Presentation: Navy JAG Corps

Psychology, UC San Diego, Wixted Lab

Thank you to the Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps of the United States Navy for having me talk to their defense counsel teams in San Diego, CA and Bremerton, WA today for one of their weekly training days! In my talk, I discussed recall and recognition memory processes, why that distinction matters in the eyewitness domain, and then we talked about how eyewitness IDs are handled (and mishandled) by the criminal justice system. I conceptualize this (mis)handling as being due to the legal system’s lack of understanding on how memory contamination occurs in recognition memory. In my talk, I mentioned the latest consensus paper published in 2021, and introduced some topics that I’ll be discussing in my upcoming paper entitled “The Principles of Memory versus the Federal Rules of Evidence.” (It’s a working title.)

As always, speaking to attorneys about the latest research is always fun for me. I am thankful for this opportunity!

Associate-In: PSYC 144 Memory & Amnesia

Personal Blog, Psychology, Teaching & Talks, UC San Diego

With my name officially on the registrar, I’m happy to announce that I’m teaching a 300-person, upper-division undergraduate course during the Winter 2023 quarter! I’ve accepted an “associate-in-lieu” position in the Department of Psychology at UCSD.

The course is PSYC 144 Memory & Amnesia. The course will review basic research into the nature of memory. It will survey current research and theory concerning human memory and amnesia from both cognitive and neuropsychological perspectives. Topics covered will include short-term memory, encoding and retrieval processes, forgetting, memory distortion, implicit memory, drug effects on memory, amnesic syndromes, and the effects of aging on memory processes.

Stay in the Chair: Ideas for staying focused while writing

Resources, UC San Diego

“Stay in the chair.” It’s one of the mantras used within writing groups at UCSD in order encourage progress on long writing projects. Below are some tips for staying in the chair. The list is broken down by the type of issue impeding focus too—super nifty.

Truthfully, this is one of the most helpful lists I’ve been given for productivity in graduate school.

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Advancement to Candidacy

Personal Blog, Psychology, UC San Diego, Wixted Lab

I’m incredibly proud to report that I recently advanced to candidacy! In our department, that means passing a qualifying paper defense (which I did in July 2020) as well as successfully “defending” a dissertation proposal paper and presentation.

My dissertation, “Evidence of Innocence: The Psychology of Lineup Rejections,” will comprise of three published or to-be-published studies. The first study was published in Law and Human Behavior earlier this year. The second and third studies will be basic-science studies investigating 1) why the confidence-accuracy relationship for lineup rejections ranges from negligible to slightly-positive and 2) the specific decision variable that is used for confidence during a lineup rejection.

Thank you to my committee: Drs. John Wixted (Chair), Tim Brady, Uma Karmarkar, John Serences, and Angela Yu.

 

Presenting: CARTA Student Symposium

CARTA, UC San Diego

Every year, the Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny (CARTA) hosts a student symposium. It’s a chance for students, faculty, outside researchers, and funders to get a glimpse into the research and interests of students within the anthropogeny Ph.D specialization track. As a two-time CARTA Fellowship recipient (each fellowship being $20,000), I also use this time to update generous donors about my current research.

CARTA is inherently interdisciplinary and hosts researchers from fields including psychology, biomedical sciences, neuroscience, biology, linguistics, and the fine arts (amongst other majors). If you’d like to view my five-minute talk called “Recognition Memory” or the talks of my colleagues, you can do so here. (This link will eventually become private by the organization. Please contact me if you do not have access and would like to view the talk.)

AFSP Out of the Darkness Campus Walk

Personal Blog

On Sunday May, 15th, I’ll be participating in the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention‘s (AFSP) “Out of the Darkness” 5k walk at UC San Diego.

Though I have not lost someone to suicide, I believe that destigmatizing mental health struggles is important for the wellness of our communities. (To me, that means showing up for causes that don’t personally affect me. One day, they may.)

 

The Reveal Procedure: Enhancing Evidence of Innocence from Police Lineups

Psychology, UC San Diego, Wixted Lab

Law and Human Behavior chose to highlight a recent paper of mine in their “Research Highlight” series. The paper explores the viability of new police lineup procedure — a “Reveal” procedure — that enhances evidence of suspect innocence in a police lineup. (Lineups are typically designed to gather information about a suspect’s guilt.) This exploration was done using signal-detection-based model of eyewitness memory. LHB created a nifty graphic in their tweet below that explains what the paper is about, whom the paper is for, and why the paper is important. (Links to the original tweet and paper are below if the embed ever fails.)

 

 

View the original tweet.

 Read the paper in full.

 

 

 

Presenting: Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2022)

Psychology, UC San Diego, Wixted Lab

I will be presenting a flash talk at CogSci 2022! The talk is entitled: “Decision Variables in the Case of Police Lineup Rejections.” If you’re interested in learning about the decision rules which participants may use when rejecting a set of stimuli for a recognition memory task, come on by. The 4-5 minute talk will be uploaded virtually for those not going to the in-person conference in Toronto, Canada.

This poster will presented live during the Decision Making 3 session (1:50-2:35pm EST). If you miss the presentation, slides will be posted on the conference website, but a recording will not be available. 

“hello world” (Some Intro-Level R Resources)

Personal Blog, Resources, UC San Diego

Data science proficiency goes hand-in-hand with Ph.D-level research. For most of us, however, we don’t enter graduate school with strong programming skills. Instead, we’re likely thrown into a two-in-one, programming-and-statistical-methods course during our first year of graduate school, using any number of possible languages (MatLab, R, SPSS, etc.). Personally, I’m of the belief that learning R is invaluable. I think the learning curve is steeper compared to other languages, but as you develop proficiency and confidence, I find it to be a dynamic language that can do most-anything you’ll need within the scope of a Ph.D program. (A bonus: It’s heavily used in industry as well.)

Since proficiency comes with practice, I take coding workshops as frequently as they’re available. It solidifies what I already know and keeps me from forgetting methods that I may not use regularly when doing my own research and analyses. Sometimes, I’ll learn more efficient ways to do things too. Also, learning from different teachers has the benefit of having concepts explained in a different ways—things that seemed ‘fuzzy’ when explained by one professor may be crystal clear when explained in a different manner. 

I advocate for a general literacy across a few languages — after all, you’ll have little control over the format of materials sent over by colleagues — but here I thought I’d focus on my favorite beginner-level resources for R programming.

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