Ms Maryanne Brassil

Post-Doctoral Research Officer

Law

maryanne.brassil@swansea.ac.uk

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About

Maryanne is a Postdoctoral Research Officer working on the UKRI-funded TRUE project led by Professor Yvonne McDermott Rees, investigating the impact of deepfakes and AI-generated media on perceptions of credibility on user-generated evidence in accountability processes for human rights violations.

Her work on this project so far is focused on investigating how exposure to and knowledge of deepfakes might impact trust in audiovisual media, as well as how judicial warnings may influence juror evaluations of user-generated evidence.

Maryanne is an experimental psychologist. She conducted her PhD research, supported by an Irish Research Council Postgraduate Scholarship, at the Attention and Memory Laboratory at University College Dublin (2020 – 2024). Her thesis explored the cognitive mechanisms that underpin eyewitness susceptibility to misinformation. In particular, she investigated the contribution of individual differences of cognitive abilities in this context, using a systematic review and online and laboratory experimental studies. Prior to her PhD studies, Maryanne completed a BA (Hons) in Psychology at University College Dublin (2017 – 2020).

Areas Of Expertise

Eyewitness memory accuracy
Misinformation
Working memory
Episodic memory
Experimental research design

Career Highlights

Research

Maryanne has conducted several experiments investigating the role of perceptual, attentional, and working memory factors in protecting against misinformation distortions to memory in eyewitness contexts. She has also collaborated on various projects exploring the broader impact of misinformation on judgments, beliefs, and behaviours, including the influences of fake news exposure and conspiracy theories.

Maryanne is particularly passionate about improving the ecological validity of methodologies used in misinformation research, so that we can gain more direct insights into how misinformation is perceived and processed in the real world.

Publications

Research Highlights

Brassil, M., O’Mahony, C., & Greene, C. (2024). Do cognitive abilities reduce eyewitness susceptibility to the misinformation effect? A systematic review. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 0
https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-024-02512-5, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa67725
O’Mahony, C., Brassil, M., Murphy, G., & Linehan, C. (2023). The efficacy of interventions in reducing belief in conspiracy theories: A systematic review. PLOS ONE, 18(4), e0280902
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0280902, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa67724
O’Connor, C., Brassil, M., O’Sullivan, S., Seery, C., & Nearchou, F. (2022). How does diagnostic labelling affect social responses to people with mental illness? A systematic review of experimental studies using vignette-based designs. Journal of Mental Health, 31(1), 115-130.
https://doi.org/10.1080/09638237.2021.1922653, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa67723
O'Meara, P., Coyne, A., & Brassil, M. (2019). An appraisal of investigative psychology and the applications to suspicious approaches to children in the Irish criminal justice system. Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling, 16(3), 213-221.
https://doi.org/10.1002/jip.1530, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa67721

All Research

Journal Articles

Brassil, M., O’Mahony, C., & Greene, C. (2024). Do cognitive abilities reduce eyewitness susceptibility to the misinformation effect? A systematic review. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 0
https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-024-02512-5, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa67725
O’Mahony, C., Brassil, M., Murphy, G., & Linehan, C. (2023). The efficacy of interventions in reducing belief in conspiracy theories: A systematic review. PLOS ONE, 18(4), e0280902
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0280902, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa67724
O’Connor, C., Brassil, M., O’Sullivan, S., Seery, C., & Nearchou, F. (2022). How does diagnostic labelling affect social responses to people with mental illness? A systematic review of experimental studies using vignette-based designs. Journal of Mental Health, 31(1), 115-130.
https://doi.org/10.1080/09638237.2021.1922653, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa67723
O'Meara, P., Coyne, A., & Brassil, M. (2019). An appraisal of investigative psychology and the applications to suspicious approaches to children in the Irish criminal justice system. Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling, 16(3), 213-221.
https://doi.org/10.1002/jip.1530, SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa67721

Key Grants and Projects

Misleading memories: The role of general memory ability in protecting eyewitness recollections from distortion – Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship 2021 - 2024

, €85,333.33

Invited Presentations, Lectures and Conferences

Eyewitness misinformation susceptibility

August 2023

SARMAC XIV Biennial Conference (Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition), Nagoya, Japan
The Mechanisms of Misleading Memories

October 2022

Polish Academy of Sciences Workshop: Cognitive affective biases – from mechanisms to disease symptoms, Kraków, Poland
Susceptibility to the misinformation effect in eyewitness scenarios: The impact of perceptual load and cognitive abilities

August 2022

European Society for Cognitive Psychology Annual Conference, Lille, France

Ms Maryanne Brassil

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