Dr Rachel Searston
Rachel examines the nature of human learning and expertise. Her research spans a range of applied contexts, including forensic science, medical reasoning, and higher education. She collaborates with Australian policing and forensic agencies exploring ways to optimise fingerprint examination decisions. Together with collaborators at the University of Melbourne, she also holds a Networked Society Institute Seed Funding grant on the detection of misinformation or 'fake news' online. She was a University of Melbourne McKenzie Fellow and a Research Fellow in the School of Psychology at The University of Queensland, where she completed her PhD in Cognitive Science.
✓ Eligible to supervise Masters and PhD (as Co-Supervisor) — email supervisor to discuss availability.
Our capacity to exploit our similar past experiences as a guide to the world is one of our most fundamental cognitive functions. How do we generalise from prior experience when recognising a face, discriminating fingerprints, diagnosing disease from an MRI or CT scan, determining guilt or innocence in a criminal case, evaluating the truth of a news headline, or detecting the early stages of a grapevine virus? How do we transfer our abstract knowledge of basic concepts like deep time, entropy, relativity, relativism, or regression to the mean to situations and problems outside of the classroom? What kinds of mental representations help us to generalise? How do they emerge? How can we build them most effectively through experience and training? And how do we augment them with emerging technology and intelligent systems? We investigate such questions of human cognition as they apply to practical problems in industry and education.
Appointments
| Date | Position | Institution name |
|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Lecturer | The University of Adelaide |
| 2017 - 2018 | McKenzie Research Fellow | University of Melbourne |
| 2016 - 2017 | Research Fellow | The University of Queensland |
Education
| Date | Institution name | Country | Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 - 2016 | The University of Queensland | Australia | PhD |
| 2012 - 2012 | The University of Queensland | Australia | Bachelor of Arts (Hons Class I) |
Research Interests
Journals
| Year | Citation |
|---|---|
| 2018 | Searston, R. A., Thompson, M. B., Vokey, J. R., French, L., & Tangen, J. M. (2018). How low can you go? Detecting style in extremely low resolution images. https://psyarxiv.com/zx2gs. DOI |
| 2018 | Towler, A., White, D., Ballantyne, K., Searston, R., Martire, K., & Kemp, R. (2018). Are Forensic Scientists Experts?. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 7(2), 199-208. DOI Scopus2 WoS2 |
| 2018 | Vokey, J., Jamieson, R., Tangen, J., Searston, R., & Allen, S. (2018). A visual familiarity account of evidence for orthographic processing in pigeons (Columbia livia): a reply to Scarf, Corballis, Güntürkün, and Colombo (2017). Animal Cognition, 21(3), 425-431. DOI |
| 2017 | Searston, R., & Tangen, J. (2017). The emergence of perceptual expertise with fingerprints over time. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 6(4), 442-451. DOI Scopus1 WoS1 |
| 2017 | Searston, R., & Tangen, J. (2017). Expertise with unfamiliar objects is flexible to changes in task but not changes in class. PLoS ONE, 12(6), e0178403-1-e0178403-14. DOI Scopus2 WoS1 Europe PMC1 |
| 2017 | Searston, R., & Tangen, J. (2017). Training perceptual experts: Feedback, labels, and contrasts. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 71(1), 32-39. DOI |
| 2017 | Edmond, G., Towler, A., Growns, B., Ribeiro, G., Found, B., White, D., . . . Martire, K. (2017). Thinking forensics: Cognitive science for forensic practitioners. Science and Justice, 57(2), 144-154. DOI Scopus7 WoS6 Europe PMC2 |
