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Overview My research interests lie in visual perception, attention, and memory and I explore these topics along a number of fronts. One line of research is linked by a common focus on the nature of persisting object representations - how we perceive and represent visual information as the same objects over time and motion. Coherent visual experience requires first segmenting the incoming visual information into objects (i.e. forming discrete representations) and then binding successive views of the world together into representations of persisting objects. I explore how such processing occurs using both infant cognition and adult perception techiniques. A second line of my research explores various influences on visual search - how we find a target amongst a set of distractors. In one series of experiments we have examined the role of target prevalence, finding that when targets are rarely present, they are more likely to be missed. However, (and thankfully for such real-world important rare searches such as airport baggage screening and radiology) we find that many "low-prevalence" errors can be explained by subjects responding too quickly; when given an opportunity to correct simple motor mistakes, many of these errors are eliminated. In addition, we have been exploring individual differences on such tasks, testing videogame players and the elderly. In general, my research program draws on both adult visual perception and infant cognition work. In my lab, we explore adult visual cognition questions about the nature of visual representations, memory, and attention. In collaboration with infant cognition researchers at Duke and elsewhere, I am also seeking to bridge the sociological gap between these two typically independent research areas. One of the goals of my research program is to explore whether these fields may be examining some of the same underlying mechanisms. See more here. Questions of recent interest include: What is the underlying nature of persisting object representations? How are visual changes detected and what does this tell us about representations and attention? What is the relationship between awareness and visual perception? How do infants keep track of objects over time and motion? How are items detected in rare and real-world visual searches? How and why does videogame playing enhance visual perception? How does attention change with age and how do the elderly compensate for loss? Current and Recent Collaborators
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