{"id":22,"date":"2012-09-05T11:22:33","date_gmt":"2012-09-05T15:22:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/template\/?page_id=22"},"modified":"2026-03-19T08:53:01","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T12:53:01","slug":"research","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/bodegaard\/research\/","title":{"rendered":"Research"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n
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Research<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

For the most up-to-date information, check out the webpage for the Perception, Attention, and Consciousness Laboratory<\/a> here at the University of Florida.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

My lab is interested in how attention and metacognition influence perceptual decision-making, and how the brain produces subjective conscious experiences. To that end, our team is actively investigating several topics, including:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Perceptual Decision-Making in Peripheral Vision<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Funded by a Young Investigator Award from the Office of Naval Research,<\/a>\u00a0my research group is currently investigating\u00a0how attention and metacognitive biases shape perception of the visual periphery<\/strong>.\u00a0 Our previous work indicates\u00a0we might think we see more of the periphery than we really do<\/a>, in not only\u00a0settings with simple visual stimuli<\/a>, but more\u00a0naturalistic environments, too<\/a>.\u00a0 We have published some recent work\u00a0exploring color perception in the periphery<\/a>, and my graduate students Joseph Pruitt and Trevor Caruso have conducted interesting work on this topic, with Joey’s new work finding that under conditions of inattention, people do seem to make more false alarms in the periphery<\/a>. Further, Trevor will have much more to say about this soon, with a new performance-matched paradigm that shows that preliminary story of “overconfidence in the periphery” may be a bit more complicated than we previously thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Overall, psychological research has provided conflicting evidence on whether we perceive the visual periphery in a high degree of detail.\u00a0 Studies demonstrating change blindness<\/strong> and inattentional blindness<\/strong> indicate that we see very little. But other studies indicate we actually see quite a bit, and that perceptual deficits are\u00a0 driven by processing bottlenecks in memory attention. The lab is fortunate to have\u00a0funding from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to replicate and extend work on change blindness<\/a> to test ideas related to the Higher Order Theory of consciousness. Specifically, we are investigating how eye movements influence visual change detection abilities to better understand our subjective experience of peripheral vision. Led by Francis Fallon (SJU), the research group includes David Rosenthal (CUNY), Andrew Haun (UW-Madison), and Alan Lee (Lingnan University, Hong Kong). You can find our latest results on this project in this preprint<\/a> now under review. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Reality Monitoring in Humans and AI<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Saurabh Ranjan, the lab’s first graduate student, has been interested in what distinguishes perceived memories from imagined memories in humans and large language models. His first published study of reality monitoring in humans used behavior and machine learning to show that reality monitoring was better for new and perceived (compared to imagined) words, with modeling results suggesting an \u201cexternalization bias\u201d when judging memory sources.<\/a> He has also published a short commentary on the new HeXaGen model of visual imagery here<\/a>. His thesis work explored speed-accuracy tradeoffs in reality monitoring in humans, and documented differences between human and AI internal models of the world, via imagination networks (you can find his recent preprint investigating vividness reports in humans and LLMs on arXiv<\/a> He successfully defended his dissertation in Summer 2025!<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

What principles govern how our brains integrate sensory information?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

We also study\u00a0how the brain combines information from our auditory and visual modalities<\/strong>\u00a0to produce coherent perception of the world.\u00a0 These studies investigate how things like attention and metacognition interact with our brain’s remarkable capacity to perform sensory inferences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Undergraduate researchers in the lab have helped drive this work forward recently, including work exploring confidence judgments in\u00a0multisensory speech perception<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0sound-induced flash illusion<\/a>.\u00a0 Previously, I\u2019ve used\u00a0computational models to study sensory integration<\/strong>, probing priors which influence how we combine audiovisual signals. I\u2019ve found that these priors are\u00a0stable over time<\/a>,\u00a0change with specific types of experience<\/a>, and\u00a0might be related to positive symptoms of schizophrenia.<\/a>\u00a0This focus on understanding multisensory computation has led to a recent collaboration with the Rahnev lab at Georgia Tech to explore whether\u00a0common computations might underlie both multisensory cue combination and metacognition<\/a>. As of now, it looks like confidence might plan a stronger role in driving sensory integration than once previously thought!<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

How does the brain produce conscious experience?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u200bLastly, we also write about the neural basis of conscious visual experience<\/strong>. For example, I think\u00a0you need prefrontal cortex to have conscious visual experiences<\/a>, and that we shouldn\u2019t be so quick to write off certain theories based on a selective review of the literature.\u00a0Others disagree<\/a>. I have also written with some collaborators about the utility of\u00a0scientific paradigms that match performance across conditions to probe consciousness<\/a>.\u00a0 This in addition to writings about where we might find consciousness in the brain<\/a>, as well as the relevance of paradigms like binocular rivalry for consciousness research<\/a>. Debates surrounding controversial ideas about consciousness have grown particularly lively, following release of this letter in September 2023<\/a>. I posted about why I signed it on Twitter<\/a>, and you can find my public statement on it all at this link<\/a>, which I’ll leave up permanently, whatever happens to the letter itself. These lively debates have continued in 2025, with further explanation for why some theories may be problematic.<\/a> Here’s to hoping that with more data, a clearer story emerges as to the neural mechanisms underlying subjective experience . . . onward! <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\r\n\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n<\/section>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1087,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"featured_post":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"class_list":["post-22","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/bodegaard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/22","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/bodegaard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/bodegaard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/bodegaard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1087"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/bodegaard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/bodegaard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/22\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":339,"href":"https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/bodegaard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/22\/revisions\/339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/bodegaard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}