Craig Thorley

Dr Craig Thorley

Senior Lecturer

School of Psychology

Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences


I am a Senior Lecturer in Psychology. I was born and educated in the UK. I relocated to Australia in 2017.

I primarily conduct research on human memory accuracy. For example, I have led projects examining how accurately groups of people recall shared experiences together, how accurately eyewitnesses recall crimes, and how accurately jurors recall trial evidence. Importantly, I am also interested in knowing how human memory accuracy can be improved.

I specialise in teaching people about human memory, memory and law, research methods, and statistics. I have lectured to a range of different audiences including undergraduates, fellow academics, medical professionals, and senior police officers.

  • Education

    Date Institution name Country Title
    2004 - 2007 Lancaster University United Kingdom PhD
    2001 - 2002 Lancaster University United Kingdom MSc Psychological Research Methods
    1998 - 2001 Lancaster University United Kingdom BA (Hons) Psychology
  • Journals

    Year Citation
    2022 Thorley, C., Acton, B., Armstrong, J., Ford, S., & Gundry, M. (2022). Are estimates of faces' ages less accurate when they wear sunglasses or face masks and do these disguises make it harder to later recognise the faces when undisguised?. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 7(1), 17-1-7-12.
    DOI Scopus12 WoS8 Europe PMC8
    2021 O’Brien, F., & Thorley, C. (2021). Memory of people from missing person posters: the number of posters seen, the number of times they are seen, and the passage of time matter. Psychology, Crime & Law, 27(8), 779-795.
    DOI Scopus3 WoS1
    2021 Childs, M. J., Jones, A., Thwaites, P., Zdravković, S., Thorley, C., Suzuki, A., . . . Tree, J. J. (2021). Do individual differences in face recognition ability moderate the other ethnicity effect?. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 47(7), 893-907.
    DOI Scopus8 WoS6 Europe PMC3
    2020 Thorley, C. (2020). How old was he? Disguises, age, and race impact upon age estimation accuracy. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 35(2), 460-472.
    DOI Scopus4 WoS2
    2020 Thorley, C. (2020). The Effects of Acute Moderate and High Intensity Exercise on Memory. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 1-11.
    DOI Scopus12 WoS8 Europe PMC8
    2020 Thorley, C. (2020). Misinformation encountered during a simulated jury deliberation can distort jurors’ memory of a trial and bias their verdicts. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 25(2), 150-164.
    DOI Scopus3
    2019 Romero-Rivas, C., Thorley, C., Skelton, K., & Costa, A. (2019). Foreign accents reduce false recognition rates in the DRM paradigm. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 31(5-6), 507-521.
    DOI Scopus6 WoS3
    2019 Thorley, C., Lorek, J., Dritschel, B., Centifanti, L. C. M., Lyons, M., & Thorley, C. (2019). The impact of individual differences on jurors’ note taking during trials and recall of trial evidence, and the association between the type of evidence recalled and verdicts. PLOS ONE, 14(2), 25 pages.
    DOI Scopus2 WoS2
    2019 Thorley, C. (2019). The impact of prior trial experience on mock jurors’ note taking during trials and recall of trial evidence. Frontiers in Psychology, 10(JAN), 10 pages.
    DOI
    2018 Thorley, C., Almond, L., Gregory, A., McAlonan, V., & McLoughlin, A. (2018). An archival analysis of sexual assault victims’ age estimation accuracy when describing stranger offenders. Psychology, Crime & Law, 24(10), 1030-1049.
    DOI Scopus4 WoS4
    2018 Thorley, C. (2018). Enhancing individual and collaborative eyewitness memory with category clustering recall. Memory, 26(8), 1128-1139.
