Dr. Lindsey Richland (she/her) is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Irvine in Irvine, California. She specializes in research on pre-testing, children’s reasoning, and mathematical thinking. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2003.

As Director of the UCI Science of Learning Lab, Dr. Richland integrates psychological inquiry with a commitment to ecological validity, utilizing creative methodologies to examine the development of thinking and reasoning in home and schools. In addition, she examines the contributions of stress, identity threat, socialization, culture, and pressure on cognitive processing and learning.

She has received funding from the National Science Foundation to conduct research on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on stress responses and cognitive resources. Richland will study students’ stress in relation to their performance in social science, biology, and education classes that require higher-order thinking, such as making generalizations and encouraging deep thinking about conceptual issues. She is working to develop new strategies to help students focus and engage effectively in online learning.

Recommended research publication: Richland, L. E., Kornell, N., & Kao, L. S. (2009). The pretesting effect: Do unsuccessful retrieval attempts enhance learning? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 15(3), 243–257.