Daniel Simons

About

Dr. Daniel J. Simons is a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he leads the Visual Cognition Laboratory. He holds a position in the Department of Psychology and is affiliated with the Center for Social and Behavioral Science, as well as holding a courtesy appointment in the Charles H. Sandage Department of Advertising. His research focuses on the limits of awareness and memory, investigating why people are often unaware of these limits and exploring the implications for both personal and professional contexts. Dr. Simons earned his BA from Carleton College and his Ph.D. in experimental psychology from Cornell University. Prior to joining the University of Illinois in 2002, he spent five years on the faculty at Harvard University. Dr. Simons is recognized as a Fellow and Charter Member of the Association for Psychological Science and a fellow of the Psychonomic Society. He is an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow and has received numerous awards for his research and teaching, including the 2003 Early Career Award from the American Psychological Association. Alongside his co-author Christopher Chabris, he received the 2004 Ig Nobel Award for research that combines humor with insight. He was the founding editor in chief of the APS journal Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science. Dr. Simons is the co-author of the 2023 book Nobody's Fool: Why We Get Taken In and What We Can Do About It and the 2010 New York Times bestseller The…

Research topics

• Psychology
• Cognitive psychology
• Social psychology
• Mathematics
• Philosophy
• Combinatorics
• Statistics
• Cognitive science

Selected publications

• The Trajectory of Truth: A Longitudinal Study of the Illusory Truth Effect

  Journal of Cognition · 2021 · 54 citations

  = 4.14; H1), with the effect diminishing as delay increased (H2). False information repeated over short timescales might have a greater effect on truth judgements than repetitions over longer timescales. Researchers should consider the implications of the choice of intersession interval when designing future illusory truth effect research.

  DOI

• A reproducible systematic map of research on the illusory truth effect

  Psychonomic Bulletin & Review · 2021 · 51 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  People believe information more if they have encountered it before, a finding known as the illusory truth effect. But what is the evidence for the generality and pervasiveness of the illusory truth effect? Our preregistered systematic map describes the existing knowledge base and objectively assesses the quality, completeness and interpretability of the evidence provided by empirical studies in the literature. A systematic search of 16 bibliographic and grey literature databases identified 93 re…

  DOI

• Similarity of an unexpected object to the attended and ignored objects affects noticing in a sustained inattentional blindness task

  Attention Perception & Psychophysics · 2023-10-01 · 6 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Inattentional blindness in medicine

  Cognitive Research Principles and Implications · 2024-03-27 · 5 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  People often fail to notice unexpected stimuli when their attention is directed elsewhere. Most studies of this "inattentional blindness" have been conducted using laboratory tasks with little connection to real-world performance. Medical case reports document examples of missed findings in radiographs and CT images, unintentionally retained guidewires following surgery, and additional conditions being overlooked after making initial diagnoses. These cases suggest that inattentional blindness mi…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Subjective evidence evaluation survey for many-analysts studies

  Royal Society Open Science · 2024-07-01 · 5 citations

  articleOpen access

  Many-analysts studies explore how well an empirical claim withstands plausible alternative analyses of the same dataset by multiple, independent analysis teams. Conclusions from these studies typically rely on a single outcome metric (e.g. effect size) provided by each analysis team. Although informative about the range of plausible effects in a dataset, a single effect size from each team does not provide a complete, nuanced understanding of how analysis choices are related to the outcome. We u…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01MH061372

  NIH · $1.5M · 2005

• NIH Grant R01NS041428

  NIH · $1.3M · 2008

• NIH Grant R01NS058758

  NIH · $1.4M · 2012

Frequent coauthors

• Walter R. Boot

  Cornell University

  32 shared

• Christopher F. Chabris

  24 shared

• George E. Carvell

  University of Pittsburgh

  19 shared

• Arthur F. Kramer

  18 shared

• Alex O. Holcombe

  University of Sydney

  16 shared

• Daniel T. Levin

  Vanderbilt University

  15 shared

• Katherine Wood

  Bentley University

  15 shared

• Cary Stothart

  U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences

  14 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Psychology

  Cornell University

  1997

• graduate student, Psychology

  Harvard University

  1992

• B.A., Psychology

  Carleton College

  1991

Similar researchers at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

• Peter Sheldonh-95
• Sang-Hwa Ohh-44
• Steve Hallh-40