My research is in visual cognition and concerns the perception of and memory for complex, natural environments. One strand of this research examines the nature of the internal representation formed during scene viewing and the role of eye movements in the construction of a scene representation. Because of the size and complexity of natural environments, the eyes are reoriented approximately three times each second to fixate local objects and encode detailed visual information.
Eye movements divide the visual perception of a scene into discrete episodes, or views.
My research in this area examines two main questions. The answers to these questions have broad implications for our understanding of visual representation and the role of memory in perception. A second strand of research investigates the influence of conceptual knowledge on visual perception. One of the central questions in cognitive science is whether perceptual processes are guided by higher-level knowledge and expectations or whether perception proceeds relatively independently of such sources of information. In particular I am interested in the influence of scene context on the perceptual identification of local objects.