Education
Ph.D., Iowa State University (2024, Cognitive Psychology)
Certificate in Quantitative Psychology, Iowa State University (2024)
B.A., Toronto Metropolitan University (2014, Psychology)
Bio
Nydia Ayala is a tenure-track assistant professor of Psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York (CUNY). She earned her Ph.D. from Iowa State University under the mentorship of Dr. Andrew Smith (primary advisor) and Dr. Gary Wells (secondary advisor). Prior to joining John Jay, she held a tenure-track assistant professor position in the Cognitive and Behavioral Science department at Washington & Lee University. Her research is broadly focused on eyewitness decision-making and the utility of lineup video recordings in assessing identification accuracy.
JJC Affiliations
Courses Taught
Forensic Social and Experimental Psychology (PSY 421)
Professional Memberships
Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition
American Psychology-Law Society
Psychonomic Society
Scholarly Work
Ayala, N.T., Smith, A.M., Ying, R.C., Wells, G.L., & Sommervold, N.M*. (2026). An evidence-based imperative to videorecord eyewitness lineups. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/mac0000269
Ying, R.C., Smith, A.M., & Ayala, N.T. (2026). Toward the systematic assessment of eyewitness identification accuracy. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/mac0000270
Ayala, N.T., Smith, A.M., & Wells, G.L. (2025). Beyond the confidence-accuracy relation: A multiple-reflector-variable approach to postdicting accuracy on eyewitness lineups. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 31(3), 204–227. . https://doi.org/10.1037/xap0000527
Smith, A. M., Ayala, N. T., & Ying, R. C. (2024). Using artificial intelligence to assess eyewitness identification accuracy. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 13(4), 500–504.. https://doi.org/10.1037/mac0000206
Ayala, N.T. & Smith, A.M. (2024) Predicting and postdicting eyewitness identification accuracy on forensic-object lineups. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 14(1), 37–50. https://doi.org/10.1037/mac0000171
Honors and Awards
2025 Raymond S. Nickerson Best Paper Award in the Journal of Experimental Psychology Applied for Ayala, Smith, and Wells (2025)
Research Summary
At a broad level, Dr. Ayala's research interest lies primarily in the application of theories of memory and decision making to improving the collection of eyewitness identification evidence. Two questions with theoretical and applied implications have driven her program of research and address how small, and feasible changes to current eyewitness identification procedure practices can provide a wealth of information to police investigators. First, how can lineup procedures be leveraged to rule out innocent persons from police suspicion (Ayala et al., 2022; Smith & Ayala, 2021; Smith et al., 2022, 2023)? Second, what witness lineup behaviors can police extract from lineup video recordings to improve their capacity to discriminate guilty from innocent suspects (Ayala et al., 2025, 2026)? In answering these questions, her research focuses on how police investigators can best capitalize on the strengths of the human recognition system to incriminate the guilty while still maintaining the risk of mistaken identifications at a minimum.