Psychology & Law Lab
Meet Our Team
Principal Investigator
Dr. Andrew M. Smith
Andrew Smith is an Assistant Professor in Quantitative Psychology at Iowa State University where he affiliated with both the Cognitive Psychology program and the Psychology and Law Research group.
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He received his Ph.D. in Psychology from Queen's University in Ontario. His research examines memory, judgment, and decision-making primarily in applied settings.
Ph.D. Candidate
Rebecca C. Ying
Rebecca is a fourth-year Cognitive Psychology Ph.D candidate at Iowa State. She received her M.S. in Forensic Psychology from California State University, Los Angeles in 2021.
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Her research interests focus on eyewitness identification procedures and the trade-offs between them. She wants to explore the processes by which eyewitnesses make decisions.
Lab Alumni
Emeritus Faculty
Dr. Gary L. Wells
Gary Wells is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Iowa State University. He received his PhD in Social Psychology from the Ohio State University in 1977. His work has primarily focused on the reliability of eyewitness identification. He has also investigated how extraneous information can bias the conclusions of forensic examiners.
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2024 Ph.D. Graduate
Dr. Nydia T. Ayala
Nydia is now an Assistant Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Science at Washington & Lee University in Lexington, VA. She graduated from the Psych & Law Lab in Spring 2024.​ Her research focuses primarily on the importance of video-taping eyewitness identification procedures.
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