Overview
Background
I’m a Professor of Cognitive Science in the School of Psychology at The University of Queensland.
I spend most of my time investigating the cognitive processes involved in learning new skills. For example, we’ve been working closely with policing and security agencies to help experts interpret evidence more effectively and reduce the amount of time that it takes to train examiners. I take great pleasure in working across multiple domains from basic visual processes to high level decision making, misinformation, and insight moments.
I received a BASc in Philosophy and Psychology from The University of Lethbridge, in Alberta, Canada where I grew up, and a PhD in Psychology from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, before moving to Sydney in 2004 for a postdoctoral fellowship at UNSW, and joined The University of Queensland in 2006.
I work with some outstanding collaborators, and I have been fortunate to have many wonderful honours and PhD students in my lab.
Availability
- Professor Jason Tangen is:
- Available for supervision
- Media expert
Fields of research
Qualifications
- Doctor of Philosophy, McMaster University
Research interests
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Expertise in Forensic Decision Making
“CSI”-style TV shows give the impression that fingerprint identification is fully automated. In reality, when a fingerprint is found at a crime scene, it is a human examiner who is faced with the task of identifying the person who left the print. We conducted one of the first empirical tests of fingerprint identification, finding that examiners possess genuine expertise in matching fingerprints (Tangen, Thompson & McCarthy, 2011; Thompson, Tangen & McCarthy, 2013). Since these early experiments, we have conducted dozens of lab- and field-based experiments on fingerprint expert, trainee, and novice participants. We provided evidence that expertise in forensic identification is characteristically fast (Thompson, Tangen & McCarthy, 2014; Thompson, Tangen & Searston, 2014), is affected by the similarity (Searston, Tangen, & Eva, 2016), that the visual structure of forensic evidence is distributed across prior instances (Searston & Tangen, 2016), and is domain specific (Searston & Tangen, 2017). We have examined how experts constrain their attention to relevant features that will enable them to make decisions quickly and accurately (Robson, Tangen, & Searston, 2020), and extract important features more efficiently than novices (Robson, Searston, Edmond, McCarthy, & Tangen, 2020). We have also demonstrated that pooling the decisions of small, independent groups of analysts can substantially boost the performance of these crowds and reduce the influence of errors (Tangen, Kent, & Searston, 2020).
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Communicating Uncertainty
As John Allen Paulos once said, “Uncertainty is the only certainty there is.” Indeed, we all try to articulate or even quantify this sense of uncertainty everyday in predicting future events or deciding what to do. In science, we tend to convey our level of uncertainty by comparing our observations to “chance” or control groups to infer something meaningful about reality. But if uncertainty is not communicated clearly and effectively, then mistakes will happen, even in high-stakes situations where people’s lives are at stake in areas such as diagnostic medicine, legal decision making, climate change, or intelligence analysis. We have explored perceptions of error and involvement of human judgment in each stage of forensic analysis (Ribeiro, Tangen, McKimmie, 2019), and demonstrated that people struggle to understand and evaluating probabilistic information (Ribeiro, Tangen, McKimmie, 2020) compared to conveying the same information using a diagnostic information approach that we developed (Edmond, Thompson, & Tangen, 2014), which provides decision-makers with the tools they need to make inferences about the current case based on information about how examiners perform in previous, similar situations. We have translated our findings for use in the legal system to support law reform by publishing dozens of review and commentary papers in leading law reviews, and discipline-focused journals (e.g., Edmond et al, 2014, 2015, 2017).
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Insight and the Eureka Heuristic
An “Aha!” or insight experience occurs when a solution to a problem presents itself suddenly and without warning. For example, while waiting to go to a concert, mathematician Yitang Zhang discovered the solution to the twin prime problem. He said that he “...immediately knew that it would work,” and then it took several months to verify his solution. The mathematician Jacques Hadamard said that, “on being very abruptly awakened by an external noise, a solution long searched for appeared to me at once without the slightest instant of reflection on my part.” Given the myriad thoughts that appear in our minds at any given moment, it’s interesting to know why some ideas are dismissed as meaningless distractions while others are grasped as significant or profound. These insight moments make an idea feel more true or valuable in order to aid quick and efficient decision-making — akin to a heuristic — which we can now detect and measure reliably (Laukkonen & Tangen, 2018). But we have argued that these feelings of insight have a dark side: they can make misinformation feel true and we discuss circumstances where they may inspire false beliefs and delusions (Laukkonen, Kaveladze, Tangen, & Schooler, 2020). Indeed, these so-called false insights have been difficult to investigate, but we have developed a new paradigm to reliably induce false insights in order to explore their origins. Our broader goal is to better understand how to calibrate these experiences so we can help people to better distinguish between true and false information.
