For the most up-to-date information, check out the webpage for the Perception, Attention, and Consciousness Laboratory here at the University of Florida.
Funded by a new Young Investigator Award from the Office of Naval Research, my research group is currently investigating how attention and metacognitive biases shape perception of the visual periphery. Previous work that I have conducted indicates we might think we see more of the periphery than we really do, in not only settings with simple visual stimuli, but more naturalistic environments, too. We have published some recent work exploring color perception in the periphery, and my graduate students Joseph Pruitt and Trevor Caruso have conducted interesting new work on this topic, with much more to say about it soon.
We are also interested in how the brain integrates information across sensory modalities. Undergraduate researchers in the lab have helped drive this work forward recently, including work exploring confidence judgments in multisensory speech perception and the sound-induced flash illusion. Previously, I’ve used computational models to study sensory integration, probing priors which influence how we combine audiovisual signals. I’ve found that these priors are stable over time, change with specific types of experience, and might be related to positive symptoms of schizophrenia. This focus on understanding multisensory computation has led to a recent collaboration with the Rahnev lab at Georgia Tech to explore whether common computations might underlie both multisensory cue combination and metacognition. We’re very interested to see where this work goes in the future!
I do some writing about conscious visual experience. For example, I think you need prefrontal cortex to have conscious visual experiences, and that we shouldn’t be so quick to write off certain theories based on a selective review of the literature. Others disagree. I have also written with some collaborators about the utility of scientific paradigms that match performance across conditions to probe consciousness. Debates surrounding controversial ideas about consciousness have grown particularly lively in recent years, and the lab is fortunate to have funding from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to replicate and extend work on change blindness to test ideas related to the Higher Order Theory of consciousness. Keep your eyes here for a preprint to be posted in Fall 2023!
Saurabh Ranjan, my first graduate student, has conducted recent work looking at “perceptual reality monitoring,” or how the brain distinguishes between reality and imagination. He presented his first results at VSS 2023, and we’re very excited to go public with more of his results in the next month.
I have also had the privilege of leading fantastic teams of researchers that code cool new things like random dot stimuli for web browsers, and emphasizing rigorous, thorough research with studies that include hundreds of subjects run in the lab.
Overall, I’m a fan of open science (recently started using OSF for recent projects), open code, and open review. The field is moving in some promising directions, and it’s a great time to be a part of it.