Perception, Action and Cognition Group

Current research activities are focusing on inferential process in vision, visual attention in social cognition and 3D vision, attentional control, modulation of visual processing and visual-guided action by attention, emotion and memory, and visual processing in dyslexic and autistic population. The group has extensive internal and external collaboration with researchers in social psychology, forensic psychology, neuroscience, animal science and computing science. We have successfully attracted external funding support from Leverhulme Trust, EPSRC, Nuffield Foundation, Royal Society, Home Office and NHS.

The group has several dedicated laboratories and a range of state-of-art specialised equipments. The Visual Psychophysics Lab is equipped with two ViSaGe Visual Stimulators and a High Speed Video Eyetracker Toolbox; the Eye tracker Lab is housing a Fourward Technologies Generation 5.5 Dual Purkinje Image eye-tracker plus control System, Tobii portable and VisionTrak head-mounted eye trackers; the electrically shielded EEG lab is equipped with a 64 channel ActiveTwo EEG set-up with BrainVision Analyzer; and the TMS lab is housing a Medtronic MagPro X100 high performance magnetic stimulator that is used in conjunction with a Zebris guidance system.

Click to book EEG/TMS lab Login:TMSandEEGlab@yahoo.com Password:labbooking Click to book Eye tracker Login:lincolnvisionlab@yahoo.com Password:experimentalpsychology

Group Members (for recent publications and projects please visit individual members' pages)

Research Fellow and Postgraduate Students

Undergraduate Research Assistants

Miss Carla Gavin
Miss Claire Edwards

If you're interested in pursuing postgraduate study (MRes, MPhil/PhD) in our research area or gaining research experience in our group, please contact Dr. Kun Guo

Selection of Current Research Projects

Exploitation of environmental regularities in visual process (Dr Kun Guo, Dr Petra Pollux, Sophie Hall & Hettie Roebuck; Funded by Leverhulme Trust)

We have evolved to operate within a dynamic visual world in which natural visual signals are not random but have various statistical regularities (i.e. spatiotemporal regularity, co-linearity, co-circularity). In this project we use combined approach of visual psychophysics, ERP and TMS to examine how our visual system exploits these regularities to achieve accurate and efficient representations of the external world. Recent publications.

Processing facial cues in social interactions (Dr Kun Guo, Dr Kerstin Meints, Prof. Daniel Mills, Anais Racca & Fiona Williams)

Face perception plays crucial role in primate social communication and human-animal interactions. In this project we use preferential looking and mobile eye tracking protocol to compare the process of utilizing various facial cues to guide natural behaviour in pet dogs, wolves, rhesus monkeys, and human infants and adults. Our findings have been reported in various academic journals and covered in New Scientist, BBC etc.

Gaze pattern in natural vision in dyslexic and autistic population (Dr Kun Guo, Dr Philip Benson, Dr. Lesley Allinson, Claire Edwards & Carla Gavin)

Gaze distribution in scene exploration is susceptible to an individual’s mental activities, and could provide valuable information for the early detection and assessment of mental deficits such as autism, schizophrenia and depression. In this project we compare fixational, saccadic and smooth pursuit eye movements between control group, dyslexic and autistic participants. We intend to address how efficient the visual information can be sampled and processed in different populations.

Recent Publications

Exploitation of environmental regularities in visual process

Pollux PMJ, Hall S, Roebuck H, Guo K (2011) ERP correlates of the interaction between attention and spatiotemporal context regularity in vision. Neuroscience (in press).

Hall S, Pollux PMJ, Guo K (2010) Exploitation of natural geometrical regularities facilitates target detection. Vision Research 50: 2411-2420.

Pollux PMJ, Guo K (2009) Event-related potential correlates of spatiotemporal regularities in vision. NeuroReport 20:525-530.

Guo K, Robertson RG, Pulgarin M, Nevado A, Panzeri S, Thiele A, Young MP (2007) Spatio-temporal prediction and inference by V1 neurons. European Journal of Neuroscience 26:1045-1054.

Guo K, Robertson RG, Nevado A, Pulgarin M, Mahmoodi S and Young MP (2006) Primary visual cortex neurons that contribute to resolve the aperture problem. Neuroscience 138:1397-1406.

Guo K, Robertson RG, Mahmoodi S and Young MP (2005) Centre-surround interactions in response to natural scene stimulation in the primary visual cortex. European Journal of Neuroscience 21: 536-548.

Guo K, Nevado A, Robertson RG, Pulgarin M, Thiele A and Young MP (2004) Effects on orientation perception of manipulating the spatiotemporal prior probability of stimuli. Vision Research 44:2349-2358.

Processing facial cues in social interactions

Guo K, Smith C, Powell K, Nicholls K (2011) Consistent left gaze bias in processing different facial cues. Psychological Research (in press). DOI: 10.1007/s00426-011-0340-9

Guo K, Liu CH, Roebuck H (2011) I know you are beautiful even without looking at you: detection of facial beauty in peripheral vision. Perception 40: 191-195.

Hall C, Hogue T, Guo K (2010) Differential gaze behavior towards sexually preferred and non-preferred human figures. The Journal of Sex Research (in press).

Williams F, Mills D, Guo K (2011) Development of a head-mounted, eye-tracking system for dogs. Journal of Neuroscience Methods 194: 259-265.

Guo K, Tunnicliffe D, Roebuck H (2010) Human spontaneous gaze patterns in viewing of faces of different species. Perception 39: 533-542.

Racca A, Amadei E, Ligout S, Guo K, Meints K, Mills D (2010) Discrimination of human and dog faces and inversion responses in domestic dogs (Canis familiaris). Animal Cognition 13: 525-533.

Guo K, Meints K, Hall C, Hall S, Mills D (2009) Left gaze bias in humans, rhesus monkeys and domestic dogs. Animal Cognition 12: 409-418.

Guo K (2007) Initial fixation placement in face images is driven by top-down guidance. Experimental Brain Research 181:673-677.

Guo K, Mahmoodi S, Robertson RG and Young MP (2006) Longer fixation duration while viewing face images. Experimental Brain Research 171:91-98.

Guo K, Robertson RG, Mahmoodi S, Tadmor Y and Young MP (2003) How do monkeys view faces? – A study of eye movements. Experimental Brain Research 150:363-374.