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The Flashed Face Distortion Effect
In 2010, Sean Murphy — an honours student in the lab — was “eye aligning” hundreds of faces for a memory experiment we were about to run. He noticed that when he quickly flicked through the faces on the screen one-by-one, they began to appear highly distorted and even monstrous. For example, if a person had a large jaw, it looked particularly large, almost ogre-like. If a person had a slender nose, then it looked remarkably thin. The faces appeared to be almost like caricatures. When Sean stopped, the faces appeared normal again. We described this basic finding as a flashed face distortion effect (Tangen, Murphy, & Thompson, 2011), and uploaded a simple demonstration to YouTube, which attracted a lot of attention so we posted another video shortly after using celebrity faces. We have conducted dozens of experiments since then to figure out how to optimise the effect; we developed an elegant way to quantify its strength, and used multidimensional scaling to predict which faces would appear most distorted. Unfortunately, these experiments were fairly basic in order to fit within the scope of a one-year honours project, so we haven’t yet published the results. We’re hoping to find an enthusiastic PhD student who’s willing to spend a few years working on this project so we can properly investigate this interesting effect.
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The Style of a Category
Humans and non-humans are remarkably sensitive to style. We recognise the works of artists and composers, a sense of what does and does not belong to a particular genre of writing, what drivers in the right lane are likely to do that drivers in the left are not, or what a normal interaction with a teller at our bank is like. Often this sensitivity develops effortlessly and without any intention to learn them. Many animals, such as chimpanzees, rats, pigeons, and fish can demonstrate similar sensitivities to style in art, music, and even handwriting. For example, we demonstrated that even honeybees can learn to distinguish paintings by Monet from those by Picasso (Wu, Moreno, Tangen, & Reinhard, 2013). The visual style of a category refers to the features and visual cues that covary across images. For example, Monet was certainly fond of waterlilies, but this feature certainly doesn’t define his artistic style. It’s the same notion as Wittgenstein’s description of various “games” — board games and ball games have some commonalities, but also many differences. It is only when you look across several instances that a resemblance emerges. For example, we demonstrated that people are able to remember images that have been downscaled to a single pixel and can distinguish between categories well above chance with images that are only 2x2 pixels (Searston, Thompson, Vokey, French, & Tangen, 2019). Much of the research in our lab is based on this notion of style since this sensitivity influences our performance in virtually every task that we undertake.
Research impacts
Accurate and timely identification of criminals and crime scene evidence is an important issue for Australia’s law enforcement agencies. Upholding legal processes and criminal justice social legitimacy through more reliable forensic evidence will help to prevent wrongful convictions and permit rightful convictions. Indeed, the consequences of misses and false identifications in forensics are potentially devastating – innocent people could be wrongly convicted, and guilty people could pass undetected or be wrongly acquitted. Our research has resulted in a better understanding of the source of identification errors, the factors that influence performance, and the nature of expertise in fingerprint identification. We provide a scientific basis for demonstrating the validity of forensic methods and measures of uncertainty in the conclusions of forensic analyses. This research allows police, intelligence systems and investigators to interpret evidence more effectively and efficiently, help to reduce the amount of time that it takes to train novices to experts, assist forensic examiners in the development of evidence-based training programs, discourage exaggerated interpretations of forensic evidence, and help in the development of a model of expert testimony that does not extend beyond the capabilities of examiners or beyond the scope of our experimental findings.
Works
Search Professor Jason Tangen’s works on UQ eSpace
2014
Journal Article
Understanding expertise and non-analytic cognition in fingerprint discriminations made by humans
Thompson, Matthew B., Tangen, Jason M. and Searston, Rachel A. (2014). Understanding expertise and non-analytic cognition in fingerprint discriminations made by humans. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 737.1-737.3. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00737
2014
Other Outputs
Incentives and Australians’ passport care
Greenaway, Katharine, Peters, Kim, Steffens, Niklas, Haslam, S. Alexander, Sanderson, Penelope and Tangen, Jason (2014). Incentives and Australians’ passport care.
2014
Journal Article
How to cross-examine forensic scientists: A guide for lawyers
Edmond, Gary, Martire, Kristy, Kemp, Richard, Hamer, David, Hibbert, Brynn, Ligertwood, Andrew, Porter, Glenn, San Roque, Mehara, Searston, Rachel, Tangen, Jason, Thompson, Matthew and White, David (2014). How to cross-examine forensic scientists: A guide for lawyers. Australian Bar Review, 39 (174).
