TEACHING
My primary teaching interests include psychology and the law, human memory, social and cognitive psychology. I am also interested in the effects of watching film on cognition, perception, and emotion in audiences—an area sometimes called "psychocinematics."
RESEARCH
I am a social/cognitive psychologist focusing primarily on human memory and suggestion. Much of my work revolves around memory distortion in legal contexts (e.g., eyewitness errors), however I also research other causes of wrongful convictions (e.g., false confessions), autobiographical memory, memory for news and political events, stereotypes and other social influences on memory and decision making.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Frenda, S. J., Berkowitz, S. R., Loftus, E. F., & Fenn, K. M. (2016). Sleep deprivation and false confessions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113, 2047-2050.
Frenda, S. J., Patihis, L., Loftus, E. F., Lewis, H. C.*, & Fenn, K. M. (2014). Sleep deprivation and false memories. Psychological Science, 25, 1674-1681.
Patihis, L., Frenda, S. J., LePort, A. K. R., Petersen, N., Nichols, R. M., Stark, C. E. L., McGaugh, J. L., & Loftus, E. F. (2013). False memories in highly superior autobiographical memory individuals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 10, 20947–20952.
Frenda, S. J., Knowles, E. D., Saletan, W., & Loftus, E. F. (2013). False memories of fabricated political events. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49, 280-286.
Frenda, S. J., Nichols, R. M., & Loftus, E. F. (2011). Current issues and advances in misinformation research. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20, 20-23.