University of Southampton

Biography

Roberts Research Fellow, University of Southampton.

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Durham, working with Prof. David Milner.

Part time Ph.D student, University of Durham, working with Prof J M Findlay.

Research Associate, University of Durham, working with Prof R Walker.

Duties

Member of the Visual Cognition Group (CVC).

Teaching Activities

Supervising Ph.D students and undergraduate project students. 

Lecturing on third year course in Eye movements.

Research Interests

Oculomotor control and visual cognition. In everyday life the default strategy to sample the visual environment is to move our eyes in fast ballistic movements (saccades) interspersed with periods where the eye remains still (fixations). This is known as saccadic orienting, and its purpose is to re-position the high acuity area of the retina, the fovea, so that detailed inspection can be carried out at the point of fixation. I work with 'normal' and 'special' participants in an aim to understand how normal, and defective saccadic orienting impacts upon the ability to sample and percieve the 'world'.

Work in Progress

I am currenlty working on the effects of complex remote distractors in the RDE paradigm, and also with several other members of the CVC group in southampton, and with other International collaborators, on various projects. Each project measures eye movements for various tasks, for different participant groups. Examples include:

Biases in the processing of emotional stimuli in anxiety, working with Dr Julie Hadwin and Helen Richards; and also with Prof(s) Bradley and Mogg and Louise Neilson on separate projects.

Oculomotor control in Aspergers Syndrome Disorder (ASD) for both low and higher level visuo/cognitive tasks, working with Sheena AuYeung &Tony Brown in Southampton, and collaborators from the University of Durham, and also with someone from the USA and Canada.

Eye movements in 'Prosopagnosia' working with Prof Nick Donnelly and Prof Roz McCarthy, and others.

Eye movements in 'Visual Neglect' in collaboration with colleagues from the Universities of Durham and Northumbria.

Eye movements in ageing populations, in collaboration with colleagues from Tianjin Normal Univerity, China.