Research Areas

The goal of the UBC Visual Cognition Lab is to investigate visual intelligence - the way in which the human visual system uses the light entering the eyes to create a variety of perceptual experiences. We are interested both in exploring the mechanisms that carry this out, and the ways in which this knowledge can help with the design of effective visual displays.

Attention
What it is; how it operates; basic units

Change Blindness
How attention relates to change perception

Culture and Cognition
Looking at the “Nature vs. Nurture” question at the cognitive level

Mindsight
Visual sensing without seeing; “gut feelings”; how this differs in individuals; how it might be trained

Nonconscious Perception
Implicit perception; inattentional blindness

Objects and Events
What they are; how they relate to attention; basic units

Preattentive Vision
The complexity of representations formed rapidly and in parallel across the visual field

Rapid Vision
Rapid recovery of scene properties; statistical summary representations

Scene Perception
Perception of gist; perception of layout; virtual representation of scenes

Space Perception
Representation of various spatial reference frames; invariance to geometrical transformations

Visual Analytics
Using our high-bandwidth visual system to cope with information overload