September 22nd, 2024: Haoqi Wang has recently presented our poster at the 2024 AI in Health conference in Houston. This was a big collaboration, also including Xiomara Gonzalez, Gabriela Renta Lopez, Sara Hull, Mary Catherine Bordes, myself, Seung Choi, Mia Markey and Greg Reece. Departments include UT Austin Biomedical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Educational Psychology. Also MD Anderson Cancer Center Plastic Surgery, and Imaging Physics. And New Mexico State University Psychology.
September 20th, 2024: Today was a fantastic symposium put on by the NMSU Postdoc Association. I was a featured speaker, and discussed National Science Foundation grant writing and other opportunities.
August 25th, 2024: I am beyond thrilled to announce that the National Science Foundation (specifically the Perception, Action, and Cognition program) has decided to fund our most recent proposal. This work included three co-PIs (myself, Carly Leonard of CU Denver, and Andy Leber of Ohio State), but the lion’s share of the work was carried out by the organizers of the Object Perception, Attention, and Memory conference. These include Han Zhang (post-doc at Michigan), Ryan O’Donnell (post-doc at Drexel), and Karolina J. Krzyś (graduate student finishing up at Queen’s University). The project increases financial support available for conference presenters, particularly those from historically underrepresented groups. Principal Investigators and conference organizers will engage in a series of outreach efforts to connect with populations historically underrepresented at OPAM and in the cognitive sciences more broadly. A new keynote speaker format has been adopted in which the speaker shares experiences from their early-career stage that will inspire and guide other early-career researchers. A “Lunch with an Expert” event allows attendees to learn about scientific topics and receive career guidance from established experts in a friendly setting. And outside of the conference itself, OPAM will host online workshops throughout the year, focusing on topics critical to the professional development and technical skill-building of early-career researchers. We are immensely grateful for NSF’s support and cannot wait to expand the impact of OPAM.
August 10th, 2024: Last week, I gave a presentation at the 2024 New Mexico INBRE (Idea Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence) symposium held in Las Cruces. I discussed our work on the development of novel stimuli and bespoke experimental paradigms for studying medical image perception.
August 10th, 2024: We have a new kid-friendly science communication article out in Frontiers for Young Minds. This one is by Shelby O’Leary and myself and it discusses schizophrenia and eye movement behaviors. Check it out, here: https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2024.1274188
June 26th, 2024: I’m very happy to finally announce that (as of July 1st), I will be starting a new role as the Associate Dean for Research in the NMSU College of Health, Education, and Social Transformation (HEST). I’m excited to start this position and help grow and support the excellent research going on in the HEST College.
June 26th, 2024: We have another kid-friendly science communication article out in Frontiers for Young Minds. Jennifer Martinez heads this article on the use of eye-tracking to explore cognitive demands during reading. Check it out here: https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2024.1237161
June 14th, 2024: Juan Guevara Pinto (of Rollins College) and I have just published a chapter in a new text (edited by Megan Papesh and Steve Goldinger). Our chapter is a good introduction for those interested in using pupil dilation to study how people in mundane and serious (e.g., radiological) settings find what they are looking for. Check it out, and pick up a copy of Megan and Steve’s book while you’re at it!
May 29th, 2024: In collaboration with an international team (comprising researchers in the US, Hungary, Portugal, and the Czech Republic), we’ve just put out a collection of articles at Frontiers in Psychology. Together, we put out a call and accepted 10 papers that contribute to our understanding of threat processing and perception. This was led by Andras Zsido (University of Pecs), myself, David March (Florida State University), Carlos Coelho (University of the Azores), and Jakub Polak (Charles University). You can read our lead-in editorial here: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1427224/full?utm_source=Email_to_authors_&utm_medium=Email&utm_content=T1_11.5e1_author&utm_campaign=Email_publication&field&journalName=Frontiers_in_Psychology&id=1427224 and view the full collection here: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/54567/towards-an-understanding-of-the-cognitive-mechanisms-involved-in-threat-processing-and-perception/overview
May 18th, 2024: Three of our students have moved on from the lab, following their Spring 2024 graduation. Discovery Scholars Emily Stutesman, Janelle Hernandez, and Marko Hernandez have graduated and we’ll miss them very much. Emily will be applying to Physician Assistant schools soon, Marko is headed for a graduate program in cognition at Sam Houston State, and Janelle is considering graduate programs in counseling psych. Joining us (or moving up to bigger roles) are three new students. Virginia Millsap (left) is a current research assistant who will be undertaking an Honors College thesis project on threat perception. Aftab Ahmed (middle) will be joining us from St. John’s College as a NM-INBRE Summer Experience student working on medical image perception. And Eli Lara (not pictured) is a current research assistant who will be joining the Discovery Scholars Program to work on a project at the intersection of similarity perception and artificial intelligence. Welcome, Virginia, Aftab, and Eli!
May 7th, 2024: We’ve put out a new article in American Psychologist. David Trafimow led this paper (with me and Andrew Conway) on the extent to which narrow populations are scientifically problematic in Psychological Sciences. Check out the paper, here: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2024-79361-001
May 5th, 2024: The past two weeks have involved first year project presentations from two members of our lab. Ashley Mathis presented her work on aphantasia, and the degree to which individual differences in visual imagery impact visual search performance. And then Aiden Schabacker presented their work on visual memory, which will begin with the creation of a new database of images (and similarity ratings) and normed data for category names for these stimuli. Stayed tuned for more great things out of our group!
April 14th, 2024: We have just published a new paper in Teaching of Psychology. Laura Madson leads this article (with myself and Giovanna Del Sordo) showing that students in team-based learning courses report heightened belongingness relative to students in traditional ones. Check out the full article, here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00986283241243089
April 9th, 2024: Our lab has another SciComm article out in Frontiers for Young Minds. Eben Daggett fronts this article on the importance of the concept of similarity in cognitive science, and methods for quantifying/modeling it. Check it out, here: https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2024.1239117
March 20th, 2024: We’ve put out a new SciComm article in Frontiers for Young Minds. This one is myself and Daniel Berger, discussing how transcranial magnetic stimulation can be used to modify brain activity for research and therapeutic purposes. Check it out, here: https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2024.1248252
March 12th, 2024: A new paper of ours is out (in Scientific Reports), and it represents a large, international collaboration between our lab and labs in Hungary, the Czech Republic, and the UK. Andras Zsido leads this paper on threat perception and prevalence effects where we question much of the work that has been done in this area in recent years. Andras is joined by myself, Marko Hernandez (a Discovery Scholar student from our lab who now has his first publication!), Bryan White, Jakub Polak (of Ambis University), Botond Kiss (of University of Pecs), and Hayward Godwin (of University of Southampton). Check out the paper, here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-56265-1
March 2nd, 2024: If you are in the Albuquerque area on 4/1, please drop by the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center for Brain Recovery and Repair. I’ll be speaking there about our NM-INBRE funded research on medical image perception.
