Come and work in our lab: PhD studentships

Would you like to come and work in Visual Cognition? Would you like to be part of John Henderson's great research lab and learn how to investigate static, dynamic, and film cognition using eye tracking?

Well we now have funded PhD studentships available.

Details below:

UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY AND LANGUAGE SCIENCES

PPLS (PSYCHOLOGY) CAREER DEVELOPMENT STUDENTSHIPS
Deadline for Application: Friday 10th July 2009

A minimum of four Career Development Studentships are offered by Psychology within the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences

Career Development Studentships are designed to provide students with teaching
experience, training, and other career development opportunities. A stipend of £10,000 per
annum will be provided in addition to tuition fees at the Home/EU level and additional
programme costs of £600 per annum. The studentships will start in September 2009.

Further information on the topics/research areas are available online at:
http://www.ppls.ed.ac.uk/postgraduate/CareerDevStudentship.html
Eligibility
Candidates should have an academic background in Psychology holding (or expecting to hold
by September 09) a postgraduate Masters level qualification or equivalent and be eligible to
apply for PhD level study at the University of Edinburgh. Students entering the second year
of their PhD Psychology study at the University of Edinburgh are also encouraged to apply.

Both International and Home/EU students are eligible to apply although please note that the
tuition fees provided in the studentship are at a Home/EU level only.

Application Procedure
Candidates are invited to apply through the University of Edinburgh online application system
(EUCLID); please ensure that you note your intention to apply for this studentship under the
funding section of the application form. When you submit your application, please also email
pplspg@ed.ac.uk to indicate that you have done so.

The application form and further guidance is available online at:
http://www.ppls.ed.ac.uk/postgraduate/CareerDevStudentship.html
If you have already submitted an application for PhD Psychology and would like to be
considered for these studentships, please email pplspg@ed.ac.uk to register your interest.

Deadline for application: Friday 10th July 2009
Selection Process
Short listed candidates will be invited to attend an interview at the University of Edinburgh. Successful candidates will be informed by Friday 14th August 2009

ECHOES

I am proud to announce a very exciting new project I am involved in, ECHOES II: Improving Children's Social Interaction through Exploratory Learning in a Multimodal Environment.

The intention of the ECHOES project is to develop a safe, motivating, and inclusive multimodal learning environment allowing Aspergers and Typically Developing children to explore different social situations to improve their social interaction and communication skills. ECHOES II will provide a unique opportunity to explore a place in which learning happens and in which learning can be studied.

The ECHOES project is a multi-site (Edinburgh, London, Sussex, Birmingham, Dundee, Glasgow, and Cardiff), three year project funded jointly by ESRC and EPSRC via the TLRP TEL call. This project which will combine the latest and most innovative methods in participatory design of education technology with cutting-edge multimodal interfaces including motion, gesture, and facial expression capture, audio reactivity and gaze tracking within an augmented reality 3D environment. Further details on the project can be found here:

http://www.lkl.ac.uk/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=287&Itemid=91

The ECHOES project is currently at the recruitment stage. We are looking for a range of full-time, part-time RAs and PhD students. These posts are spread across the various sites. Details are below. If you are interested in any of these posts please follow the links below and contact the people named in each advert.

*Check each advert for closing date as it varies across posts*

Full-Time Research Fellow (School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh)

The successful applicant will contribute to the design and development of an intelligent multimodal interface, using a combination of an interactive whiteboard, 3D graphics, speech synthesis, and video input technology. The post will involve development of the ECHOES software architecture and organisation of software modules developed at the other sites. Experience in software engineering and multi-modal interfaces is highly desirable.

http://www.jobs.ed.ac.uk/vacancies/index.cfm?fuseaction=vacancies.detail&vacancy_ref=3009321

Part-Time Research Assistant (School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh)

Job description same as above except RA will focus more on combining existing interface technologies, e.g. motion tracking + gaze tracking, into the ECHOES architecture.

http://www.jobs.ed.ac.uk/vacancies/index.cfm?fuseaction=vacancies.detail&vacancy_ref=3009321


Full-Time Research Fellow (London Knowledge Lab, University of London)

The successful applicant will collaborate in the development of the ECHOES II environment with other researchers, focusing particularly on the design and implementation of the learning activities and interventions along with the ‘action engine’ responsible for the selection of the activities based on user input .

http://jobs.ioe.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx?ref=7AC-CPLKL-4665

Part-Time Research Assistant (London Knowledge Lab, University of London)

The successful applicant will collaborate in the design of the ECHOES II environment with other researchers, focusing particularly on the design and testing of the learning activities and the evaluation of the educational impact of the environment.

http://jobs.ioe.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx?ref=7AC-CPLKL-4664

Full-Time Research Fellow (School of Informatics, University of Sussex)

The successful candidate will use participatory design methods with children in order to design and implement the interface for the ECHOES II environment, and collaborate in the develompent of the environment with the other researchers, focusing particularly on the development of 3D characters and avatars and “mirroring” the user’s actions through video input.