| 2017 | Searston, R., & Tangen, J. (2017). The style of a stranger: identification expertise generalizes to coarser level categories. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 24(4), 1324-1329. DOI Scopus3 WoS2 |
| 2016 | Searston, R., Tangen, J., & Eva, K. (2016). Putting bias into context: The role of familiarity in identification. Law and Human Behavior, 40(1), 50-64. DOI Scopus6 WoS6 Europe PMC2 |
| 2016 | Edmond, G., Found, B., Martire, K., Ballantyne, K., Hamer, D., Searston, R., . . . Roberts, A. (2016). Model forensic science. Australian Journal of Forensic Sciences, 48(5), 496-537. DOI Scopus8 WoS6 |
| 2015 | Edmond, G., Tangen, J., Searston, R., & Dror, I. (2015). 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), 1-25. DOI Scopus11 WoS9 |
| 2014 | Edmond, G., Matire, K., Kemp, R., Hamer, D., Hibbert, B., Ligertwood, A., . . . White, D. (2014). How to cross-examine forensic scientists: A guide for lawyers. Australian Bar Review, 39, 174-197. |
| 2014 | Thompson, M. B., Tangen, J. M., & Searston, R. A. (2014). Understanding expertise and non-analytic cognition in fingerprint discriminations made by humans. FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY, 5, 3 pages. DOI WoS2 Europe PMC1 |
Conference Papers
| Year | Citation |
|---|---|
| 2018 | Lodge, J. M., Alhadad, S., & Searston, R. A. (2018). Open science in applied and use-inspired basic research. In UQ Open Science Conference 2018. Brisbane, Australia. |
| 2018 | Thompson, M. B., Searston, R. A., Ribeiro, G., & Tangen, J. M. (2018). Alternative statistical frameworks for communicating the strength of forensic evidence in court. In Australasian Mathematical Psychology Conference. Perth. |
| 2018 | Alhadad, S., Searston, R. A., & Lodge, J. M. (2018). Interdisciplinary Open Science: What are the implications for educational technology research?. In Open Oceans: Learning without borders. Proceedings ASCILITE2018: 35th International Conference on Innovation, Practice and Research in the Use of Educational Technologies in Tertiary Education.. Geelong. |
| 2018 | Thompson, M. B., Tangen, J. M., Searston, R. A., Edmond, G., Eva, K. W., Osborn, S., . . . Raymond, J. (2018). Creating the next generation of perceptual experts in Australia’s Policing and Security Agencies. In Australian & New Zealand Forensic Science Society (ANZFSS) 24th International Symposium. Perth. |
| 2017 | Lodge, J. M., Searston, R. A., & Tangen, J. M. (2017). What is psychological science contributing to higher education?. In Australian Psychology Learning and Teaching Conference. Ipswich, Australia. |
| 2017 | Tangen, J. M., Corbett, B., Matthews, B., Searston, R., & Thompson, M. B. (2017). Progressive challenge in the discrimination of visual categories. In Psychonomic Society 58th Annual Meeting. Vancouver, British Columbia. |
| 2017 | Searston, R. A., Tangen, J. M., & Thompson, M. B. (2017). Collapsing across categories, contexts, and cognitive tasks as an alternative to replication. In 44th Experimental Psychology Conference. Newcastle, Australia. |
| 2017 | Tangen, J. M., Searston, R. A., & Thompson, M. B. (2017). Turning novices into experts with style. In 12th Biennial Meeting of the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition. Sydney, Australia. |
| 2016 | Searston, R. A., & Tangen, J. M. (2016). Perceptual expertise is flexible to changes in task but not changes in class. In 43rd Experimental Psychology Conference. Melbourne, Australia. |
| 2015 | Searston, R. A., & Tangen, J. M. (2015). Should forensic experts justify their decisions in court?. In 5th International Conference on Evidence Law and Forensic Science. Adelaide, Australia. |
| 2015 | Searston, R. A., & Tangen, J. M. (2015). Turning novice identifiers into experts. In 11th Biennial Meeting of the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition. Victoria, BC, Canada. |
