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.
Author: Anne Yilmaz
National Eye Institute Early Career Scientist Travel Grant
Psychology, UC San DiegoThe 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 DiegoMy 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.
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.
Tips: Overcoming avoidance behaviors in the writing process
Resources, UC San DiegoBelow are some writing tips from a graduate writing retreat hosted by UC San Diego’s Teaching + Learning Commons. These tips are centered around how to overcome resistance to writing when you find yourself doing (or thinking about doing) avoidance behaviors.
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.)