One of the most important abilities we possess is our capacity to detect, discriminate and identify objects in our environment. It is difficult to imagine navigating through the world without the ability to reliably detect objects in our path; or having social interactions without the ability to recognize other people's faces. These are tasks that we perform with ease and on a continual basis every day. But how does our visual system translate the array of light that reaches our eyes into an organized representation of meaningful objects embedded within complex scenes? My research is directed towards understanding some of these processes that are performed on visual patterns after the initial stages of sensory encoding. I am particularly interested in understanding what it is that limits our ability to use the information that is available to us when we are trying to detect or recognize visual patterns. My approach typically involves the use of a variety of psychophysical and signal-processing methods (such as ideal observer analysis and signal detection theory) to quantitatively characterize the mechanisms involved in various perceptual processes, such as perceptual learning, visual completion, face recognition and visual memory decay.
Bold student names indicate a cognitive science standalone student.
| Author | Dissertation Title | Committee |
| Blaha, Leslie | A Dynamic Hebbian-style Model of Configural Learning (December 2010) | Townsend, J. (Co-Chair), Busey, T. (Co-Chair), Gold, J,. Trosset, M. |
| Thomas, Wisdom | Incentives, Innovation, and Imitation: Social Learning in a Networked Group (August 2010) | Goldstone, R. (Co-Chair), Ostrom, E. (Co-Chair), Collins, K., Gold, J., Smith, E. |
| Weidemann, Christophe | Identifying brief stimuli: Perceptual, preferential, and decisional aspects (August 2006) | Shiffrin, R. (Chair), Gold, J., Goldstone, R., Todd, P. |
| Wild, Heather | Applying Signal Detection Theory to Evoked Response Potentials For Understanding Mechanisms of Bias and Sensitivity in Face Detection Tasks (September 2006) | Busey, T. (Co-Chair), Candy, R., Gold, J., Townsend, J. (Co-Chair) |
