Vision and Cognition

Colleagues in the Vision and Cognition research group explore fundamental issues of importance in vision and cognition.

Our particular interests span colour perception, face perception and visual search through to aesthetics, spatial navigation and motor control. In doing so, we have a wide range of technical expertise that includes the running of behavioural studies to measuring brain function and biochemical influences on brain function, visual perception and cognition.

The group provides a supportive environment for colleagues and postgraduate students.

The latest project in our group was run by Drs. Letizia Palumbo and Neil Harrison, and Prof. Nick Donnelly in collaboration with Tate Liverpool. The project looked at empowering people to engage with art using portable eyetracking glasses. For more information of what the project was about, please visit the Tate website. 

The project was a joint collaboration between staff members of Liverpool Hope University, including Prof Nicholas Donnelly (Head of the Psychology Department), and Dr Tobiasz Trawinski (Postdoctoral researcher at New York University in Abu Dhabi), Dr Jason Kass (Associate Dean of Fashion and Assistant Professor of Fashion Communication at Parsons School of Design, NYC, USA) and UG student and photographer Mr Alberto Gonzalez (University of Chester, UK).

Dr Dan Clark

Dr Simon Davies

Dr Letizia Palumbo

Professor Galina Paramei

Dr Glenda Pennington

Dr Idalmis Santiesteban

Dr Yue Yue

Postgraduate Students

Georgina Bailey

Emma Smillie

Dr Dan Clark

Exploring Survival Processing and Animacy in Human Memory, Investigating the Temporal Contiguity effect. (In collaboration with Dr Davide Bruno, School of Natural Sciences and Psychology, Liverpool John Moores University, UK.)

Exploring the Impact of Sat Nav Devices on Spatial Memory. (In collaboration with Dr Thomas Smyth, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Huddersfield, UK and Associate Professor Janet Speake, Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences, Liverpool Hope University, UK.)

Dr Simon Davies

Professor Nick Donnelly

He collaborates extensively with colleagues in the UK and the US. His current work includes projects funded by the Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) called ‘We’re in this together: Using evidence-based visual perception to enhance crowd resilience’ and the Department for Transport called ‘X-ray Baggage Screening Time on Task’.

Dr Neil Harrison

Visual attention and EEG measures of prosthetic hand control: optimisation through gaze training (in collaboration with Dr Greg Wood, Manchester Metropolitan University, and Dr Johnny Parr.)

Neural correlates of verbal-conscious and verbal non-conscious motor control (in collaboration with Dr Greg Wood, Manchester Metropolitan University, and Dr Johnny Parr.)

Readiness potentials, response times, and the automatic processing of affordances (in collaboration with Stefano Uccelli, University of Parma, Professor Nicola Bruno, University of Parma, and Dr Letizia Palumbo.)

Liking and approach avoidance for abstract curvature using EEG (in collaboration with Dr Letizia Palumbo.)

Context congruency effects in aesthetic evaluations of art works (in collaboration with Dr Letizia Palumbo.)

Aesthetic perception of art and its relationship to connection with nature

Dr Letizia Palumbo

Visual preference for symmetry and curvature in typical developed adults and autism (in collaboration with Dr Giulia Rampone and Dr Marco Bertamini, University of Liverpool.) 

Objects preference in autism (in collaboration with Prof Enric Munar, University of Balearic Islands, Spain.)

Liking and approach avoidance for abstract curvature using EEG (in collaboration with Dr Neil Harrison.)

Context congruency effects in aesthetic evaluations of art works (in collaboration with Dr Neil Harrison.)

Perception of biological motion and its role on aesthetic evaluations of dance (in collaboration with Dr Neil Harrison.)

Intergenerational effects of object semantics on colour preference (in collaboration with Prof Galina Paramei.)

Embodied mechanisms in emotional anticipation using EMG and TMS (in collaboration with Dr Tjeerd Jellema, University of Hull and Dr Valentina Cazzato, Liverpool John Moores University.)

Readiness potentials, response times, and the automatic processing of affordances (visiting PhD student Stefano Uccelli, from University of Parma, Italy. PhD supervisor: Prof Nicola Bruno. Project co-supervision in collaboration with Dr Neil Harrison).

Professor Galina Paramei

The effect of colour on emotions read out from emoticons (In collaboration with Prof. Katsuaki Sakata: Department of Fine Arts, Joshibi University of Art and Design, Tokyo, Japan.)

Diatopic variation of the „Italian blues“: Estimating basicness. Modelling colour category volumes and boundaries (In collaboration with Prof. Gloria Menegaz: Department of Computer Science, University of Verona, Italy; Prof. Maria M. Del Viva: Department of Neuroscience & Psychology, University of Florence, Italy; Prof. Natalia L. Komarova: Department of Mathematics, University of California Irvine, USA.)

The effect of inversion of facial expressions of emotions (In collaboration with Dr. David L. Bimler: School of Psychology, Massey University, New Zealand.)

Assessing repeatability of the Cambridge Colour Test (In collaboration with Thiago M. P. Fernandes, PhD student: Department of Psychology, University of Paraíba, João Pessoa, Brazil.)

Dr Yue Yue

Dual task search (In collaboration with Prof. Nick Donnelly and Prof. Kyle Cave, University of Massachusetts.)