2014
Journal Article
Contextual bias and cross-contamination in the forensic sciences: The corrosive implications for investigations, plea bargains, trials and appeals
Edmond, Gary, Tangen, Jason M., Searston, Rachel A. and Dror, Itiel E. (2014). Contextual bias and cross-contamination in the forensic sciences: The corrosive implications for investigations, plea bargains, trials and appeals. Law, Probability and Risk, 14 (1) mgu018, 1-25. doi: 10.1093/lpr/mgu018
2014
Journal Article
Human matching performance of genuine crime scene latent fingerprints
Thompson, Matthew B., Tangen, Jason M. and McCarthy, Duncan J. (2014). Human matching performance of genuine crime scene latent fingerprints. Law and Human Behavior, 38 (1), 84-93. doi: 10.1037/lhb0000051
2013
Journal Article
Expertise in fingerprint identification
Thompson, Matthew B., Tangen, Jason M. and McCarthy, Duncan J. (2013). Expertise in fingerprint identification. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 58 (6), 1519-1530. doi: 10.1111/1556-4029.12203
2013
Journal Article
Identification personified
Tangen, Jason M. (2013). Identification personified. Australian Journal of Forensic Sciences, 45 (3), 315-322. doi: 10.1080/00450618.2013.782339
2013
Other Outputs
The Reserve Bank of Australia security feature perception study report
Tangen, J. M., Grove, P. M., Spehar, B., Kemp, R. I. and White, D. (2013). The Reserve Bank of Australia security feature perception study report. Sydney, Australia: The Reserve Bank of Australia.
2013
Journal Article
A guide to interpreting forensic testimony: scientific approaches to fingerprint evidence
Edmond, Gary, Thompson, Matthew B. and Tangen, Jason M. (2013). A guide to interpreting forensic testimony: scientific approaches to fingerprint evidence. Law, Probability and Risk, 13 (1), 1-25. doi: 10.1093/lpr/mgt011
2013
Journal Article
Honeybees can discriminate between Monet and Picasso paintings
Wu, Wen, Moreno, Antonio M., Tangen, Jason M. and Reinhard, Judith (2013). Honeybees can discriminate between Monet and Picasso paintings. Journal of Comparative Physiology A, 199 (1), 45-55. doi: 10.1007/s00359-012-0767-5
2012
Conference Publication
On discriminating people: visual redundancy in categorization
Wu, Wen, Tangen, Jason M., Vokey, John R. and Humphreys, Michael S. (2012). On discriminating people: visual redundancy in categorization. Canadian Society for Brain Behaviour and Cognitive Science 22nd Annual Meeting, Kingston, ON, Canada, 7-9 June 2012. Ottawa, ON, Canada: Canadian Psychological Association. doi: 10.1037/a0029409
2012
Conference Publication
Putting repetition blindness in context
Vokey, John R., Allen, Scott W. and Tangen, Jason M. (2012). Putting repetition blindness in context. Canadian Society for Brain Behaviour and Cognitive Science 22nd Annual Meeting, Kingston, ON, Canada, 7-9 June 2012. Ottawa, ON, Canada: Canadian Psychological Association. doi: 10.1037/a0029409
2011
Journal Article
The Role of Interest and Images in Slideware Presentations
Tangen, Jason M., Constable, Merryn D., Durrant, Eric, Teeter, Chris, Beston, Brett R. and Kim, Joseph A. (2011). The Role of Interest and Images in Slideware Presentations. Computers and Education, 56 (3), 865-872. doi: 10.1016/j.compedu.2010.10.028
2010
Conference Publication
The mark of the instance: Autoassociative neural-nets as exemplars of storage and retrieval in instance theory
Vokey, John Richard and Tangen, Jason Marcus (2010). The mark of the instance: Autoassociative neural-nets as exemplars of storage and retrieval in instance theory.
2010
Journal Article
Unintended effects of memory on decision making: A breakdown in access control
Humphreys, Michael S., Tangen, Jason M., Cornwell, T. Bettina, Quinn, Emerald A. and Murray, Krista L. (2010). Unintended effects of memory on decision making: A breakdown in access control. Journal of Memory and Language, 63 (3), 400-415. doi: 10.1016/j.jml.2010.06.006
2010
Conference Publication
The importance of ground truth: An open-source biometric repository
Tear, Morgan J., Thompson, Matthew B. and Tangen Jason M. (2010). The importance of ground truth: An open-source biometric repository. 54th Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting 2010, HFES 2010, San Francisco, CA, U.S.A., 27 September-1 October, 2010. United States: Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. doi: 10.1518/107118110794004556
2010
Conference Publication
Expertise in matching fingerprints and faces
Thompson, M. B., Tangen, J. M., Ivison, K. J. and Treloar, R. (2010). Expertise in matching fingerprints and faces. 37th Australasian Experimental Psychology Conference, Melbourne, VIC, Australia, 8-10 April 2010. Melbourne, Vic, Australia: Australian Psychological Society.
