Valerie F. Reyna, Ph. D.

Valerie Reyna is Professor of Human Development and Psychology at Cornell University, and a Co-director of the Center for Behavioral Economics and Decision Research. Dr. Reyna holds a Ph.D. in experimental psychology from Rockefeller University, and publishes regularly in such journals as Archives of Internal Medicine, Cognitive Psychology, Current Directions in Psychological Science, Psychological Review, and Psychological Science. Her research encompasses human judgment and decision making, numeracy and quantitative reasoning, risk and uncertainty, medical decision making, social judgment, and false memory. Dr. Reyna’s current research program is focused on risky decision making in adolescents, on risk communication in genetics, cancer, and AIDS prevention, and on criteria for rationality in decision making. She is a developer of fuzzy-trace theory, a model of the relation between mental representations and decision making that has been widely applied in law, medicine, and public health. Dr. Reyna also teaches an undergraduate and a graduate seminar on Risk and Rational Decision Making.

Dr. Reyna has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She is also a Fellow of the Division of Experimental Psychology, the Division of Developmental Psychology, the Division of Educational Psychology, and the Division of Health Psychology of the American Psychological Association, and she is a Fellow of the American Psychological Society. Dr. Reyna has been a Visiting Professor at the Mayo Clinic, a permanent member of study sections of the National Institutes of Health, and a member on advisory panels for the National Science Foundation and the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Reyna was appointed Senior Research Advisor in the United States Department of Education, where she oversaw research grant policies and programs, and has also held leadership positions in organizations dedicated to equal opportunity for minorities and women, and on national executive and advisory boards of Centers and grants with similar goals, such as the Arizona Hispanic Center of Excellence, National Center of Excellence in Women’s Health, and Women in Cognitive Science (supported by a National Science Foundation ADVANCE leadership award).

Dr. Reyna is currently associate editor of Psychological Science, action editor of Memory, and an editorial board member of Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied and Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, leading journals in experimental psychology, and associate editor of Developmental Review, the leading journal of literature review and theory in developmental psychology. Dr. Reyna has received many years of research support from private foundations and from U.S. government agencies. She currently serves as principal investigator of a National Institutes of Health grant to study risk and sexual decision making in youth.

Selected Research Articles

Reyna, V. F., Mills, B., Estrada, S., & Brainerd, C. J. (2007). False memory in children: Data, theory, and legal implications. In M. P. Toglia, J. D. Read, D. F. Ross, & R. C. L. Lindsay (Eds.), The handbook of eyewitness psychology: Memory for events (Vol. I, pp. 479-507). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Reyna, V. F., & Farley, F. (2006). Risk and rationality in adolescent decision making: Implications for theory, practice, and public policy. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 7(1), 1-44.

Reyna, V.F. (2004). How people make decisions that involve risk. A dual-processes approach. Current Directions in Psychological Science. 13, 60-66.

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Last updated January 10, 2007