I was invited to give a training open to the entire Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office and their law enforcement counterparts, held at the Los Angeles Police Department Headquarters in DTLA.
Psychology
PSYC 144: Miguel and Silvia Solorio Guest Lecture + Q&A
Psychology, Teaching & Talks, UC San DiegoThe following 2024 recording is from Miguel and Silvia Solorio’s visit to my PSYC 144 Memory & Amnesia class. The class is an upper-division undergraduate course open to all majors. As people outside of my class (including the Solorios) have asked to view this lecture, I wanted to post the link to the podcast recording from that day. The recording is audiovisual.
SD Union Tribune: Richard Atkinson Feature
Psychology, UC San Diego, Wixted LabThe San Diego Union-Tribune wrote a feature on Richard Atkinson, one of the most distinguished and influential memory researchers of all time. The feature highlights a few of his major accomplishments and positions in academia as well as his focus in present day. The article opens with a mention of a project that I’m working on. To quote the lede (with a link to the full-text existing below), “At 96, Richard C. Atkinson talks with interest and enthusiasm about a young professor’s research on reading skills, the same enthusiasm that he has embraced his entire life.”
UCSD Psychology Undergraduate Study Resources
Psychology, Resources, Teaching & Talks, UC San DiegoStudying is a skill, and undergraduates often ask me for studying best-practices. There exists a few study resources for UCSD undergraduates taking classes within the Department of Psychology.
Amici Curiae: People vs. Jason Wright
Psychology, ResourcesThe Innocence Project and the Wilson Center for Science and Justice at Duke Law wrote an amici curiae brief that utilized the two most recent scientific consensus statements in eyewitness memory (and utilized a lot of basic memory science in general). This amici curiae brief cites work from our lab and from our collaborators, and gives an explanation on how…
Resources: Sequential vs. Simultaneous Lineup Superiority
Psychology, ResourcesWhen I give presentations to the legal / criminal justice system on memory science and eyewitness reliability, the topic of lineup superiority invariably comes up in Q&A. Here, I link a few resources (coming from the National Research Council, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, etc.) on ROC Analysis and the rescinded endorsement of the sequential lineup procedure being superior to the simultaneous lineup procedure.
A rate-them-all lineup procedure increases information but reduces discriminability
Psychology, UC San Diego, Wixted LabWe published a new paper of mine in JEP: Applied on the effect of a simultaneous rate-them-all lineup procedure on discriminability.
Response bias modulates the confidence-accuracy relationship for both positive identifications and lineup rejections in a simultaneous lineup task
Psychology, UC San Diego, Wixted LabA 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.
What latent decision variable underlies confidence in police lineup rejections?
Psychology, UC San Diego, Wixted LabA new paper of mine came out in Journal of Memory and Language this past February. This is a math modeling paper looking at whether a MAX or AVG decision rule is being used as the basis for confidence when rejecting a lineup. The decision rule for posIDs, by comparison, is a MAX rule.
The Exoneration of Miguel Solorio
Personal Blog, Psychology, UC San Diego, Wixted LabIn 1998, Miguel Solorio was arrested for a drive-by shooting. On November 9th, 2023, Solorio was exonerated after spending 25 years in prison. I’m happy to have played a role in this exoneration.