2010
Conference Publication
Investigations of print discrimination
Vokey, John and Tangen, Jason (2010). Investigations of print discrimination. AP-LS 2010: American Psychology-Law Society Conference, Vancouver, BC, Canada, 18-20 March 2010.
2010
Conference Publication
Using change detection to explore the role of features and context in object recognition
LaPointe, Mitchell, Vokey, John R., Wu, Wen and Tangen, Jason (2010). Using change detection to explore the role of features and context in object recognition. Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour and Cognitive Science (CSBBCS 2010), Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, 11-13 June, 2010. Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour and Cognitive Science (CSBBCS).
2010
Conference Publication
Death by bullet points? On interest and images in slideware presentations
Tangen, J. M., Constable, M. D. and Kim, J. A. (2010). Death by bullet points? On interest and images in slideware presentations. EPC '10 37th Australasian Experimental Psychology Conference, Melbourne, Vic, Australia, 8-10 April, 2010.
Funding
Current funding
Supervision
Availability
- Professor Jason Tangen is:
- Available for supervision
Before you email them, read our advice on how to contact a supervisor.
Available projects
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Tangen Lab Research
If you'd like to join the lab, please read through some of our projects descriptions and papers to see if you're interested in the research questions we're asking.
Supervision history
Current supervision
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Doctor Philosophy
Resilience in traumatic work situations.
Principal Advisor
Other advisors: Dr Samuel Pearson
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Doctor Philosophy
Holding up a mirror to The Cognitive Reflection Test: Investigating the roles of intuition, reflection and insight in test performance
Principal Advisor
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Doctor Philosophy
Balancing Efficiency with Equity: Exploring the Impact of AI-Driven Tutors on Learning in Higher Education
Principal Advisor
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Doctor Philosophy
AI Tutors As 'Metacognitive Pumps' For Learning and Calibrating Confidence
Principal Advisor
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Doctor Philosophy
Improving adolescents' rationality to improve career decision-making skills and promote wellbeing
Associate Advisor
Other advisors: Dr Michael Noetel
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Doctor Philosophy
Arousal Coherence: Feeling our way through uncertainty
Associate Advisor
Completed supervision
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2024
Doctor Philosophy
Reverse engineering expertise in fingerprint identification
Principal Advisor
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2023
Doctor Philosophy
When "Aha!" moments are wrong: A new paradigm for experimentally induced false insights
Principal Advisor
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2022
Doctor Philosophy
The relationship between visual expertise and learned attention
Principal Advisor
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2020
Doctor Philosophy
Communicating error and expertise in forensic expert testimony
Principal Advisor
Other advisors: Professor Blake McKimmie
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2019
Doctor Philosophy
The Phenomenology of Truth: The Psychological Functions of the Insight Experience
Principal Advisor
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2016
Doctor Philosophy
The Emergence of Expertise with Novel Objects
Principal Advisor
Other advisors: Dr Jenny Burt
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2014
Doctor Philosophy
Visual discrimination on the basis of style: Evaluation of low-levels of awareness in human discrimination
Principal Advisor
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2014
Doctor Philosophy
On expertise in fingerprint identification
Principal Advisor
Other advisors: Professor Penelope Sanderson
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2024
Doctor Philosophy
The Highs and Lows of Visual Categorisation: Insights from Response Time Modeling
Associate Advisor
Other advisors: Dr David Sewell
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2022
Doctor Philosophy
Rethinking Auditory Alarms: Examining the potential for novel auditory displays to overcome the limitations of conventional alarms
Associate Advisor
Other advisors: Professor Penelope Sanderson
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2022
Doctor Philosophy
Understanding the Impact of Schemas on Victim Credibility in Rape Trials
Associate Advisor
Other advisors: Professor Barbara Masser, Professor Blake McKimmie
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2015
Doctor Philosophy
Violent video games and prosocial behavior
Associate Advisor
Other advisors: Professor Mark Nielsen
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2014
Doctor Philosophy
Examining the utility of visual search tasks in assessing preferential attention to fear-relevant stimuli
Associate Advisor
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2014
Doctor Philosophy
Modelling Dynamic Affective and Decision Making Processes during Approach and Avoidance Goal Striving
Associate Advisor
Other advisors: Professor Andrew Neal
Media
Enquiries
Contact Professor Jason Tangen directly for media enquiries about:
- Bias
- Categorisation
- Cognition
- Decision Making
- Discrimination
- Education
- Evidence
- Expertise
- Forensics
- Identification
- Insight
- Instruction
- Judgement
- Learning
- Memory
- Metascience
- Misinformation
- Performance
- Problem Solving
- Rationality
- Reasoning
- Thinking
- Training
- Validation
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