§ 03 People
The lab is the people in it.
Four PhDs underway, a fresh cohort of honours students each year, and collaborators across forensics, policing, and AI.
PI · Lab director
Since 2006
Professor Jason Tangen
I'm a Professor of Cognitive Science at The University of Queensland, originally from Alberta, Canada. I did my BASc in Philosophy and Psychology at The University of Lethbridge and my PhD at McMaster University, then held a postdoctoral fellowship at UNSW before joining UQ in 2006.
Much of our work brings cognitive science and AI together, asking how generative AI can help people learn and think. AI isn't the whole story, though. We also study the quirks of human reasoning, especially the biases that bend our judgements, whether in everyday life or in high-stakes decisions.
I've been lucky to work with some genuinely brilliant students and collaborators over the years. Turning up to the lab to puzzle through these questions with them is still the best part of the job.
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A Current PhD students
Four projects in progress.
Jade Butterworth
in progress
Predicting and enhancing resilience in forensic, policing, and frontline personnel
Brynlea Gibson
in progress
Balancing efficiency with equity: the impact of AI-driven tutors on learning in higher education
Lena Hall
in progress
The illusion of thinking: how sycophantic AI amplifies confirmation bias and undermines reasoning
Dustin Venini
in progress
Stateless minds: the situational awareness gap in LLMs
B Previous PhD students
Nine theses, all defended.
2023
2018
2014
C The lab
The lab, past and present.
Current and former students, plus the professor, around the table at UQ.
D Honours students
Annual honours theses, 2007 onwards.
2025
Emilie Tixeront
Silicon fallacies: comparing human and AI cognitive biases
2025
Martin Komitski
Branded by insight: the power of Aha! moments in brand marketing
2025
Niraasha Munasinghe
Confirmation bias in police command decision-making
2024
Lena Hall
Can insight dimensions and propensity predict paranormal beliefs and conspiracy mentality?
2024
Noah Rose
Does personalised feedback by generative AI improve learning outcomes?
2024
Rick Hoefnagels
Decoding the exponential growth bias
2023
Brynlea Gibson
Can insight moments increase brand appeal for consumers?
2023
Zoe Goldthorpe
Bridging the 2-sigma gap: the efficacy of generative AI as a personalised tutoring tool
2023
Nanna Thomsen
Re-evaluating the cognitive reflection test: cognitive load impairs test performance
2022
Lachlan Brown
The role of fingerprint variation for the development of fingerprint expertise
2022
Paul Prudon
Expert bang-for-buck: feature information & novice recognition memory for fingerprints
2021
Amy Cramb
Effects of information breadth on trust and pro-environmental behavioural intentions
2021
Kaitlin Moat
Is seeing really believing? How media type affects truth judgements
2020
Team Thesis
Developing a masterclass on cognitive forensics
2018
Luke Gao
Considering the alternative: a training method to improve expertise with fingerprints
2018
Hilary Grimmer
Can eliciting feelings of insight influence judgements of fake news
2018
Naomi Hunt
The role of feature lists in fingerprint identification
2018
Kenyon Turner
Cause and effect: the efficacy of causal mechanisms for improving fingerprint identification
2017
Brooklyn Corbett
The role of progressive challenge in the development of perceptual expertise
2017
Daniel Ingledew
Objective Aha! moments: measuring insight using a dynamometer
2017
Kirsty Kent
Harnessing our hidden wisdom: making use of crowds in fingerprint identification
2017
Benjamin Matthews
Deep structure in visual category learning
2017
Ryan Metcalfe
A handful of identities: the nature of identity categorisation in fingerprints
2016
Yinnam Chan
How image resolution affects memory confidence bias and response time judgements
2016
Luke French
Pixels in place of pictures: image resolution and discrimination between visual categories
2016
Samuel Robson
Faces from different dimensions: distinctiveness in the flashed face distortion effect
2016
Liuissa Zhen
Effects of practice testing on learning to discriminate visual categories
2015
Jessica Marris
From novice to expert: investigating the effect of exemplars on learning
2015
Freya Young
Domain specificity vs generality: what upside-down fingerprints can tell us
2012
Jessica Baird
Investigating the nature of fingerprint expertise
2012
Charles Driver
Memory for choices
2012
Hannah Haysom
Could Comic Sans make you smarter? The effects of disfluency on learning outcomes
2012
Ruben Laukkonen
Pupil dilation as a physiological indicator of perceptual expertise
2012
Rachel Searston
Guilty by association: an investigation of bias in fingerprint identification
2011
Elise Jones
Fingerprint identification: the biasing effect of search strategy
2011
Jane Sexton
Proficiency tests in forensic science: a step towards identifying expertise
2011
Billy Sung
When pretty girls turn ugly: the flash face distortion effect
2011
Cindy Theresiana
Associative learning under low contingency awareness and brand image formation
2011
Alice Towler
Charts and fingerprints: a match made in court
2011
Elizabeth Whitehouse
An investigation into disfluency effects: depth of learning and affective outcomes
2010
Sean Murphy
Recognising faces with low levels of information
2010
Jacqueline Seah
The effect of context on brand choice
2009
Merryn Constable
Simplifying learning: bridging the gap between expression and comprehension
2009
Kathleen Ivison
The underlying processes involved in fingerprint identification
2009
Bridie James
Forming attitudes under a low level of awareness
2009
Renée Treloar
Lineup and be counted: memory and presentation mode in fingerprint perception
2009
Katherine Woodward
Investigating the cheater and danger frameworks using a change detection task
2008
Phillip Gee
The perception of fingerprints: style over specifics
2008
Carly Seymour
The preliminary psychophysics of shoeprint identification
2008
Wen Wu
Visual discrimination on the basis of style
2007
Stephanie Goodhew
Judgements of style: people, pigeons, and Picasso
2007
David Miles
A flexible interpretation of events: outliers, expectancy and the causal model
2007
Roxana Pearson
When more causes less: intuitive judgements of negative continuous relationships
2007
Stephen Rollings
Similar causes similar effects: how causal judgements are influenced by similarity