Perceiving and tracking moving objects. Processing and tracking moving objects poses challenges for human perception. To succeed, visual processing must accumulate analyses of the object from its different positions. Perceptual experiments will reveal human limits and yield insights into the underlying mechanisms, providing a basis for understanding object tracking in tasks like driving.
Binocular rivalry: a new model to measure it, and a new approach to attention and crossmodal influences. Ambiguity is inherent in visual perception. Retinal images under-specify the outside world and may suggest several interpretations, causing our perception to oscillate between them. This project will introduce a new and more objective method for quantifying this perceptual ambiguity and use it to explore the brain's response to ambiguous sensory inputs.
A new training approach to address the novice driver problem. This project aims to develop a new approach to driver training. For the second consecutive year, road deaths in Australia have increased by 150 from 2014 to 2016. The increase in deaths was greatest for young drivers between the ages of 17-25 years, who remain over-represented in road deaths. The majority of these deaths occur in the first few months after licensing. This project expects to generate new knowledge, where the focus is o ....A new training approach to address the novice driver problem. This project aims to develop a new approach to driver training. For the second consecutive year, road deaths in Australia have increased by 150 from 2014 to 2016. The increase in deaths was greatest for young drivers between the ages of 17-25 years, who remain over-represented in road deaths. The majority of these deaths occur in the first few months after licensing. This project expects to generate new knowledge, where the focus is on developing young driver’s cognitive skills about speed choice through the provisions of a training program that focuses on feedback. The results will have the potential to be used by road authorities and driver training organisations to improve road safety.Read moreRead less
Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment And Facilities - Grant ID: LE100100055
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$400,000.00
Summary
State-of-the-art upgrade to multi-transmit multi-receive technology for research dedicated 3 Tesla magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner. Projects requiring the proposed infrastructure are aligned with two National Research Priorities. The research will lead to new methods for imaging and detecting soft tissue changes, identifying developmental, cognitive and degenerative disorders, and pharmacological research. The understanding of the basis of physiological, cognitive and biochemical proces ....State-of-the-art upgrade to multi-transmit multi-receive technology for research dedicated 3 Tesla magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner. Projects requiring the proposed infrastructure are aligned with two National Research Priorities. The research will lead to new methods for imaging and detecting soft tissue changes, identifying developmental, cognitive and degenerative disorders, and pharmacological research. The understanding of the basis of physiological, cognitive and biochemical processes which will be facilitated by the new equipment will contribute to the priority area Promoting and Maintaining Good Health and will underpin an array of subsequent medical research. The new equipment will extend capabilities and training in signal analysis, biomedical engineering and biomedicine, contributing to the priority area Frontier technologies for Building and Transforming Australian Industries.Read moreRead less
Attention please! Selective attention and human associative learning. Selective attention allows us to pick useful pieces of information out of the mass of stimulation that we're faced with every moment. This project investigates how what we've previously learnt about the significance of events influences whether we'll pick them out as useful in future, and how this might be impaired by old age or mental disorder.
Overcoming distraction by reward-related stimuli. This project aims to establish the cognitive processes underlying distraction by reward associated stimuli, and whether 'attentional control' processes can reduce distraction. Even when people try to concentrate on a certain task, they can be distracted and they are more likely to be distracted by events associated with reward (such as money, food, sex, etc.). The expected outcomes of this project should show how to minimise distraction when it i ....Overcoming distraction by reward-related stimuli. This project aims to establish the cognitive processes underlying distraction by reward associated stimuli, and whether 'attentional control' processes can reduce distraction. Even when people try to concentrate on a certain task, they can be distracted and they are more likely to be distracted by events associated with reward (such as money, food, sex, etc.). The expected outcomes of this project should show how to minimise distraction when it is most detrimental: when safety depends on staying focussed (such as when driving), or for recovering addicts trying to ignore drug-related stimuli.Read moreRead less
Predicting the diagnostic performance of individuals and organisations. Predicting the diagnostic performance of individuals and organisations. This project aims to address diagnostic error in advanced technology systems, by providing a mechanism to assess and improve individual diagnosticians’ performance. Organisations that rely on their employees’ diagnostic skills rarely assess them once the operators become qualified, so there is no basis for interventions that might prevent diagnostic erro ....Predicting the diagnostic performance of individuals and organisations. Predicting the diagnostic performance of individuals and organisations. This project aims to address diagnostic error in advanced technology systems, by providing a mechanism to assess and improve individual diagnosticians’ performance. Organisations that rely on their employees’ diagnostic skills rarely assess them once the operators become qualified, so there is no basis for interventions that might prevent diagnostic errors affecting thousands. This research tests a new method of assessing diagnostic skills based on how skilled operators respond to cues. This project will test how employees’ diagnostic skills change and whether this change corresponds to measures of organisational performance. This research is expected to provide organisations with a tool to pre-empt diagnostic errors that could minimise costs to the economy.Read moreRead less
The seeds of literacy in infancy: empirical specification of the acoustic determinants of language acquisition. Reading is one of the most difficult skills we learn, and while the process is largely forgotten by adults, any minor difficulty can have lasting effects. This project will follow speech, vocabulary and reading in infants at or not at risk for dyslexia from six months to five years with implications for parent-child interaction and language delay intervention.
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE140101181
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$384,183.00
Summary
How Do Our Past Decisions Affect Our Present Decisions? – An Innovative Model. Decisions under time pressure made in the past have a tendency to affect our current decisions. This phenomenon is often termed ‘sequential effects’. Typically, sequential effects are explained by positing the existence of a psychological mechanism that is specifically aimed at resolving conflicting information. The aim of this project is to develop a computational model that produces sequential effects naturally. Inn ....How Do Our Past Decisions Affect Our Present Decisions? – An Innovative Model. Decisions under time pressure made in the past have a tendency to affect our current decisions. This phenomenon is often termed ‘sequential effects’. Typically, sequential effects are explained by positing the existence of a psychological mechanism that is specifically aimed at resolving conflicting information. The aim of this project is to develop a computational model that produces sequential effects naturally. Innovatively, this model would remove the need for an explicit conflict monitoring mechanism. This project is significant because it progresses our understanding of how humans deal with conflict. The expected outcome is a comprehensive, quantitative account of sequential effects in human decision making.Read moreRead less
Perception of Gaze, Head and Body Direction. This project aims to understand the computational processes in our brains that enable us to know where someone else is looking. To an observer, the direction of your gaze reveals where you are looking and hence what you are looking at. This might be an object of shared attention or it might be the observer him or herself. The direction of your gaze is thus a strong social signal to your intentions and future actions. Project findings may be of signifi ....Perception of Gaze, Head and Body Direction. This project aims to understand the computational processes in our brains that enable us to know where someone else is looking. To an observer, the direction of your gaze reveals where you are looking and hence what you are looking at. This might be an object of shared attention or it might be the observer him or herself. The direction of your gaze is thus a strong social signal to your intentions and future actions. Project findings may be of significance to clinicians seeking to rehabilitate the malfunction of social communicative skills, to scientists interested in the social attention system, and to engineers designing robotic systems to interact socially with humans.Read moreRead less