    DOI Scopus10 WoS8 Europe PMC4
    2017 Thorley, C., & Christiansen, P. (2017). The impact of own and others’ alcohol consumption on social contagion following a collaborative memory task. Memory, 26(6), 1-14.
    DOI Scopus9 WoS6 Europe PMC4
    2017 Thorley, C., & Kumar, D. (2017). Eyewitness susceptibility to co-witness misinformation is influenced by co-witness confidence and own self-confidence. Psychology, Crime and Law, 23(4), 342-360.
    DOI Scopus20 WoS18
    2016 Marion, S. B., & Thorley, C. (2016). A Meta-Analytic Review of Collaborative Inhibition and Postcollaborative Memory: Testing the Predictions of the Retrieval Strategy Disruption Hypothesis. Psychological Bulletin, 142(11), 1141-1164.
    DOI Scopus90 WoS56 Europe PMC34
    2016 Thorley, C., Dewhurst, S. A., Abel, J. W., & Knott, L. M. (2016). Eyewitness memory: The impact of a negative mood during encoding and/or retrieval upon recall of a non-emotive event. Memory, 24(6), 838-852.
    DOI Scopus10 WoS8 Europe PMC3
    2016 Thorley, C. (2016). Note Taking and Note Reviewing Enhance Jurors’ Recall of Trial Information. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 30(5), 655-663.
    DOI Scopus9 WoS6
    2016 Thorley, C., Baxter, R. E., & Lorek, J. (2016). The impact of note taking style and note availability at retrieval on mock jurors? recall and recognition of trial information. Memory, 24(4), 560-574.
    DOI Scopus15 WoS10 Europe PMC2
    2015 Thorley, C. (2015). Blame conformity: Innocent bystanders can be blamed for a crime as a result of misinformation from a young, but not elderly, adult co-witness. PLoS ONE, 10(7), 15 pages.
    DOI Scopus18 WoS15 Europe PMC6
    2014 Schnitzspahn, K. M., Thorley, C., Phillips, L., Voigt, B., Threadgold, E., Hammond, E. R., . . . Kliegel, M. (2014). Mood impairs time-based prospective memory in young but not older adults: The mediating role of attentional control. Psychology and Aging, 29(2), 264-270.
    DOI Scopus20 WoS14 Europe PMC7
    2014 Knott, L. M., & Thorley, C. (2014). Mood-congruent false memories persist over time. Cognition and Emotion, 28(5), 903-912.
    DOI Scopus27 WoS20 Europe PMC15
    2013 Thorley, C., & Rushton-Woods, J. (2013). Blame conformity: Leading eyewitness statements can influence attributions of blame for an accident. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 27(3), 291-296.
    DOI Scopus8 WoS8
    2013 Thorley, C. (2013). Memory conformity and suggestibility. Psychology, Crime and Law, 19(7), 565-575.
    DOI Scopus18 WoS13
    2013 Thorley, C. (2013). The effects of recent sleep duration, sleep quality, and current sleepiness on eyewitness memory. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 27(5), 690-695.
    DOI Scopus7 WoS5
    2011 Dewhurst, S. A., Thorley, C., Hammond, E. R., & Ormerod, T. C. (2011). Convergent, but not divergent, thinking predicts susceptibility to associative memory illusions. Personality and Individual Differences, 51(1), 73-76.
    DOI Scopus50 WoS43
    2009 Thorley, C., & Dewhurst, S. A. (2009). False and veridical collaborative recognition. Memory, 17(1), 17-25.
    DOI Scopus31 WoS27 Europe PMC11
    2009 Dewhurst, S. A., Bould, E., Knott, L. M., & Thorley, C. (2009). The roles of encoding and retrieval processes in associative and categorical memory illusions. Journal of Memory and Language, 60(1), 154-164.
    DOI Scopus41 WoS38
    2007 Thorley, C., & Dewhurst, S. A. (2007). Collaborative false recall in the DRM procedure: Effects of group size and group pressure. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 19(6), 867-881.
    DOI Scopus84 WoS65
  • Position: Senior Lecturer
  • Phone: 83130832
  • Email: craig.thorley@adelaide.edu.au
  • Campus: North Terrace
  • Building: Hughes, floor 5
  • Org Unit: Psychology

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