D. Stephen Lindsay is a

cognitive psychologist Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of 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, which he ...

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 remembered, ...

, and a

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

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...

at the

University of Victoria The University of Victoria (UVic or Victoria) is a public research university located in the municipalities of Oak Bay and Saanich, British Columbia, Canada. The university traces its roots to Victoria College, the first post-secondary instit ...

(UVic),

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...

. He received his PhD from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

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 dramatic event that he or she has witnessed. Eyewitness testimony is often relied upon in the judicial system. It can also refer to an individual's memory for a face, where they a ...

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 searching, interviews, interrogations, evidence collection and preservatio ...

, and

therapy A therapy or medical treatment (often abbreviated tx, Tx, or Tx) is the attempted remediation of a health problem, usually following a medical diagnosis. As a rule, each therapy has indications and contraindications. There are many different ...

in the context of the debate over recovered memories. 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 Young Investigator Award in Experimental Psychology in 1995, served as Editor in Chief of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General from 2001 to 2007, became a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science 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. It was established as a men's college in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams, a col ...

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). The ultimate goal of a postdoctoral research position is to pu ...

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 and Westdale, adjacent to the Royal Botanical Ga ...

Education

Lindsay graduated from

Reed College Reed College is a private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus in the Eastmoreland neighborhood, with Tudor-Gothic style architecture, and a forested canyon nature preserve at ...

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

Anchorage, Alaska Anchorage () is the largest city in the U.S. state of Alaska by population. With a population of 291,247 in 2020, it contains nearly 40% of the state's population. The Anchorage metropolitan area, which includes Anchorage and the neighboring Ma ...

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

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

recovered memory Repressed memory is an inability to recall autobiographical information, usually of a traumatic or stressful nature. The concept originated in psychoanalytic theory where repression is defined as a protective mechanism that excludes memory of ...

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 psychoanalysis, hypnosis, journaling, past ...

. 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