Current Projects

False, Distorted and Recovered Memories 

As a lab, we're broadly interested in memory and how it works in everyday contexts. Ongoing projects in this area are looking at how therapists handle memory recovery in clinical settings, how expert witness testimony by memory experts is utilised by juries in sexual assault cases, and how memory errors can sometimes benefit us in our day-to-day lives. 

In the past, we've implanted false memories for childhood events, compared different methods of misleading eyewitnesses, and demonstrated how voters misremember the reasons why they voted as they did. 

Misinformation & Conspiracy Theories 

Misinformation is a growing societal problem, one where understanding everyday cognition is key. Our ongoing projects use a range of methodologies to examine susceptibility to misinformation and to design effective interventions that combat misperceptions.

We've previously published work demonstrating how voters can form false memories for fake news, how "push polls" can be used to distort voters' memories of the past, and how misinformation can (sometimes) affect our behaviours. We've also been developing a novel method for reducing susceptibility to conspiracy theories by improving critical thinking skills. 

AI & Deepfake Technologies

Technology plays a significant role in our day-to-day cognition and in our lab we are very interested in examining emerging technologies and how they may (or may not) affect how we think, remember and act. Our members are part of the wider People & Technology research cluster (PaTLAB) at UCC.

In recent years, we've been examining deepfake technology and contrary to our initial expectations, we've found that deepfakes are generally no more effective than simple text at planting false memories for fake news stories or even entirely fabricated movie remakes. We have though demonstrated other harms of deepfakes, like how they may cause confusion over what is real or not and specifically, how they harm women who are targets of non-consensual abusive imagery. 

As our research into false memories and misinformation often involves misleading or deceiving our research participants, we have a specific interest in the ethics and meta-science of deceptive research practices. 

We have previously established that most participants enjoy rich false memory studies and that our debriefing methods are highly effective. We have developed guidelines for the ethical conduct of misinformation studies.