March 2nd, 2024: Hop on Zoom or better yet, come visit the Las Cruces Museum of Nature and Science on 3/19 to take part in “Science Cafe” discussions with me, where the topic will be all things visual cognition!
January 24th, 2024: Andras Zsido’s group (out of University of Pecs, in Hungary) and I have a new paper in Acta Psychologica. This one is led by Diana Stecina, and also includes Cintia Bali. In it, we start breaking down the saliency of threats into shape and valence. Check it out here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001691824000271
December 20th, 2023: Our newest paper is out in PLoS One. In this one, Hayward Godwin (of the University of Southampton) and I look at “information stagnation,” and the implications of giving participants an uncertainty response option during search tasks wherein stimuli may be ambiguous, and therefore search may not be clearly resolved. Check it out here: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0295669&fbclid=IwAR0piFyMtRIvMfcz2VJDiARw0ZLlGdsTDtM0cCxbc3R9tL9IaTuAV_nlPKg
- October 15th, 2023: This week, Haoqi Wang (supervised by Mia Markey) presented a poster at the Biomedical Engineering Society meeting in Seattle. The goal of this work is to create a similarity map of breast reconstruction surgery outcomes for cancer patients. The work is a collaboration between UT Austin, MD Anderson Cancer Center, and my lab at NMSU.
- September 14th, 2023: We’ve got a new paper out in Frontiers in Education. This one is a collaboration with Bryan White (from our lab), Anita Hernandez and Jose Montelongo (of the TPAL Program in NMSU‘s HEST College), and Francisco Serrano-Wall of Texas A&M. In it, we create a database of orthographic transparency ratings for a large set of Spanish/English cognates. Download it here: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2023.1225169
- September 8th, 2023: This week, I got to spend time up on the campus of the University of New Mexico, doing graduate recruiting (for our Department, College, and the Graduate School) at the McNair Conference. It was a fantastic opportunity to meet some gifted young students, hopefully some of whom will join us in Las Cruces next year.
- August 28th, 2023: Happy to announce that our lab is returning to the Object Perception, Attention, and Memory meeting this year, and that we have a trio of excellent posters to be presented. Bryan White (in collaboration with Eben Daggett and myself) will present part of his dissertation work, creating a similarity database for 30 natural (rock) categories. And two of our undergraduate Discovery Scholars will be presenting the results of our NM-INBRE funded medical image perception research. Emily Stutesman will lead the first poster, on the training sessions of this experiment. And Janelle Hernandez will lead the second poster, focused on the retention and transfer session results. This work is also co-authored by Megan Papesh (of UMass Lowell) and Rebecca Penn. Stop by and see these excellent student presentations!
- August 26th, 2023: Our group has another Frontiers for Young Minds science communication paper out this week. This one is by Andras Zsido (from the University of Pecs, in Hungary) and myself on the topic of attentional biases to threats. You can download it here: https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2023.1032968
- July 29th, 2023: Next week, I’ll be traveling to Albuquerque to present our NM-INBRE funded work on medical image perception at the NIH IDeA Western Regional meeting. This work has been a massive undertaking, and involves Megan Papesh (now at UMass Lowell), two of our undergraduate Discovery Scholars (Emily Stutesman and Janelle Hernandez), and two of our PhD studens (Rebecca Penn and Eben Daggett). I’m excited to brief the group on what we’ve been up to, and what is yet to come.
- July 24th, 2023: Lots of stuff going to the Psychonomic Society meeting this year! We just got confirmation on 5 presentations. I will present a talk on our medical image perception training study (in collaboration with Megan Papesh of UMass Lowell, Rebecca Penn, Emily Stutesman, and Janelle Hernandez). Eben Daggett will present a poster on his newest suite of R code to be used for dimension reduction and data visualization. Bryan White (in collaboration with Eben Daggett, and Arryn Robbins of University of Richmond) will present a poster on his dissertation work on the shaping of similarity via category learning. Marko Hernandez will present a poster (in collaboration with Hayward Godwin of University of Southampton, Jakub Polak of Charles University in the Czech Republic, Bryan White, and Andras Zsido of University of Pecs in Hungary) on the prevalence effect as pertains to threatening stimuli. And Collin Scarince (of Texas A&M Corpus Christi) will present a poster demonstrating a modified version of Guided Search that allows for continuous feature dimensions. Lots of new stuff to share, so come check out our talks and posters in San Francisco!
- July 5th, 2023: Fantastic news to share… last week, Eben Daggett passed his master’s thesis defense! Eben created a model of multiple attentional phenomena, such as the attentional blink, and conducted a pair of experiments to validate novel theoretical predictions that fell out of his model. This work is ongoing, but for now, we’re thrilled that Eben has this milestone behind him. Congrats, Master Daggett.
- July 5th, 2023: The newest edition to our lab is Discovery Scholar, Crystal Parra. Crystal has been working in the lab on our NM-INBRE funded research, and is going to start a Discovery Scholars project with myself and Eben Daggett looking at creating large-scale similarity models that can be used to custom tailor perceptual training for anomaly search tasks like radiology. Welcome to the group, Crystal!
- May 16th, 2023: This semester (Spring, 2023) I was honored with an award from the NMSU Teaching Academy for Outstanding Workshop. The Teaching Academy Gala was also covered in an NMSU News story, here: https://newsroom.nmsu.edu/news/nmsu-s-20th-annual-teaching-academy-gala-honors-members–donors/s/98990458-76a4-48bc-bfdf-308800a2a5e6
- May 9th, 2023: Meet our newest graduate students, joining us in the fall. Ashley Mathis (left) is coming to us from University of Arkansas (at Little Rock) and plans to study things like attention, perception, and memory. Sydney Schabacker (right) is joining us from California State University (San Marcos) and will be studying categorization, categorical visual search, and object memory. Welcome to the lab, Ashley and Sydney!
- May 4th, 2023: We have yet another person joining our lab. Ms. Paean Luby will be joining us as a visiting researcher and computer programmer starting in the summer of 2023. Paean comes to us from the University of Richmond, where she works in the lab of Dr. Arryn Robbins (the first PhD student to graduate from this lab!). Paean (and Arryn) will be helping to bring to life a variety of projects we’re planning to do in virtual reality. Welcome to the group, Paean!
- April 24th, 2023: Our newest addition to the lab is Janelle Hernandez. Janelle has been a research assistant in our lab this semester, but has decided to upgrade and become a Discovery Scholar. In her project, she’ll be helping to run our NM-INBRE funded research on medical image perception, and will be working closely with another DSP student, Emily Stutesman, on this work. The pair hope to present some of our results at upcoming conferences in the fall. Welcome, Janelle!
