Burt Thompson
Professor of Psychology, Niagara University

Research

My students and I conduct research on the general topics of human learning, memory, and perception. We are currently studying various factors that affect face perception, identification accuracy, and eyewitness memory. We also investigate how people interpret scientific evidence and statistical results. Our lab is located in room 107 of the DePaul science building.

Recent presentations and publications from our lab, with undergraduate student names in bold type:

Thompson, B., and Radell, M. L. (2021, May). Student acceptance of anomalous research findings: Explaining treatment implausibility reduces belief in far-fetched results. To be presented at the virtual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science.

Thompson, W. B., Garry, A., Taylor, J., and Radell, M. L. (2020). Is one study as good as three? College graduates seem to think so, even if they took statistics classes. Psychology Learning and Teaching, 19(2), 143-160.

Thompson, B., and Hinkley, K. A. (2019, May). Frequency of video or photographic identification evidence in U.S. criminal cases. Presented at the meeting of the Association for Psychological Science, Washington, D.C.

Garry, A., Thompson, B., and Taylor, J. (2019, May). Base rate neglect in the interpretation of statistical results. Presented at the meeting of the Association for Psychological Science, Washington, D.C.

Thompson, W. B. (2019). Alpha is not the false alarm rate: An activity to dispel a common statistical misconception. Teaching of Psychology, 46, 72-79.

Thompson, W. B. (2018). Eyewitness memory: A field study of viewing angle, pose, and eyewitness age. Applied Psychology in Criminal Justice. 14, 102-119.

Thompson, W. B., Lauher, M. L., and Moody, T. R. (2017). Comparing the defendant to images of the culprit: Interpreting results of mock witness filler-control tests. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 31, 632-643.

Monteleone, R., Austin, L., and Thompson, B. (2017, May). Sleepiness and eyewitness memory. Presented at the meeting of the Association for Psychological Science, Boston.

Lauher, M., Moody, T., Thompson, B., and Rosado, A. (2017, May). Defendant-culprit matching: Fillers reduce incorrect identifications. Presented at the meeting of the Association for Psychological Science, Boston.

Thompson, W. B., Dunkelberger, N., Vescio, S., and Elling, C. (2016). Does a judicial warning improve defendant-culprit matching? Applied Cognitive Psychology, 30, 757-767.