Rate My Professor Paola Paola Castelli

Paola Castelli is Department Chair of Psychological Science and Associate Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychological and Social Sciences at John Cabot University in Rome, Italy. She has been teaching at the university since 2011. Castelli obtained her Laurea from Sapienza University of Rome in 1998 and her PhD from the University of California, Davis in 2009. In addition to her teaching and research roles, she serves as Chair of the Institutional Review Board, ensuring compliance with ethical standards in human subjects research at John Cabot University.

Castelli's research specializations encompass cognitive development and psychology and law. She investigates the development of psychological processes underlying children’s memory accuracy, with a particular emphasis on memorial and metamemorial processes involved in the formation and rejection of false memories. Her work aims to clarify the conditions through which existing memories are more or less likely to become distorted. This line of investigation also highlights the conditions under which children’s accuracy as witnesses can be compromised or maintained. Key publications include "Resisting imagination and confabulation: Effects of metacognitive training" (Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 2014, co-authored with Simona Ghetti), "Children's perceived emotional behavior at disclosure and short-term disclosure consequences" (2014), "Hearsay versus children's testimony: Does it make a difference in the eyes of the jury?" (Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 2005), and "Principal component analysis-based latent-space modeling of repetition priming in picture naming" (2023, co-authored with T. M. H. Hope and others). Her scholarship contributes to understanding memory distortions and implications for forensic psychology, particularly regarding child witnesses.