- April 19th, 2023: I’m very pleased to announce that my promotion to the rank of Professor has just been approved!
- April 15th, 2023: At this year’s Rocky Mountain Psychological Association meeting we had lots of new work to present! I gave a symposium (in collaboration with Geoff McKinley and Dan Peterson of Skidmore College) on incidental learning during visual search. Eben Daggett presented our work on modeling of the attentional blink (and other attentional phenomena). Bryan White presented our work (in collaboration with Eben Daggett and Arryn Robbins) on how category learning shapes visual perception. And Discovery Scholar Marko Hernandez presented our work on threat perception and the low-prevalence effect (in collaboration with Bryan White, Hayward Godwin, Jakub Polak, and Andras Zsido). Lastly, Andras Zsido put together a poster (but could not present in person) on our work on threat perception and eye movements (in collaboration with Diana Stecina). Well done, everyone.
- April 14th, 2023: At this year’s NMSU Undergraduate Research and Creative Arts Symposium, Discovery Scholar Emily Stutesman presented our ongoing NM-INBRE funded research on medical image perception and perceptual training methodology. This work is in collaboration with Rebecca Penn, Megan Papesh, Jessica Madrid, and Phil Post.
- February 27th, 2023: Today, our latest article came out in Memory and Cognition. This one was headed up by Geoff McKinley and Dan Peterson (of Skidmore College), and it looks at incidental memory for facial stimuli. Check it out here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13421-023-01405-7
- February 24th, 2023: Today I participated in NMSU‘s “Research and Creativity Week.” More specifically, I gave a talk (on eye movement research and best practices) at the Data Science Symposium. Reach out via email if you’d like a copy of the slides.
- January 11th, 2023: This post is a bit delayed, but we have a new article out (online first) in the Teaching of Psychology journal. It is led by Laura Madson (supported by myself, Sarah Wheat, and Marlena Fraune), and documents how team-based learning approaches in the classroom can lead to greater perceived social support among students. Download it here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/00986283221136865
- January 10th, 2023: Emily Stutesman, a veteran member of our lab, has just joined us as a Discovery Scholar. She is going to be working on research in medical image perception; specifically, strategy training and perceptual learning paradigms to help improve anomaly detection. Welcome, Emily!
- December 13th, 2022: We have a new Frontiers for Young Minds paper out today. This one is a “New Discovery” paper; a kid-friendly summary of our recent Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied paper wherein we used Lego bricks to study interactive visual search. Check out the work by myself, Bryan White, Jessica Madrid, Hayward Godwin, and Collin Scarince here: https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2022.814043
- November 17th: 2022: This year, we’ve got lots of work being presented at the Psychonomics Society conference, though sadly I cannot attend in person. I have a poster (with Andras Zsido, Hayward Godwin, and Jakub Polak) on how prevalence affects search for threatening items. Eben Daggett is presenting a poster on his recent connectionist modeling work. Andras Zsido (with Cintia Bali, Ferenc Kocsor, and myself) is presenting our work on the effects of emotional valence during search. And Geoff McKinley (with Daniel Peterson and myself) is presenting our work on visual search and incidental memory for faces.
- November 17th, 2022: We have a new paper out in Emotion, led by Andras Zsido (and co-authored by Cintia Bali, Ferenc Kocsor, and myself. Check it out (open access) here: https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2023-17073-001.pdf
- November 5th, 2022: Next week (11/10/22) I’ll be giving an invited lecture to the Northern New Mexico College Biomedical Seminar Series. I’ll be discussing our recent work on attentional control strategies and perceptual learning approaches to improving medical image perception.
- November 2nd and 4th, 2022: This week, I presented an information session and workshop at the NMSU Teaching Academy geared towards making the National Science Foundation a bit less intimidating and obscure to newcomers. My plan is to do an even more detailed workshop in the Spring of 2023. Stay tuned.
- October 20th, 2022: This week, our lab participated in the 2022 NMSU “Research and Creativity Open House.” Special thanks to Bryan and Eben for helping us show some really talented and ambitious undergraduates (from the Honors College) what goes on in our lab, and how to get involved in Psychological Science research!
- October 18th, 2022: Marko Hernandez has just joined our lab as the newest Discovery Scholar. He is going to be working on projects related to threat perception and conditions of low-prevalence. Welcome, Marko!
- September 26th, 2022: Our newest kid-friendly SciComm article has come out in the “Neuroscience and Psychology” section of Frontiers for Young Minds. This one is an article by Andras Zsido and myself on how emotional information is processed and prioritized in visual attention. The full article can be found here: https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2022.781748
- August 4th, 2022: I’m very proud to announce that — now that my rotation at the National Science Foundation is over — I’ve been asked to rejoin the editorial board at AP&P. I’ve started a new rotation at the journal, so send us your best work, fellow scientists!
- July 26, 2022: I recently traveled to Santa Fe, NM to attend the NM-INBRE (Ideas Network of Biomedical Research Excellent) conference where I presented our work on simulated medical image perception.
- May 24th, 2022: Dr. Benjamin Wolfe wrote a blog post for the Psychonomic Society about our recent paper, “The Oddity Detection in Diverse Scenes (ODDS) database: Validated real-world scenes for studying anomaly detection” which appears in Behavior Research Methods. The full article can be found here: https://featuredcontent.psychonomic.org/sometimes-a-little-bit-odd-is-what-you-need-the-odds-database-of-search-stimuli/
- May 13th, 2022: At the end of the month, Haoqi Wang will be presenting our poster at the American Medical Informatics Association meeting, the Clinical Informatics Conference. He will be presenting our work looking at methods of collecting similarity data for use in multidimensional scaling models of breast reconstruction outcomes. This work is in collaboration with Seung Choi and Mia Markey of the University of Texas at Austin, and Gregory Reece of MD Anderson Cancer Center.
- April 23rd, 2022: This coming Tuesday (April 26th), I will be visiting the George Washington University campus and giving a talk at the Mind-Brain Institute. If you’re in the DC area, please stop by!
- April 11th, 2022: Today, I had the excellent fortune to get back on a college campus and give a talk in person! I visited the beautiful University of Delaware campus and the fantastic Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences where I gave a talk on the use of multidimensional scaling to conduct better vision science experiments.
- March 30th, 2022: Our newest database, “The Oddity Detection in Diverse Scenes (ODDS) Database” has just been published at Behavior Research Methods. This work is a rated and validated database of real-world scenes, each of which has been modified multiple times to contain an anomaly (i.e., a blurred/rippled portion of the scene). The database contains hundreds of scenes (and more than 4,000 scene variants!) that should be of use to researchers interested in medical image perception or camouflage detection. We’re thrilled to see this in print at such an excellent journal. Congrats to our many collaborators on this project: Megan Papesh, Saleem Masadeh, Hailey Sandin, Stephen Walenchok, Phil Post, Jessica Madrid, Bryan White, Juan Guevara Pinto, Julian Welsh, Becca Skulsky, and Mariana Cazares Rodriguez. Thanks as well to Electronic Caregiver and the NM-INBRE program for funding this work.