Enquiries should be address to Dr. Judith Good (J.Good@sussex.ac.uk).

Full-Time PhD. (School of Computing, University of Dundee)

The School of Computing invites applications for a PhD student to work on the functional communication of children with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) and similar disabilities within a wider project to develop and evaluate a technology enhanced multimodal learning environment designed to scaffold children’s social interaction and communication skills.

The successful candidate will collaborate with other researchers who will be designing a system for the exploration and learning of social interaction skills, and will be focussing of how the ECHOES environment impacts on the interactive communication of children with ASD, specifically Asperger Syndrome.

A first class or good 2:1 Honours or Masters degree, or equivalent, in Applied Computing, Computer Science, Psychology, Cognitive Science or related discipline is essential, as are knowledge of user-centred design methods, computer vision, and an ability to organise and run studies involving children, parents and professionals. Good written and communication skills are essential.

Enquiries and application requests should be addressed to Dr Annalu Waller (awaller@computing.dundee.ac.uk ).

Closing date for applications: 15 September 2008

Completing the Circle

The Lansdown Centre for Electronic Arts (Middlesex University) is hosting a one-day symposium focussing on novel methods, or methods newly borrowed from other disciplines, in evaluating the user's or audience's response to media such as websites, portable media (such as iPods, PSPs), pervasive games, film, videogames, technology-rich performance, interactive art. The organising committee have put out a special call for researchers using eye tracking to evaluate film or media.

For further information see:

http://www.cea.mdx.ac.uk/?location_id=59&item=31

Research Assistant in Active Viewing of Dynamic Scenes

John Henderson and I have recently been awarded a 2-year Leverhulme research grant investigating Active Viewing of Dynamic Scenes. We are very excited about the project as it will enable us to explore issues of attentional control, eye movements, and scene processing using dynamic scenes such as naturalistic social scenes, film and television. This will allow us to build upon the initial research I have been doing in this area and provide the foundations for other research groups to follow.

The project will begin later this year and we are currently advertising for a part-time Research Assistant to join the project. Details copied below. If you are interested please contact me or John asap as the deadline is July 11th.

"Research Assistant, Edinburgh University

Active Viewing of Dynamic Scenes: Eye Movements in Video

The University of Edinburgh invites applications for a two-year, part-time (20 hours per week), fixed term Research Assistant related to a new project funded by the Leverhulme Trust titled: Active Viewing of Dynamic Scenes: Eye Movements in Video. The post requires technical expertise with computational methods in computer graphics with particular application to video. Knowledge of human visual perception and eyetracking methods is desirable. The research assistant will interact with cognitive psychologists and cognitive scientists in the research team, and should have excellent interpersonal and communication skills. Applications are welcomed from individuals with a good first degree in computer science, informatics, or related computational discipline.

Informal enquiries: Prof John M. Henderson (john.m.henderson@ed.ac.uk).

Apply online (www.jobs.ed.ac.uk, Vacancy Reference: 3009312) including a CV and statement of relevant experience. Alternatively, telephone the recruitment line on 0131 650 2511. "

MSC in Visual Cognition

I am happy to announce that as of the academic year 2008-2009 Edinburgh University Psychology department will be hosting an MSc programme in Visual Cognition. This one-year taught MSc will give students the opportunity of learning from leading researchers in the field of Visual Cognition and Percention in Action: Prof. John M Henderson, Dr. James Brockmole, Dr. Robert McIntosh, and Dr. Antje Nuthman. Students will also benefit from the broad and varied visual cognition and eye movement research groups across the University. The taught course will culminate in a Summer research project in which the students can explore their own research ideas under the tutelage of researchers such as myself. This provides a framework under which students interested in Psychology and Cognitive Science can improve their empirical skills in the area of eye tracking and apply it to new and innovative areas. I would specifically welcome applicants who are interested in eye movement and attentional control during static and dynamic scene viewing and during film and media viewing.

Funding may be available for this MSc.

For further information follow this link:
http://www.psy.ed.ac.uk/postgrad/msc/vc

If you have any specific questions about the course or want to discuss potential research ideas contact me directly (tim [dot] smith [at] ed.ac.uk).

Attention: experimental film project

How do we watch film? How does the way that I watch a film differ from the way you watch a film? If we were to make a film of the way I watch a film, what would it look like?

These are some of the questions a group of Design and Digital Media MSc. students under my mentoring are exploring in an art installation entitled Attention: experimental film project. Parag Mital, Stefanie Tan Su Ann, and Dave Stewart have create an interactive film experience for their Digital Media Studio Project that will be premiered this Friday (21^st March), 12-5pm in Teviot Row House, Edinburgh University.

