University of Nottingham Malaysia
School of Psychology
     
  

Visual Cognition

Our research

Our research focuses on understanding how our eyes and brain provide us with information about the world that we can use to recognize and interact with objects, environments and people. We are interested in visual perception from the most basic level (e.g., how we discriminate different shades of colour) to the most complex (e.g., face and object recognition).

To provide this understanding, we use techniques, such as eye-tracking (which allows us to track where participants are looking), EEG-ERP (to measure participants’ brain activity while viewing certain stimuli, such as faces and other objects), and classical behavioral (e.g., remembering faces) and psychophysical paradigms.

 

Current Projects

  • Other race effect in Malaysian population: Malaysia is a country with a multi-ethnic background. In our lab, we are exploring whether this multi-ethnic exposure affects the ability of people to recognize faces of different ethnicities.
  • Effect of quantitative eye movements on face processing task: how many times do we have to look at a face to extract different information, such as gender, familiarity and emotional status?
  • Self-face recognition: how do we know that one particular face is our own? Do we process our own face qualitatively and quantitatively differently to other faces?
  • Featural and holistic processing in face processing: what is the relationship between these processes and face processing tasks?
  • Face and object expertise: does visual experience with an object shape the way we process that object?
  • Mathematical cognition: what are the cognitive mechanisms involved in solving arithmetic problems?
  • Texture perception: how do we distinguish objects purely by virtue of their texture properties?
  • Visual illusions in Malaysia: do different cultural groups see visual illusions to different extents?

Funding

Over the years, group members have received funding from the following sources: A Pump-Priming grant from the Faculty of Science at the University of Nottingham - Malaysia Campus, a Fundamental Research Grant (FRGS) from the Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education (MOE), a ScienceFund grant from the Malaysian Ministry of Science, Technology and Inovation (MOSTI), and grants from the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (UK), the Royal Society (UK), and the British Council.

Visual Cognition

Heat map showing how often participants view different regions of the face in an eyetracking experiment. Red color represent the more visually explored areas.
 
 

Collaborators

Research Interests

  • Face perception and recognition
  • Object perception and recognition
  • Texture perception
  • Visual illusions in Malaysian populations
  • Effect of punctuation on reading
  • Mathematical cognition
 

School of Psychology

University of Nottingham Malaysia
Jalan Broga, 43500 Semenyih
Selangor Darul Ehsan
Malaysia

telephone: +6 (03) 8924 8000
fax: +6 (03) 8924 8018

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