- March 18th, 2022: We have an upcoming poster at the Team-Based Learning Collaborative conference. Laura Madson and Sarah Wheat will present the research we’ve been conducting (in collaboration with Marlena Fraune) on the downstream social support benefits that fall out from team-based learning courses.
- February 1st, 2022: We’ve got a second paper out with Andras Zsido and Diana Stecina (of the VICE lab at the University of Pecs, in Hungary). This one explores the reasons why threatening stimuli receive prioritized attention in visual working memory and it can be found at Acta Psychologica, here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001691822000385
- February 1st, 2022: At long last, our paper using Lego bricks to study interactive visual search and cognitive search strategies is out in JEP:Applied. Congrats to my co-authors Bryan White, Jessica Madrid, Hayward Godwin, and Collin Scarince! You can find the paper here: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2022-16080-001
- November 13th, 2021: We — that is, Andras Zsido, members of his VICE lab (at the University of Pecs, in Hungary), and myself — have just published some new work using eye-tracking to better understand the prioritization of visual attention to threatening stimuli. The work is appearing in the British Journal of Psychology, and can be downloaded here: https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjop.12540
- November 3rd, 2021: Tomorrow, I will present a poster of our newest database at the 2021 Psychonomics Society meeting. This work is a rated and validated database of real-world scenes, each of which has been modified multiple times to contain an anomaly (i.e., a blurred/rippled portion of the scene). The database contains hundreds of scenes (and more than 4,000 scene variants!) that should be of use to researchers interested in medical image perception or camouflage detection. Come see what we’ve been up to! Thanks to my many collaborators on this project: Saleem Masadeh, Hailey Sandin, Megan Papesh, Phil Post, Jessica Madrid, Bryan White, Juan Guevara Pinto, Julian Welsh, Becca Skulsky, and Mariana Cazares Rodriguez. Thanks as well to Electronic Caregiver and the NM-INBRE program for funding this work.
- November 3rd, 2021: On Saturday, Andras Zsido and members of his VICE lab (at the University of Pecs, in Hungary) will present our newest talk at the 2021 Psychonomics Society meeting. Log on to hear about our work on the visual and memorial processing of threatening stimuli.
- November 3rd, 2021: Today I’ll be joining a career panel for the Object Perception, Attention, and Memory conference. It’ll be nice to chat with the OPAM community about careers in academia and the federal government, and I’m excited to be returning to the meeting again after having been a co-organizer way back in 2013 and 2014.
- October 14th, 2021: We have yet another Frontiers for Young Minds paper out. This one focused on work by Arryn Robbins showing that when we look for things in the environment, we use clues from the scene to create more useful target representations in our minds. The full article is here: https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2021.587865
- September 30th, 2021: Our most recent Frontiers for Young Minds paper is out. This one focused on our recent publication on incidental learning during visual search, headed up by Juan Guevara Pinto and Megan Papesh. The full article can be found here: https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2021.588337
- September 30th, 2021: I was recently interviewed by the newly founded Data Science and Applications Center at NMSU about the role and importance of data science in the study of cognition. You can find the interview here: https://datascience.nmsu.edu/news-events/2021/09/interview-with-michael-hout.html
- September 14th, 2021: This month I was given a Special Act Award by the National Science Foundation in recognition of my extra-programmatic activities engaged in during the first year of my rotation as a Program Director.
- September 7th, 2021: Today, Hayward Godwin presented our overview talk “Human Visual Cognition and Decision Making” to the VizTIG 2021 Symposium at the Alan Turing Institute (virtually).
- August 22nd, 2021: This past weekend I volunteered for the National Science Foundation‘s “Ask a Scientist” booth at the Washington DC Awesome-Con. Had a great time answering questions from curious people and trying to get some kids interested in cognition and the brain!
- August 17th, 2021: Bryan White has just successfully passed his comprehensive exams. Congrats, Bryan!
- July 7th, 2021: Becca Skulsky completed her master’s thesis today, having presented her work on templates for rejection with complex visual objects. She’s now about to begin a job in industry back on the east coast. Congrats, Becca!
- July 3rd, 2021: A new Frontiers for Young Minds paper is out by our group. This is a paper about the role of eye movements during speech perception, based on some of the work in an NIH-funded project headed by Justin MacDonald. The original Frontiers in Psychology paper and this one were headed by Edin Sabic, and also included Justin MacDonald, Dan Henning, Hunter (Myuz) Fong, and Audrey Morrow. Nice job, gang. Check out the paper here: https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2021.569624
- June 25th, 2021: I’m happy to announce that we officially have two new people joining our lab. Dr. Megan Papesh — my long time collaborator and friend — is joining the lab as a co-Director to help oversee all of our research and mentorship. And Eben Daggett will be joining our lab as a graduate student working on computational models of attention, search, and eye movements. Welcome, Megan and Eben!
- June 7th, 2021: Today in Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics, we published a large tutorial review article on how to avoid some common mistakes in eye-movement research. Check it out (open access) here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758%2Fs13414-021-02326-w. Congrats to my co-authors, Hayward Godwin, Katrin Alexdottir, Steve Walenchok, and Tony Barnhart!
- May 26th, 2021: As of now, my duties at the National Science Foundation will extend beyond the Perception, Action, and Cognition program for which I am a Program Director. In addition to PAC and my other cross-directorate responsibilities, I’ll now be taking on a position as Program Director for the Cognitive Neuroscience program. Exciting (but busy) times!
- May 24th, 2021: Today I’ll be taking part in a doctoral mentorship panel as part of the 2021 Eye Tracking Research and Applications Symposium. If you’re attending the virtual ERTA 2021, please join in!
- May 20th, 2021: Today I had the great pleasure of speaking with the psychology and neuroscience folks at University of California, Davis. I gave a talk on the use of multi-dimensional scaling to model similarity in empirical studies. Not as much fun as traveling to California and speaking with folks in person, I admit. But it was still a very good experience with an even better audience of grads and faculty.
