Research

What happens when people discover evidence of experiences that they do not remember, or when they are led to doubt whether the events they remember really happened? How do people resolve this doubt, and how does this resolution process affect their memories?

My research explores how people respond to suggestion, why and when people trust or distrust their memories, and the strategies people use for verifying what they recall. I also study the consequences when people cease believing that a specific memory is accurate.

In many contexts in everyday life - from education, to business, to sport - people receive feedback from others. For this feedback to be at all useful, people must attend to it, engage with it, and be able to remember it at a later time. 

My research explores the cognitive and social processes that determine whether or not learners engage with feedback, and what we can do to foster this engagement. I also attempt to identify and understand what makes certain kinds of feedback 'stick' in memory more readily.

In numerous real-world contexts, it is important for people to be able to recall information as fully and accurately as possible. In education and training, for example, successful retrieval of knowledge is key to subsequent success; in legal contexts, recent years have seen greater understanding of how to maximise the quality and quantity of information gathered from interviewees.

My research explores psychological techniques that help people to remember and report more information.