| 2015 | Searston, R. A., & Tangen, J. M. (2015). Identification expertise and family resemblance categorisation. In Talk presented at the 42nd Experimental Psychology Conference. Sydney, Australia. |
| 2015 | Searston, R. A., & Tangen, J. M. (2015). Training visual expertise. In 3rd Annual Unfamiliar Face Matching Research Meeting. Sydney, Australia. |
| 2014 | Tangen, J. M., Searston, R. A., & Thompson, M. B. (2014). Visual expertise and identification. In Psychonomic Society 55th Annual Meeting. Long Beach. |
| 2014 | Searston, R. A., & Tangen, J. M. (2014). Mapping the development of identification expertise: A prospective longitudinal approach. In 41st Experimental Psychology Conference. Brisbane, Australia. |
| 2014 | Edmond, G., Found, B., Kemp, R. I., Martire, K., Searston, R. A., Tangen, J. M., . . . White, D. (2014). Psychological factors in the interpretation, delivery and assessment of forensic science evidence. In 22nd International Symposium on the Forensic Sciences of the Australian and New Zealand Forensic Science Society. Adelaide, Australia. |
| 2014 | Searston, R. A., & Tangen, J. M. (2014). Developing expertise in the identification of fingerprints and faces. In 2nd Annual Unfamiliar Face Matching Research Meeting. Sydney, Australia. |
| 2013 | Searston, R. A., & Tangen, J. M. (2013). Training and recruitment in forensic reasoning. In 2013 Fingerprint Experts’ Conference. HMAS Penguin, Sydney, Australia. |
Conference Items
| Year | Citation |
|---|---|
| 2018 | Palada, H., Searston, R. A., Thompson, M. B., Persson, A., & Ballard, T. (2018). Evidence accumulation in a complex visual domain: Applying the linear ballistic accumulator to fingerprint discrimination.. Poster session presented at the meeting of Psychonomic Society 59th Annual Meeting. New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. |
| 2017 | Searston, R. A., Zhen, L., & Tangen, J. M. (2017). Effect of practice testing on learning to discriminate natural categories. Poster session presented at the meeting of Psychonomic Society 58th Annual Meeting. Vancouver, British Columbia. |
| 2014 | Searston, R. A., & Tangen, J. M. (2014). “Match” or “No Match”? Learning to Identify Unfamiliar People. Poster session presented at the meeting of Psychonomic Society 55th Annual Meeting. Long Beach, California. |
| 2013 | Searston, R. A., & Tangen, J. M. (2013). Cognitive bias in fingerprint identification: The subtle effects of familiarity. Poster session presented at the meeting of 40th Experimental Psychology Conference. Adelaide, Australia. |
Report for External Bodies
| Year | Citation |
|---|---|
| 2018 | Kent, K. M., Tangen, J. M., & Searston, R. A. (2018). Wisdom of the Expert Crowd: Aggregating Fingerprint experts’ blind judgments for improved accuracy. |
| 2016 | Searston, R. A., Tangen, J. M., & Thompson, M. B. (2016). Turning novices into fingerprint experts. |
| 2016 | Tangen, J. M., Searston, R. A., & Thompson, M. B. (2016). Error, the demand for hypervigilance, and the abrupt limits of expertise. |
Tangen, J. M., Searston, R. A., Thompson, M. B., Edmond, G., Eva, K. W., Osborn, S, McCarthy, D., Hayes, R. (2018-2022). Australian Research Council Linkage Project Scheme (LP170100086, $AU $534,188) on 'Creating perceptual experts in Australia's policing and security agencies'.
Lodge, J. M., Searston, R. A., Fidler, F., Bailey, J., Little, D., Nolan, D. (2018). Melbourne Networked Society Institute Seed Funding grant ($AU 37,368) on 'Combating fake news and misinformation online: Evaluating and updating conceptual understanding in the networked society'.
Searston, R. A. (2017-2020). University of Melbourne McKenzie Postdoctoral Research Fellowship ($AU 282,245 + $20,000 project costs).
Searston, R. A. (2013-2016). Australian Government Australian Postgraduate Award ($AU 73,959).
I coordinate and teach the capstone course on research methods: Doing Research in Psychology Advanced. I also teach a fourth year course on Mind, Brain & Behaviour.