- April 27th, 2021: I was interviewed for a story on Nature Index about the importance of and what can be gained by doing science communication for a more general and younger audience. The interview was about the recent set of papers our group had written for the journal Frontiers for Young Minds. The full story (posted April, 2021) can be found here: https://www.natureindex.com/news-blog/lessons-writing-a-science-paper-kids-journal-frontiers-young-minds
- April 13th, 2021: At this year’s Undergraduate Research and Creative Arts Symposium (URCAS; put on by the NMSU Honor’s College), we’ll have a pair of posters presented by Jonathan Ayavar and Julian Welsh. Jonathan is a computer science and creative media institute dual-major working in our Addison Care Virtual and Augmented Reality Lab as a Discovery Scholars student. Jonathan is presenting a poster called “Using virtual reality to study best practices in search and rescue ‘clue finding’ tasks” in collaboration with myself, Rebecca Penn, Kitt Phi, and Phil Post. Julian is a psychology major working in our Vision Sciences and Memory Lab as a Building Research Achievements in Neuroscience (BRAiN) student. Julian is presenting a poster called “The ODDS database: Scene stimuli that can be used to study basic and complex visual search” in collaboration with myself, Saleem Masadeh, Hailey Sandin, Megan Papesh, Phil Post, Jessica Madrid, Bryan White, Juan Guevara Pinto, Dre Goode, Rebecca Skulsky, and Mariana Cazares Rodriguez. We are grateful to Electronic Caregiver for supporting the virtual reality research, to the BRAiN program for supporting Julian, and to the NM-INBRE grant (awarded to myself) for supporting both projects.
- March 17th, 2021: Another Frontiers for Young Minds article from our group has come out. This one focuses on the use of virtual reality in rehabilitative medicine and was headed up by Sean Cochran. You can read the full article here: https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2021.552774
- March 15th, 2021: Our newest Frontiers for Young Minds article is out on the experience of benign pain during exercise. This one is Marcel Berger’s first publication, and was also co-authored by Dan Henning. You can read the full article here: https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2021.566420
- February 16th, 2021: Our newest paper is out in Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications. This represents some particularly ambitious and innovative work on the development of expertise in visual search. Check it out here: https://cognitiveresearchjournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s41235-020-00269-8. Congrats to our team, headed by Megan Papesh, and including Juan Guevara Pinto, Arryn Robbins, and Alexis Lopez!
- December 21st, 2020: Our new poster for the Experimental Psychology Society meeting (in London, UK) is now ready for virtual presentation. Andras Zsidó presents our poster — “The effects of task-irrelevant threatening stimuli on orienting- and executive attentional processes under cognitive load” — in collaboration with Diana Stecina, Rebecca Cseh, and myself. Check it out, below!
- November 15th, 2020: I was recently interviewed by the Association for Psychological Science about my move to the National Science Foundation and my work as a Program Director. The full story (posted October 2020) can be found here: https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/hout?fbclid=IwAR3OTltxnSyYGsXXV-mq3K1HTqfoBTjmnPy_lbRa-ai2EX_Dai0j1gjc9FA
- October 29th, 2020: Jessica Madrid has just completed her poster for the virtual Psychonomics conference this year on our work in multi-modal search for Lego (in collaboration with Bryan White, Collin Scarince, and Hayward Godwin). Because this year is an entirely virtual conference, Jessica has created a short video walk through of our work, which you can view below.
- October 14th, 2020: Our newest Frontiers for Young Minds article is out on anticipatory pain perception. This one was headed by Giovanna Del Sordo, Emma Moyer, and from our lab, Dre Goode. You can read the full article here: https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2020.539649
- August 7th, 2020: NMSU news just ran a story on my appointment as Program Director at the National Science Foundation. The full story can be found here: https://newscenter.nmsu.edu/Articles/view/14350/two-nmsu-professors-selected-for-nsf-program-director-appointments
- July 16th, 2020: Our newest work on categorical search is now out in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. This represents Arryn Robbins‘ (the first PhD student in our lab and now a research psychologist at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) long-standing work on typicality effects in search. Check it out here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1747021820936472
- June 2nd, 2020: Now that it’s 100% official, I’m happy to announce that I’m headed to work at the National Science Foundation starting next Monday. I’ll be a Program Director in the Perception, Action, and Cognition Program of the Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences. I’m certainly sad to be leaving the NM/Texas area for a while, but will still be maintaining my labs and mentorship (albeit remotely) for the 2 years I’m at the NSF in the DC area (after which I will return to NMSU full time). I’m incredibly excited and a little nervous to get started, but it should be an awesome opportunity. I had planned at this point to post a “here we come DC” post, but due to covid, I’ll be working remotely from El Paso for at least a couple months (until the NSF building opens back up). So for now, you’re stuck with me, El Paso.
- June 23rd, 2020: Juan Guevara Pinto, Megan Papesh, and I have just published an article in Memory and Cognition. This one uses our prior multidimensional scaling database to probe the fidelity of incidental memories acquired during visual search. Check it out here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13421-020-01051-3
- May 11th, 2020: We (myself and Dr. Phil Post) have just been awarded a Developmental Research Project Program grant from the New Mexico IDeA Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence. Our project is entitled “Strategy training in search: Evidence from eye movements and virtual reality.” We are thrilled to put this money to use to fund research in the Addison Care Virtual and Augmented Reality Laboratory (which we both co-direct). In the project, we’ll explore cognitive strategy use in a longitudinal study focused on simulated radiological screening and simulated search and rescue. We’re thrilled to get to work, and are extremely grateful to NM-INBRE for this opportunity!
- April 20th, 2020: Edin Sabic successfully defended his PhD today, and became the third doctoral graduate from our lab. His work was titled “Eye movements and machine learning: Predicting user search templates.” While it was not ideal to have a defense done over Zoom, he nonetheless did a great job, and passed with flying colors!
- February 22nd, 2020: Steve Walenchok has just published his dissertation work in JEP:HPP. This paper also includes Steve Goldinger and myself, and explores confirmation and prevalence biases in visual search. Check it out here: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2020-12343-003
- February 22nd, 2020: Our newest paper on the spatial arrangement method is out in Behavior Research Methods. This one was fronted by Russell Richie (at the University of Pennsylvania), and also includes Bryan White (from our lab), Sudeep Bhatia (also at UPenn), and myself. Check it out here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13428-020-01362-y?wt_mc=Internal.Event.1.SEM.ArticleAuthorOnlineFirst&utm_source=ArticleAuthorOnlineFirst&utm_medium=email&utm_content=AA_en_06082018&ArticleAuthorOnlineFirst_20200220
- February 22nd, 2020: A new paper by our group is out in Frontiers in Psychology. This paper is by Edin Sabic, Dan Henning, Hunter Myuz, Audrey Morrow, myself, and Justin MacDonald. It explores the eye movement patterns of people during noisy conversational listening tasks. Check it out here: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00200/full
- January 25th, 2020: Today, our VR lab (the Addison Care Virtual and Augmented Reality Laboratory) did some community outreach with Ciudad Nueva, from El Paso. A wonderful group of young persons joined us to learn about virtual and augmented reality, to chat with us, and to try out the equipment. We had a great time and hope they come back and visit us again soon!
