Postdoctoral research opportunities
Queen Mary University of London, Biological and
Experimental Psychology Group
Dr Michael Proulx's Crossmodal Cognition Laboratory
We are seeking postdoctoral candidates who are
internationally competitive, taking into account the current stage of
their career. The strongest candidates may be offered a short term
departmental fellowship during which time they would be expected to
seek external funding. We will provide other candidates with help in
applying for appropriate national (eg, FCT or Schweiz. Nationalfonds)
or international (eg, Marie Curie or Human Frontiers) fellowships that
can be hosted at QMUL.
Possible projects:
1. Crossmodal perception and attention: Sensory substitution for blind
persons.
A sensory substitution device aims to
provide visual information in a format that another sense, such as the
auditory system, can process. Could a blind person 'see' again if
visual information is translated into a format another one of the
senses can process? If so such a finding would have a clear impact on
the quality of life for visually impaired individuals, but also would
answer fundamental questions about the nature of the sensory modalities
for cognition and consciousness. Basic questions about crossmodal
attentional cueing, categorisation and learning are also of primary
interest.
2. Attentional priority and visual search: Strategic use of salience
for attention and eye movements.
What are the guiding attributes for attention in visual search? Is
the guidance bottom-up or top-down? Intentional or stimulus-driven? Attention is the
mechanism used to prioritize the processing of relevant or salient
information
at the expense of momentarily irrelevant information.
Although much research has focused on what captures attention, much
more needs to be known about why and how certain attributes capture
covert and ocolumotor attention to better understand how information is
represented
consciously and unconsciously.
3. Comparative cognition: Visual attention and perception in bees (
with Prof Lars Chittka) and zebrafish (with Dr Caroline Brennan).
Many exciting possibilities exist to study how mechanisms of
attentional priority and visual perception (such as colour perception)
work in other species, such as bees (experts in
visual search for flowers) and zebrafish (an excellent model organism
for developmental and genetic studies). These collaborations provide an
opportunity for comparative, ethological, or physiological studies.
--
Michael J. Proulx, PhD
Lecturer [Assistant Professor] in Cognitive Psychology
Biological and Experimental Psychology Group
School of Biological and Chemical Sciences
Queen Mary University of London
m.proulx@qmul.ac.uk
http://www.sbcs.qmul.ac.uk/staff/michaelproulx.html