Researcher biography
I'm a Lecturer in the School of Psychology at The University of Queensland, working at the intersection of cognitive, social and applied psychology. My research interests include how people develop expertise, visual attention and inattention, forensic decision-making, epistemic cognition and reasoning, with my current research focusing primarily on the psychology of misinformation and conspiracy beliefs.
Journal Articles
Searston, Rachel A., Thompson, Matthew B., Robson, Samuel G. and Tangen, Jason M. (2025). Beyond minutiae: inferring missing details from global structure in fingerprints. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 10 (1) 3, 1-14. doi: 10.1186/s41235-025-00610-z
Robson, Samuel G., Faasse, Kate, Gordon, Eliza-Rose, Jones, Samuel P., Smith, Natasha and Martire, Kristy A. (2025). People who believe implausible claims are not cognitive misers: evidence from evaluation tasks. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 14 (2), 275-287. doi: 10.1037/mac0000190
Robson, Samuel G., Searston, Rachel A., Thompson, Matthew B. and Tangen, Jason M. (2024). A guide to measuring expert performance in forensic pattern matching. Behavior Research Methods, 56 (6), 6223-6247. doi: 10.3758/s13428-024-02354-y
Robson, Samuel G., Faasse, Kate, Gordon, Eliza-Rose, Jones, Samuel P., Drew, Manisara and Martire, Kristy A. (2024). Lazy or different? A quantitative content analysis of how believers and nonbelievers of misinformation reason. advances.in/psychology, 2024 (1), 1-21. doi: 10.56296/aip00027
Robson, Samuel G. and Tangen, Jason M. (2023). The invisible 800-pound gorilla: expertise can increase inattentional blindness. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 8 (1) 33, 33. doi: 10.1186/s41235-023-00486-x
Martire, Kristy A. A., Robson, Samuel G. G., Drew, Manisara, Nicholls, Kate and Faasse, Kate (2023). Thinking false and slow: implausible beliefs and the cognitive reflection test. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 30 (6), 2387-2396. doi: 10.3758/s13423-023-02321-2
Robson, Samuel G., Tangen, Jason M. and Searston, Rachel A. (2022). Specific versus varied practice in perceptual expertise training. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 48 (12), 1336-1346. doi: 10.1037/xhp0001057
Robson, Samuel G., Tangen, Jason M. and Searston, Rachel A. (2021). The effect of expertise, target usefulness and image structure on visual search. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 6 (1) 16, 16. doi: 10.1186/s41235-021-00282-5
Robson, Samuel G., Baum, Myriam A., Beaudry, Jennifer L., Beitner, Julia, Brohmer, Hilmar, Chin, Jason M., Jasko, Katarzyna, Kouros, Chrystyna D., Laukkonen, Ruben E., Moreau, David, Searston, Rachel A., Slagter, Heleen A., Steffens, Niklas K., Tangen, Jason M. and Thomas, Amberyn (2021). Promoting Open Science: a holistic approach to changing behaviour. Collabra: Psychology, 7 (1) 30137, 1-20. doi: 10.1525/collabra.30137
Robson, Samuel G., Searston, Rachel A., Edmond, Gary, McCarthy, Duncan J. and Tangen, Jason M. (2020). An expert-novice comparison of feature choice. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 34 (5) acp.3676, 984-995. doi: 10.1002/acp.3676
Searston, Rachel A., Thompson, Matthew B., Robson, Samuel G., Corbett, Brooklyn J., Ribeiro, Gianni, Edmond, Gary and Tangen, Jason M. (2019). Truth and Transparency in Expertise Research. Journal of Expertise, 24 (4), 199-209.
Theses
Robson, Samuel (2022). The relationship between visual expertise and learned attention. PhD Thesis, School of Psychology, The University of Queensland. doi: 10.14264/3624f0f
Robson, Samuel (2016). Faces from different dimensions: the role of distinctiveness in the flashed face distortion effect. Honours Thesis, School of Psychology, The University of Queensland.