- January 15th, 2020: Congratulations to Rebecca Penn! Today she defended the massive undertaking that was her master’s thesis on visual search in the real world (specifically, in settings designed to mimic “clue finding” tasks undertaken by search and rescue responders). Well done, Master Rebecca.
- December 19th, 2019: We have a pair of new Discovery Scholars Program recruits that have recently joined the lab. Mariana Cazares Rodriguez will be working on creating an open access database of real world visual search scenarios. And Jonathan Ayavar is working on some virtual reality search and rescue programming. Welcome, both!
- December 18th, 2019: We just had a new paper come out in the Journal of Sports Sciences. This one (headed by Chris Aiken, and including Phil Post, myself, and Jeff Fairbrother) investigates self-controlled practice in a motor learning task. Find it here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02640414.2019.1704498
- December 18th, 2019: Recently, our newest paper came out in Behavior Research Methods. This paper (headed by Justin MacDonald, and including myself and Joseph Schmidt) is an algorithm used to deal with incomplete block designs in psychology and elsewhere. It is particularly useful for those of you who want to use the spatial arrangement method of collecting similarity data on large stimulus sets. Check it out, here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13428-019-01326-x
- November 11th, 2019: Part of Arryn Robbins‘ dissertation work was just published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. Our new paper, “Scene priming provides clues about target appearance that improve attentional guidance during categorical search” can be found here: https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fxhp0000707. Congrats, Arryn!
- On October 2nd, 2019, the Addison Care Virtual and Augmented Reality Laboratory – sponsored by Las Cruces based tech company Electronic Caregiver and co-directed by myself and Dr. Phillip Post – opened on NMSU campus. This event was widely covered in the media, including:
- Youtube coverage of the lab from NMSU: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0BEX1iw-7U&fbclid=IwAR1v60_w60FgxsRLNjQ2WxoNV4E7DoYKSNrNh2yNxRzcdU7h29agOI7VgMM
- An NMSU news briefing: https://newscenter.nmsu.edu/Articles/view/13886/nmsu-electronic-caregiver-unveil-virtual-reality-lab-at-milton-hall?fbclid=IwAR2wh_bN-EV0OJcRrU39GrLm94G_HOTVQrBT6cq8vpjp7TQfCWXAW9T-sqI
- KVIA El Paso news coverage: https://www.kvia.com/news/new-mexico/virtual-reality-research-lab-unveiled-at-new-mexico-state-university/1128290800
- KTSM El Paso news coverage: https://www.ktsm.com/local/nmsu-unveils-virtual-reality-research-lab-improve-quality-of-life-for-others/
- Las Cruces Sun News coverage: https://www.lcsun-news.com/story/news/2019/10/03/nmsu-professors-demonstrated-functions-of-the-virtual-reality-lab/3847061002/
- September 9th, 2019: Our newest paper was just published at Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications. Jessica Madrid is out front on our new paper, called “Examining the effects of passive and active strategies on behavior during hybrid visual memory search: Evidence from eye tracking.” Congratulations, Jessica! It is open access, so you can download it here: https://cognitiveresearchjournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s41235-019-0191-2?fbclid=IwAR19D0ngAS50Bx96hT_qP2KRb9TntRQzeWnvtUoYI7GQlHb4eeqFC6I54Mw
- September 3rd, 2019: We just had a pair of posters accepted for this year’s Object Perception, Attention, and Memory conference in Montreal, Canada. First, we have Jessica Madrid out front on our poster called “Open the window: Passive search strategies lead to broader attentional distribution during single target and hybrid visual search.” Second, Bryan White will present a poster (in collaboration with Hayward Godwin, Jessica Madrid, Collin Scarince, and myself) called “Every search is awesome!: A pilot study using Lego to examine three-dimensional visual search.” Congrats, Jessica and Bryan!
- July 25th, 2019: Just got one more poster accepted to the 60th Annual Psychonomics Society meeting in Montreal. Juan Guevara-Pinto will present our poster (in collaboration with Megan Papesh and myself) called “The details are in the difficulty: Incidental recognition of objects’ perceptual details following visual search.” Congrats, Megan and Juan!
- July 24th, 2019: We’ve just had a pair of posters accepted to the 60th Annual Psychonomics Society meeting this November in Montreal, Canada. Both projects are in collaboration with Russell Richie and Sudeep Bhatia of the University of Pennyslvania and Bryan White (in my lab). Russell will present our poster titled “Modeling fine-grained word similarity with embeddings from language corpora, free association, and feature norms” and I’ll present a poster called “The spatial arrangement method of collecting similarity ratings can capture higher dimensional, conceptual similarity structures.” Congratulations, guys!
- July 17th, 2019: Last week, I gave a pair of talks in Australia, at Macquarie University and the University of Wollongong. I gave talked titled, “The detail is in the difficulty: Challenging search facilitates incidental encoding of objects’ perceptual details” in collaboration with my co-authors, Juan Guevara-Pinto and Megan Papesh. I had a great time visiting these amazing universities, and can’t wait for the opportunity to visit again!
- July 8th, 2019: Next week, Hayward Godwin will be presenting some new research we’ve done on the “abacus task” and people’s insight into their own eye movement behavior. He’ll be presenting a talk (co-authored by Andreea Butnaru and myself) at the Experimental Psychology Society meeting in Bournemouth (UK), titled “Using the abacus task to study overestimation of accuracy in eye movements.”
- July 2nd, 2019: Our newest article is out in Frontiers for Young Minds. This one is written by Arryn Robbins and I on the topic of the involvement of the brain during visual search. You can read it online, here: https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2019.00089
- May 15th, 2019: We have a new article out now in Frontiers for Young Minds on the use of transcranial direct current stimulation. This one is headed by Mary Berg and Audrey Morrow, and is titled “Wake up, Brain!: Using electricity to think and feel differently.” You can read it online, here:
https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2019.00062
- April 26th, 2019: Today, a pair of Discovery Scholars students presented their work at the NMSU Honors College Undergraduate Research and Creative Arts Symposium (URCAS). Kitt Phi presented our poster (in collaboration with Rebecca Penn, Phil Post, Saleem Masadeh, and myself) entitled “Simulating an open terrain visual search environment in three-dimensional virtual reality.” And Rene Mcpherson presented our poster (in collaboration with Hailey Sandin, Edin Sabic, and myself) called “Creation of a large, open-access database of complex visual scenes for use in experimental psychology.” Congrats, all, and well done DSP scholars!
