Mario Baldassari

Program affiliation: Cognition and brain sciences

Supervisor: Dr. Stephen Lindsay & C.A.E. Brimacombe

Research interests

My research interests are potentially unlimited within the field of cognitive research, but of particular current interest are the concepts behind distinctiveness, the gathering of eyewitness evidence, and false memories in general. For my undergraduate thesis, I examined the effects of distinctiveness (specifically humor) on memory for an introductory limerick and a proceeding passage. I am currently beginning the work on my Msc. thesis, which will focus on the effects of eyewitness testimony on confidence of investigators, specifically the abilities of police officers to discriminate between accurate and inaccurate witnesses. Beyond these two projects, I am looking to gain experience in differing threads of research and am generally interested in topics that include the experience of remembering and false or inaccurate memories.

Awards

University of Victoria Fellowship
Lake Forest College Edward H. Oppenheimer Memorial Award
Lake Forest College Sterling Price Williams Award in Psychology

Representative publications

Baldassari, M. J., & Kelly, M. R. (submitted). Make ‘em laugh? The mnemonic effects of humor in a speech. Psi Chi Journal of Undergraduate Research.

Kelley, M. R., Reysen, M. B., Knight, G. A., & Baldassari, M. J. (2010, Nov.). Distinctive encoding, cue congruence, and collaborative memory. Poster presented at the 51st annual meeting of The Psychonomic Society, St. Louis, USA.