diego

My department nomination for the Summer Graduate Teaching Scholars (SGTS) Program was accepted, which means that I’m going to be taking on another Associate-In position this summer! The course I’ll be teaching during UCSD’s summer session II is PSYC 162 Psychology & Law. PSYC 162 is an upper-division undergraduate course that closely aligns with my research interests, and I’m choosing to teach it over Zoom in order to gain further experience teaching in different environments.

APS & VSS: Upcoming Conference Poster Presentations

Psychology, UC San Diego, Wixted Lab

Today I received word from both the Association for Psychological Science (APS) and the Vision Sciences Society (VSS) that my abstracts were accepted at their annual conventions. Both of these presentations are part of my dissertation work that addresses the often-flat confidence-accuracy relationship found in police lineup rejections. Below is a description of each poster and information on the talks themselves.