Moment by moment the mind-brain is making inferences or attributions about the origins or sources of its own contents. ~ Professor Stephen Lindsay
Professor Stephen Lindsay (@dstephenlindsay) is a cognitive psychologist and the head of The Lindsay Lab at the University of Victoria. Much of his work focuses on human memory.
While Steve is deep into the science and theories of memory, he also looks at the ways we can apply this research to everyday memory phenomena (e.g., eyewitness evidence).
He has authored and co-authored many scientific articles and was Editor in Chief of Psychological Science, the flagship journal of the Association for Psychological Science from 2015 through 2019.
In this episode, Steve takes us on a tour through the world of memory research that is fascinating and full of surprises. It will probably change the way you look at the role of memory and witnesses in the world of law and justice. But it may have even bigger impacts on the way you see your own world.
Topics Covered
- Cognitive psychology
- Applying science and research results appropriately
- The science of human memory
- Change blindness
- False memories
- False confessions
- Evidence and memory
- Eyewitness identification and influence on investigators
- Co-witness contamination
- Influences on expert witnesses
Listen to “31 Stephen Lindsay – Human Memory – From Facts to Falsehoods” on Spreaker.
Quiz
The Quiz for this episode is here.
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Shownotes
4:30 How Steve describes his work
6:00 Cognitive psychology
13:00 Taking care not to overgeneralize research results
19:00 Memory exercise
23:23 Primacy effect
26:40 How memory works
31:30 The illusion we’re seeing everything (we only see what we fauviate on)
31:40 The Invisible Gorilla
33:30 Change blindness
37:00 Different ways of remembering
39:00 Remembering & imagining the past
42:30 False memories
43:40 Slime study
50:00 Photos and memory
54:30 Manipulated images and false memories
1:0:00 False confessions
1:02:00 Suggested non-occurrence of things that actually did happen
1:06:00 Eyewitness identification
1:12:00 Co-witness contamination
1:19:20 Truthiness
1:24:25 The relationship between confidence and accuracy of witnesses
1:26:00 Delayed abuse accusations
1:29:30 Influences on the objectivity or opinions of expert witnesses using scientific approaches1:32:30 The Lindsay Lab