The installation is inspired by my research into how we attend to film, how this shapes our experience of a film, and how film manipulates this attention (see my thesis). Film can be interpreted as an analogue of our experience of the visual world. Snapshots of fragmented but related visual information is presented to us in a way that we can comprehend by forming conceptual linkages between them. This is similar to the way we acquire information from the world by moving our eyes. If we take this analogy to its logical conclusion, a visual recreation of the information acquired from a scene as a person shifts their eyes may resemble an edited filmic representation of that scene.

Creating such a filmic recreation of a viewers experience is the intention of this project.

How is this accomplished and what is the result? Check out the project website or come along to the premier to find out

http://www.theexperimentalfilm.com/

Rank Prize Funds Mini-Syposium

Last week (3-6th December, 2007) I attended a Mini-Symposium on Representations of the Visual World in the Brain organised by the Rank Prize Funds. The symposium was a small gathering of highly respected established researchers and young researchers across the field of Visual Science. Attendees included Ron Rensink (UBC), Nancy Kanwisher (MIT), Mike Land (Sussex), Ben Tatler and Ben Vincent (Dundee), Jens Helmert (Dresden), Jim Brockmole (Edinburgh), Melissa Vo (Munich), and many others from across Europe and North America.

The symposium was an incredibly stimulating, intense experience and I have to express my immense gratitude to the Rank Prize Funds for organising it (aside: the Fund was established by the late Lord Rank to support scientific research in his two main interests Nutrition and OptoElectronics; Rank was also the founder of Rank Film....a rather coincidental overlap with my interests). The symposium was held in the wonderfully picaresque Wordsworth Hotel, Grasmere, Cumbria. Not that I got to appreciate much of it as I was too busy being intellectually stimulated.

My enjoyment of the symposium was rounded off by my being awarded the Prize for the Best Presentation by a Young Researcher for my presentation entitled 'Facilitation of Return'. It is a great compliment for the work I am doing with John Henderson to be acknowledge by such a distinguished group of researchers.

.....and Lord Rank

C.V. updated

Just a quick note to say that I have updated my C.V. and my homepage. Both were old and rather poor representations of what I have been up to. Much better now :)

The Famous Colour Changing Card Trick

Richard Wiseman, the magician, psychologist, science communicator and author of Quirkology: the Curious Science of Everyday Lives asked me and John Henderson to measure viewers’ eye movements whilst they watched one of his magic tricks. The Colour Changing Card Trick is a very clever use of a perceptual phenomenon known as ‘inattentional blindness’. Check out the trick before reading on:

Inattentional Blindness is an absence of awareness of some detail or event in the visual world due to a failure to attend to it. This absence can often be strikingly large (as in Richard’s card trick) or, most famously in Simons & Chabris (1999) ‘Gorillas in our Midst' experiment. In the Simons & Chabris experiment subjects were told to watch a video of two teams, one wearing white, the other wearing black pass basketballs within their teams. Half of the subjects were told to count the number or passes made by the team wearing white. The other half were told to count the passes made by the team wearing black. Half way through the video a man wearing a black Gorilla suit walked through the scene, stopped in the middle of the scene, waved at the camera and then walked out of shot. When asked after the video if they had noticed anything odd during the video, the majority of subjects failed to report the Gorilla! The probability of noticing the Gorilla was greater when the subjects had been instructed to attend to the black team (58% detection) compared with the white team (27%) indicating that the task had biased the subjects attention either towards black or white objects. The subject’s selective attention shapes the details of the scene that reach the level of conscious awareness and subsequent memory but, importantly the subject is not aware that their awareness is in any way partial. This mismatch between what the subject think they see and what they actually see is what creates the shock at the end of the Gorilla experiment or the Colour Changing Card Trick.

The Colour Changing Card Trick uses a simple card trick to distract viewer attention from what is actually going on, namely the changing of both presenters’ T-shirts, the backdrop, and the table cloth. Such misdirection is a classic tool of any magic performance. All changes are made off camera when the continuous camera shot zooms in to a close-up. This removes the actual change itself from view, leaving only the result. In order for viewers to notice the change they must have previously attended to the object that has changed and have sufficient memory of that object to notice that its current form is different. By measuring viewer eye movements during the trick we can see whether viewers attend to the objects before the changes and whether there is any increase in attention to the objects after the change. Such an increase may indicate the precise moment at which the viewer notices the change.

The results are still being analysed but for now Richard has posted a video illustrating the eye movements of 9 subjects whilst they watched the trick (5 men and 4 women). The one red spot is the gaze location of a woman who detected the Female presenter’s T-shirt change.

This video was created using my own Gazeatron software.

As can be clearly seen from the video most viewers look in roughly the same parts of the scene at the same time. This close control over where viewers are looking is exactly the intention of the magician. By ensuring such systematic viewing the magician can hide changes/manipulations in the unattended spaces. It is only once one of the viewers notices the change (the red spot) that their gaze location begins to differ from everyone else’s.

If you want to know more about the psychology of misdirection and its relationship to eye movements check out Gustav Kuhn’s research at the University of Durham.