Research
How expertise, attention, and memory shape what we perceive
My program spans cognitive and applied psychology—law, with three connected threads. Each moves between controlled laboratory work and questions that matter in the real world.
Thread 01
Face recognition & eyewitness identification
How are faces encoded, described, and later recognized — and when does putting a face into words help or hurt? I study verbalization and recollection, the confidence–accuracy relationship, lineup construction, and the factors (weapon focus, viewing distance, exposure time) that shape whether an eyewitness can be trusted. This work informs how investigators and courts should weight identification evidence.
Thread 02
Visual attention & applied identity verification
Why do trained professionals still miss fraudulent IDs? Using visual-search paradigms and mobile eye-tracking, I examine how low prevalence, facial variability, feedback, and attentional templates affect identity-matching accuracy — and whether experience actually builds expertise. This line motivated the FACETS database of faces across cameras, time, emotions, and settings.
Thread 03
Social comparison & student belonging
In the Social Comparison (SoCo) lab, my collaborators and I ask why students compare themselves to peers, and how belonging, stress, and optimism shape outcomes for students at Hispanic-majority institutions. This NSF-funded work connects basic social-cognitive processes to educational equity.
Laboratories
MAP Research Laboratory
Memory, Attention, and Perception. Director since 2016. We study how people perceive, remember, and attend to information — especially faces — with applications in eyewitness identification, educational testing, and human–computer interaction. We work by open-science principles: preregistration, shared materials, and reproducible analysis.
SoCo Research Laboratory
Social Comparison. Co-Director since 2023. We investigate social comparison processes, academic self-concept, and sense of belonging among undergraduates, with an emphasis on minoritized and Hispanic-majority student populations.
Selected publications
Representative work
A curated selection. For the complete, current list — 30+ peer-reviewed articles and 5 book chapters — see Google Scholar or ORCID.
- 2024 Huynh, H. P., Thomas, J., Castellanos, I., Weatherford, D. R., & Lilley, M. K. “Social comparison, belongingness, self-doubt, and stress: The case of Hispanic students at Hispanic-majority schools.” Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 46(2), 99–121. doi:10.1177/07399863241292243
- 2023 Erickson, W. B., & Weatherford, D. R. “Measuring the contributions of perceptual and attentional processes in the complete composite face paradigm.” Vision, 7(4), 76. doi:10.3390/vision7040076
- 2021 Weatherford, D. R., Roberson, D. M., & Erickson, W. B. “When experience does not promote expertise: Security professionals fail to detect low-prevalence fake IDs.” Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications. doi:10.1186/s41235-021-00288-z
- 2021 Weatherford, D. R., Meltzer, M. A., Carlson, C. A., & Bartlett, J. C. “Never forget a face: Verbalization facilitates recollection.” Memory & Cognition. doi:10.3758/s13421-020-01085-7
- 2020 Weatherford, D. R., Erickson, W. B., Thomas, J., Walker, M. E., & Schein, B. S. “You shall not pass: How facial variability and feedback affect the detection of low-prevalence fake IDs.” Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 5, 3. doi:10.1186/s41235-019-0204-1
- 2020 Lockamyeir, R. F., Carlson, C. A., Jones, A. R., Carlson, M. A., & Weatherford, D. R. “The effect of viewing distance on empirical discriminability and the confidence–accuracy relationship for eyewitness identification.” Applied Cognitive Psychology, 34(5), 1047–1060. doi:10.1002/acp.3683
- 2020 Weatherford, D. R., Esparza, L. V., Tedder, L., & Hitchcock, O. “Using a fork for a hairbrush: Investigating the dual routes to release from functional fixedness.” The Journal of Creative Behavior. doi:10.1002/jocb.442
- 2014 Alogna, V. K., … Weatherford, D. R., … Zwaan, R. A. “Registered replication report: Schooler and Engstler-Schooler (1990).” Perspectives on Psychological Science, 9(5), 556–578. doi:10.1177/1745691614545653
- 2012 Carlson, C. A., Gronlund, S. D., Weatherford, D. R., & Carlson, M. A. “Processing differences between feature-based facial composites and photos of real faces.” Applied Cognitive Psychology, 26, 525–540. doi:10.1002/acp.2824
Public-facing scholarship includes invited chapters on the psychology of The Handmaid’s Tale, Stranger Things, Westworld, and Game of Thrones — using popular narratives to teach cognitive science.