Barbara Spellman


Barbara Anne Spellman is a currently a professor of law and psychology at the University of Virginia
In 2019, Spellman was one of the women to receive the Women in Cognitive Science Leadership Award and it is sponsored by the Psychonomic Society and Women in Cognitive Science.In 2010, she edited an issue of the Psychonomic Bulletin & Review about the upcoming tends in psychology research and law research. Throughout 2011-2015, she was an editor-in-chief of Perspectives on Psychological Science. In 2016, Spellman co-worte a book called "The Psychological Foundations of Evidence Law" with Michael J. Saks. In 2005 and 2007, she published "Current Directions in Cognitive Science" and "Curr Dir&how Thk Psychig" with Daniel T. Willingham. From 2010-2015, she was an editor of Perspectives on Psychological Science and she during that time period she also spend time about the issues of open and changing science. In 2017, she published a journal article in the Virginia Journal called "How Psychological Assumptions Permeate Law."

Early Life and Education

Spellman was born on September 30, 1956 in NYC. In 1979, she received her B.A. from Wesleyan University. In 1982, she received her law degree from NYU School of Law. During the 1980s she went to Chadbourne & Parke in NYC to practice tax law. She then went to Matthew Bender Company where she was a writer and an editor. In 1993, she received her Ph.D. from UCLA in cognitive psychology. During 1998—2003,she was with the National Institute Mental Health. She was with National Science Foundation during 2003-2007. She was with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus Service Group in Charlottesville during 2005—2008. She is a member of the American Contract Bridge League. And she is also a consultant for the William T.Grant Research Funding.

Research

During her psychology research, her areas of expertise are memory, analogical reasoning and causal reasoning. But now she focuses on judicial reasoning, forensics and the replication crisis in science. At the University of Chicago Law School, wrote an essay with Frederick Schauser, called " Analogy, Expertise, and Experience."