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My research interests are quite broad, but often focus on understanding human memory. My interests include the interplay of conversation and memory, perception and memory, decision-making during study and recall, strategy selection in skill acquisition, memory retrieval, metamemory, misinformation, as well as eyewitness memory and reliability.   One overarching research goal that I have is understanding how people make decisions about whether a face has been previously seen or not. For example, when a crime has been committed, and a suspect has been identified by investigators, they often create a lineup. This lineup includes a photo of the suspect, along with some number of photos that are known to be innocent (i.e., “fillers”). The task of the eyewitness is to select the offender from the lineup if they are present but reject the lineup if the offender is not present. How does an eyewitness decide whether the offender is present in the lineup? If one were to make the fillers more similar to the suspect, how does this affect eyewitness identification? I am currently exploring effective and efficient ways to manipulate suspect-filler similarity and examining how these methods affect eyewitness identification performance. 

As an educator, I am very much interested in teaching students the “WHY” or “HOW” as opposed to the “WHAT”.  That is, my goal is less about teaching students about the scientific consensus about a particular issue, and more about the structure of the underlying problem, and the logic that connects an experiment to a particular solution. I view the learning process as a continuous process that is filled with many errors. I believe that my role as an educator is to create an environment in which such errors can be comfortably made in order to fully understand a student’s comprehension. I believe that such interactions can be used to effectively guide students to a more correct (or refined) understanding.   In other words, I believe that the learning process is/should be interactive, and strongly encourage student engagement that is accompanied by an underlying humility and courage to be wrong, which is driven by willingness to learn. As a result, I feel that my optimal teaching experience involves substantial engagement, discussion, and questions.

EDUCATION:

• Ph.D., Psychology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
• M.A., Psychology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
• B.S., Psychology, Arizona State University

COURSES TAUGHT:

• Human Memory
• Introduction to Cognitive Psychology
• Psychology and Law
• Research Methods and Design

Areas of INTEREST:

SELECT PUBLICATIONS:

• McKinley, G. L., Peterson, D. J. (2023). Using objective measures to examine the effect of suspect-filler similarity on eyewitness identification performance - Final Registered Report. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications. 8, 68.

• McKinley, G. L., Benjamin, A. S., & Gronlund, S. D. (2023). Metamnemonic predictions of lineup identification. Memory,1-20.
• McKinley, G. L., Peterson, D. J., & Hout, M. C. (2023). How does searching for faces among similar-looking distractors affect distractor memory? Memory & Cognition, 1-12.
• McKinley, G. L., Kuhns, J. M., Touron, D. R., & Hertzog, C. (2024). The role of metacognitive uncertainty in the retrieval shift of older adults. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 31(1), 16-37.
• McKinley, G. L., & Benjamin, A. S. (2020). The role of retrieval during study: Evidence of reminding from overt rehearsal. Journal of Memory and Language, 114, 104128.
• McKinley, G. L., Ross, B. H., & Benjamin, A. S. (2019). The role of retrieval during study: Evidence of reminding from self-paced study time. Memory & Cognition, 47, 877-892.
• McKinley, G. L., Brown-Schmidt, S., & Benjamin, A. S. (2017). Common ground in conversation. Memory & Cognition, 45, 1281-1294.