D. Stephen Lindsay is a

cognitive psychologist Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of human mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning. Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, whi ...

in the field of

memory Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembe ...

, and a

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...

at the

University of Victoria The University of Victoria (UVic) is a public research university located in the municipalities of Oak Bay, British Columbia, Oak Bay and Saanich, British Columbia, Canada. Established in 1903 as Victoria College, British Columbia, Victoria Col ...

(UVic),

British Columbia British Columbia is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Situated in the Pacific Northwest between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that ...

. He received his

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

in 1987. Lindsay's research is focused on human memory performance, the factors and processes that may lead to false memories, incorrect beliefs about past experiences and memory distortions, and the application of these areas to other fields, such as

eyewitness memory Eyewitness memory is a person's episodic memory for a crime or other witnessed dramatic event. Eyewitness testimony is often relied upon in the judicial system. It can also refer to an individual's memory for a face, where they are required to re ...

and its effect on decisions in

criminal investigation Criminal investigation is an applied science that involves the study of facts that are then used to inform criminal trials. A complete criminal investigation can include Search and seizure, searching, interviews, interrogations, Evidence (law), ...

, and

therapy A therapy or medical treatment is the attempted remediation of a health problem, usually following a medical diagnosis. Both words, ''treatment'' and ''therapy'', are often abbreviated tx, Tx, or Tx. As a rule, each therapy has indications a ...

in the context of the debate over

recovered memories Recovered-memory therapy (RMT) is a catch-all term for a controversial and scientifically discredited form of psychotherapy that critics say utilizes one or more unproven therapeutic techniques (such as some forms of psychoanalysis, hypnosis, jour ...

. Lindsay has achieved recognition in his field. He has published scores of journal articles, edited or co-edited several books and contributed chapters to many edited volumes. He was awarded the

American Psychological Association The American Psychological Association (APA) is the main professional organization of psychologists in the United States, and the largest psychological association in the world. It has over 170,000 members, including scientists, educators, clin ...

Young Investigator Award in Experimental Psychology in 1995, served as Editor in Chief of the

Journal of Experimental Psychology The ''Journal of Experimental Psychology'' was a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal published by American Psychological Association. Established in 1916, it became the association's largest and most prestigious journal by the mid-1970s, when ...

: General from 2001 to 2007, became a Fellow of the

Association for Psychological Science The Association for Psychological Science (APS), previously the American Psychological Society, is an international non-profit organization whose mission is to promote, protect, and advance the interests of scientifically oriented psychology in r ...

in 2005, received the University of Victoria Faculty of Social Science's Teaching Excellence award in 2006, and is currently Editor in Chief of Psychological Science. Lindsay became a faculty member at UVic in 1991, previously teaching at

Williams College Williams College is a Private college, private liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts, United States. It was established as a men's college in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim ...

and completing a

post-doctoral fellowship A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). Postdocs most commonly, but not always, have a temporary academ ...

with Larry Jacoby at

McMaster University McMaster University (McMaster or Mac) is a public research university in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The main McMaster campus is on of land near the residential neighbourhoods of Ainslie Wood, Ontario, Ainslie Wood and Westdale, Ontario, Westd ...

Education

Lindsay graduated from

Reed College Reed College is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon, United States. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus in the Eastmoreland, Portland, Oregon, E ...

in 1981 with a BA in psychology. After a brief period working as a construction labourer in

Anchorage, Alaska Anchorage, officially the Municipality of Anchorage, is the List of cities in Alaska, most populous city in the U.S. state of Alaska. With a population of 291,247 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it contains nearly 40 percent of ...

, he began postgraduate study at Princeton in 1983; his doctoral work was supervised by well-known memory researcher

Marcia Johnson Marcia K. Johnson (born 1943) is a Sterling Professor emeritus of Psychology at Yale University. She was born in 1943 in Alameda, California. Johnson attended public schools in Oakland and Ventura. She attended the University of California, Berke ...

. In his dissertation he initially set out to investigate the impact of imagining contrary-to-truth hiding places on children's memory for the actual spatial location of objects. He became interested in Johnson's ongoing work on reality monitoring (the process of distinguishing between memories of external, physically experienced events versus those originating from internal sources such as imagination and thought). This led to work on the broader issues of source monitoring - how people decide where a given memory comes from, whether from own experience, a television broadcast, a story told by a friend etc. His final dissertation focused on source similarity - how alike two potential sources of a memory are - as a factor in increasing the likelihood of a source monitoring error.

Research

Lindsay's early research focused on source monitoring: what people do when they try to identify the origins of memories, knowledge and beliefs. With

and other memory researchers, he was centrally involved in developing the source monitoring framework, a model of the processes involved in source-monitoring decisions. This body of work is cited extensively, had an impact on how memory processes are understood and paved the way for further research on false memories, memory distortion and the nature of metagcognitive judgments. He also investigated what factors could impact the accuracy and confidence of such judgments. His current research on memory performance includes work on improving

recognition memory Recognition memory, a subcategory of explicit memory, is the ability to recognize previously encountered events, objects, or people.Medina, J. J. (2008)The biology of recognition memory. ''Psychiatric Times''. When the previously experienced event ...

sensitivity. Lindsay became interested in memory errors partially due to the

recovered memory Repressed memory is a controversial, and largely scientifically discredited, psychiatric phenomenon which involves an inability to recall autobiographical information, usually of a traumatic or stressful nature. The concept originated in psych ...

debate, and has published work about the consequences of

recovered memory therapy Recovered-memory therapy (RMT) is a catch-all term for a controversial and scientifically discredited form of psychotherapy that critics say utilizes one or more unproven therapeutic techniques (such as some forms of psychoanalysis, hypnosis, jour ...

. and the nature and causes of recovered memory experiences. He has also studied the application of the psychology of memory to eyewitness testimony for many years, beginning with the implications of the source-monitoring framework for the accuracy of eyewitness evidence. His current work related to eyewitness testimony includes research on the influence of (often inaccurate) eyewitness evidence on investigators' decisions about the guilt of suspects.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lindsay, Stephen Living people American expatriates in New Zealand 21st-century American psychologists Princeton University alumni Reed College alumni Academic staff of the University of Victoria Year of birth missing (living people) Psychological Science editors