- April 24th, 2019: Last week, I gave an invited lecture (at the invitation of the Centre for Vision and Cognition) at the University of Southampton (in England). I was quite excited to go back to Southampton, and to give a talk on our recent work in hybrid visual memory search and eye movements called “Examining passive and active search strategies during hybrid visual memory search: Evidence from eye movements.“ Thanks to my collaborator, Jessica Madrid, whose thesis work formed the basis of this talk!
- March 29th, 2019: We’ve just had another paper published at Frontiers for Young Minds. This article is first-authored by Hunter Myuz, and is titled, “Trick or treat: How artificial sweeteners fool the brain and body.” Congrats, Hunter! Check out the article here:
https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2019.00051?fbclid=IwAR3zuam_wmR1R2etALY1mLh1Nn_AshVy9MQYAV78dq1oEI2BOrtE9rrBzcc
- March 21st, 2019: Our new paper has just come out in the Journal of Environmental Psychology. The title is “Psychological responses to natural patterns in architecture.” We are very excited about this paper. Congrats to my co-authors, Alex Coburn, Omid Kardan, Hiroki Kotabe, Jason Steinberg, Arryn Robbins, Justin MacDonald, Gregor Hayn-Leichsenring, and Marc Berman! Download it here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272494418305280?via%3Dihub&fbclid=IwAR1vps1BFX5f2SnH_oxaj4VMfDuug2JjvGp7a66RFbfd86mKOegjYB4Kxtc
- March 14th, 2019: Our newest paper has just been published. Jessica Madrid leads our paper in Visual Cognition titled, “You’re looking for what?: Comparing search for familiar, nameable objects to search for unfamiliar, novel objects.” Congrats to Jessica and our co-authors, Corbin Cunningham and Arryn Robbins! Download it here: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/jAQuiicCMsA6Q47N7iZX/full?target=10.1080%2F13506285.2019.1577318&fbclid=IwAR2Xjj0t6iVVUy6YidNsVGxYx8keUI5CVH9O4R2TYo-W7kIOTxqtDHkn3tI
- February 19th, 2019: I’ve just been selected as the NMSU College of Arts and Sciences “Department Star“ for the Psychology Department. I’m very honored to receive this recognition, and look forward to the reception event on April 5th!
- February 18th, 2019: A pair of Discovery Scholars students just joined our team. Hop on over to the homepage to learn more about Victoria Arvizu and Rene Mcpherson!
- February 18th, 2019: We’ve just had a talk accepted to this year’s Midwestern Psychological Association conference in Chicago. Arryn Robbins will present our paper, titled “Scene context facilitates search for heterogeneous categories.” Congrats, Arryn!
- February 13th, 2019: We’ve just had a poster accepted to this year’s Association for Psychological Science meeting in Washington DC (in May). Arryn Robbins will present a poster on our upcoming database, “The Pictures by Category and Similarity (PICS) Database: A database of 1200 pictures from 20 object categories rated for similarity using multidimensional scaling.” Congrats to co-authors, Justin MacDonald, Ashley Ercolino, Joe Schmidt, and Edin Sabic!
- February 11th, 2019: Our newest Discovery Scholar to join the lab is Sydney Luna, who will also be contributing to our search and rescue “clue finding” projects. Check out the homepage for more info on Sydney!
- February 6th, 2019: We have yet another Discovery Scholar joining the lab. Christine Dellefield-Lopez will be joining us to work on some research pertaining to search and rescue “clue finding.” Check out the homepage for info on Christine!
- February 6th, 2019: We have another person joining our team. Kitt Phi will be joining the lab, both as a Discovery Scholars researcher and as a paid work-study programmer for our work in the upcoming Addison Care Virtual and Augmented Reality Laboratory (for which Phil Post and I are co-directors). Hop over to the homepage to learn more about Kitt!
- February 6th, 2019: Congrats to Alexis Torres for publishing her first ever article in Frontiers for Young Minds, entitled “Pupils: A window into the mind.” You can access the article here: https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2019.00003?fbclid=IwAR2Lj4etoDl5_a6WKrSNzHfbArv9HrTGT_YFEv67wDF31orpUEQYqAS-RQo
- February 5th, 2019: We have a new person joining the lab! Asia La Torra will joining the lab as a Student Assistant to the Discovery Scholars Program. She’ll help us keep the programming running smoothly. Check out the homepage of my site for more information on Asia!
- February 5th, 2019: We’ve just had a poster accepted to this year’s Vision Sciences Society meeting in St. Pete, Florida. Arryn Robbins will present our poster, “Using multidimensional scaling to quantify category heterogeneity effects in visual search.” Congrats to co-authors, Kory Scherer, Edin Sabic, Justin MacDonald, Ashley Ercolino, and Joe Schmidt!
- January 7th, 2019: The Las Cruces Sun News just ran a story about our upcoming virtual reality laboratory. In partnership with (and through the generous donations of) Las Cruces based Electronic Caregiver, we are building a VR lab here on NMSU campus. The focus of the work will be broad, but will include best practices in search and rescue, rehabilitative falls research, medical simulations, and much more. Dr. Phillip Post (Associate Professor in Kinesiology) and I will be co-directors of the lab. We are thrilled that this exciting new lab is coming to fruition! You can find the story here: https://www.lcsun-news.com/story/news/education/nmsu/2019/01/07/nmsu-create-virtual-reality-lab-gift-electronic-caregiver/2507215002/?fbclid=IwAR2HQOjoDWf7WPTTnV2hkdVXiQBQQF88ctNgJkoBfB8kXDjObK8r-mk_y30
- December 18th, 2018: Congrats to Jessica Madrid for publishing an article in Frontiers for Young Minds called “Eye spy: Why we need to move our eyes to gather information about the world.” You can access the article here: https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2018.00071
- December 4th, 2018: Congrats to Dan Henning and Edin Sabic for the publication of our new article in Frontiers for Young Minds, entitled, “Hear and there: Sounds from everywhere!” You can access the article here: https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2018.00063
- November 28th, 2018: Congrats to Rebecca Penn for publishing her first article. In the journal Frontiers for Young Minds, we published an article called “Making reality virtual: How VR “tricks” your brain.” You can download access article here: https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2018.00062?fbclid=IwAR1L1YV84t8Or9jHQfESHC5JBuEpIm7esEOffirqrbAt6mw8B-LqXeWltoc
- November 5th, 2018: Congratulations to Jessica Madrid for successfully passing her comprehensive exams! Now on to the PhD.
- October 30th, 2018: Audrey Morrow traveled to Albuquerque, NM to present our research at the New Mexico Academy of Science Research Symposium. She presented our poster, entitled, “The effect of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on audition”. Our collaborators for this project were Amie Amiotte and Justin MacDonald.
- October 16th, 2018: Congratulations to Edin Sabic for passing his comprehensive exams! Next up, dissertation.
