Studies of human perception, memory, legal applications of research in cognition, visual perception, relations between low-level visual and higher-order cognitive processing, and accuracy in recognition memory
Increasingly, Loftus has been applying his scientific work to issues in human cognition that have arisen in legal cases. He has participated in one way or another in approximately 1,000 such cases. He has testified as an expert witness in perception, memory, statistics, and video-game behavior in approximately 495 civil and criminal cases. He has testified in superior courts in 13 U.S. states, United States federal courts in 11 different cities, a U.S. Court-martial at the U.S. Naval Air Station Sigonella in Italy, and Canadian court in Winnipeg, Manitoba. His work has been cited by the Innocence project in several of their cases, most notably that of Darrell Edwards.
He has written articles on information loss in the human visual system associated with a witness's seeing someone from a specific distance (most relevant to the Innocence Project work)[1] and visual hindsight bias.[2]