- September 20th, 2018: We’ve just gotten word that our posters were accepted to the 2018 Object Perception, Attention, and Memory conference in New Orleans, Louisiana. This is particularly exciting because our posters span both graduate (Jessica Madrid, Rebecca Penn, and Bryan White) and undergraduate (Alexis Torres) members of our lab. Jessica will present a poster entitled “It’s all a blur: Partial visual information triggers logarithmic decision making during object recognition.” Rebecca will present a poster called “Getting a clue: Visual search in open terrain environments.” Congrats, all!
- July 20th, 2018: We’ve just had a pair of posters accepted to the 2018 Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society in New Orleans. Jessica Madrid will present our work on strategy use during search in a poster titled “Looking for the one: Passive strategies improve guidance and object recognition in single-target search.” And Collin Scarince will present our modelling work in a poster titled “An update to the Guided Search model using multi-dimensional scaling to capture the features of complex, real-world objects.” Congrats, all!
- July 9th, 2018: I’m thrilled to announce that we have a second PhD student to graduate from our lab this year: Dr. Collin Scarince. Collin successfully defended his dissertation today, titled, “Generalized Guided Search: A computational model of visual search powered by multidimensional scaling.” We’re proud of Collin, and excited for what’s next in his career.
- June 14th, 2018: I’m very pleased to announce that the first PhD student to graduate from our lab, Dr. Arryn Robbins, will soon be a post-doctoral researcher. She has accepted a position at Carthage College, working with Dr. Anthony Barnhart and Dr. Leslie Cameron. I’m thrilled that she’s on her way to such a great position, and am confident she’ll do great things at Carthage.
- May 24th: 2018: I’ve been invited to be a funded presenter at the 4th Symposium on Visual Search and Selective Attention in Munich, Germany (http://mvss.org/). This is a very prestigious honor for me, as I’ll be speaking alongside an incredibly well-respected and impressive group of academics who all share my research interests. In July, I’ll present the work Jessica Madrid and I have been working on, titled “Passive search strategies improve attentional guidance and object recognition during demanding visual search.” I can’t wait.
- May 24th, 2018: I’ve recently been invited (by the Environmental Neuroscience Laboratory: http://enl.uchicago.edu/) to speak at the University of Chicago. I’m very excited to travel to Chicago to speak with this excellent group of academics about our recent work on strategy use in visual search.
- April 26th, 2018: I just received my official letter stating that I’ve been granted promotion and tenure. As of August 2018, I will be a tenured Associate Professor. I’m very excited to have this milestone behind me, and appreciate all the support I’ve had at NMSU to get me here.
- April 23rd, 2018: This Friday (4/27/2018), Emily Green (an honors thesis student working in our lab) will present our research incidental memory work at the Undergraduate Research and Creative Arts Symposium (URCAS) here on campus. If you’re around on Friday, swing by and see her present! The title of the poster is “Challenging visual search creates better incidental memories for objects and their perceptual features.” Good luck, Emily!
- April 5th, 2018: I’m very pleased to announce that the first PhD to come out of our lab is the wonderful Dr. Arryn Robbins. Arryn successfully defended her dissertation, “The role of context and exemplar variability in shaping the categorical search template.” We’re all quite proud of her, but will be sad to see her go!
- March 20th, 2018: I’ve just gotten word that I will be a panelist at the 2018 NMSU Assessment Conference (Writing to Think). I will be part of a presentation titled, “Writing to learn? It’s not just for writing courses!” Come check out the conference, and learn about ways to improve the writing components of your courses.
- March 13th, 2018: We’ve just had a new paper accepted to the open access journal Sage Open. Our paper is titled “Simulating the fidelity of data for large stimulus set sizes and variable dimension estimation in multidimensional scaling.” Congrats to my co-authors, Corbin Cunningham, Arryn Robbins, and Justin MacDonald!
- March 8th, 2018: We’ve just had a pair of posters accepted to this year’s North American Society for the Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity meeting in Denver, Colorado (in June). Our collaborators include Dr. Phil Post, Dr. Chris Aiken, and Ms. Jessica Madrid. Phil will present our poster titled “Learner-controlled pace of practice in isolation does not yield the self-control effect.” And Chris will present our poster called “Learner-controlled amount of practice with fixed inter-trial interval benefits learning.” Congrats, all!
- March 8th, 2018: Both of my interviews for the Neurotransmission Podcast have been aired. The first is titled, “Cognitive Psychology: Flying Below the Radar.” The second is called, “An Eye for Cognitive Innovation.” You can find the episodes here (Season 2, Episodes 13 and 14). https://www.cengage.com/learn/neurotransmission?channel=eloqua&elq_mid=23794&elq_nm=FD_NeuroTransmission_Podcast_S2E13_HED_408509&elq_cid=111216&utm_medium=email&utm_source=eloqua-batch&utm_campaign=studentengagement&utm_content=408550
- February 18th, 2018: The Las Cruces Sun News ran a story about the Rising Star award I received from the Association for Psychological Science. The full article can be found at: http://www.lcsun-news.com/story/news/education/nmsu/2018/02/17/nmsu-professor-receives-award-advancing-psychology/348314002/
- February 13th, 2018: At this year’s Rocky Mountain Psychological Association meeting in Denver, CO, we’ll have a trio of talks to present. In collaboration with Emily Green, Juan Guevara Pinto, and Dr. Megan Papesh, I’ll be giving a talk called “Challenging visual search creates better incidental memories for objects and their features.” Arryn Robbins will be giving our talk called “Scene context can facilitate search for imprecisely specified targets.” And John Kulpa will present our talk “Evaluating SpAM and multi-trial spatial arrangement methods of estimating subjective similarity” in collaboration with myself and Dr. Dom Simon. Congrats, collaborators!
- February 12th, 2018: This year, we’ll be presenting a poster for the first time at the Annual Convention of the Association for Psychological Science. John Kulpa will be presenting our poster, titled, “Evaluating SpAM and multi-trial spatial arrangement methods of estimating subjective similarity.” Congrats to John and our co-author, Dr. Dom Simon!
- February 10th, 2018: We’ve just had a poster accepted to this year’s Vision Sciences Society meeting in Florida. Arryn Robbins will be presenting our poster, titled “Scene context influences expectations about imprecisely specified search targets.” Congrats, Arryn!
- January 8th, 2018: I’m happy to say that I’ve started consulting for Major League Baseball, as part of their Umpire Training Program. Over the next year, I will consult with the MLB regarding a variety of training programs aimed at increasing the perceptual skills of MLB umpires.
- December 29th, 2017: I’m very pleased and proud to announce that I’ve been selected by the Association for Psychological Science as a 2017 Rising Star. This award is for early career scientists, and I’m quite honored to have received it! http://www.psychologicalscience.org/redesign/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/2017-Rising-Stars.pdf