Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE190101043
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$404,956.00
Summary
Tackling facial prejudice. This project aims to investigate individual differences in facial prejudice, a powerful psychological bias whereby people rely on inaccurate first impressions to guide key decisions, such as whom to trust. Utilising recent advances in electrophysiology, the project will develop a new neural marker of individual differences in facial impressions that lead to prejudice. The project expects to lead to insights into the link between visual perception and social behaviour, ....Tackling facial prejudice. This project aims to investigate individual differences in facial prejudice, a powerful psychological bias whereby people rely on inaccurate first impressions to guide key decisions, such as whom to trust. Utilising recent advances in electrophysiology, the project will develop a new neural marker of individual differences in facial impressions that lead to prejudice. The project expects to lead to insights into the link between visual perception and social behaviour, and to develop strategies to reduce facial prejudice given the pervasive influence it has on everyday life.Read moreRead less
Determinants of Audio-Visual effects in degraded and non-degraded speech. Seeing a speaker's face can affect the perception of their speech in a number of ways. This project proposes a detailed comparison of factors that affect Audio-Visual (AV) facilitation of degraded speech detection and identification. Detection-based tasks should be more sensitive to signal based correlations whereas identification-based effects more sensitive to complementary information. The significance of the current pr ....Determinants of Audio-Visual effects in degraded and non-degraded speech. Seeing a speaker's face can affect the perception of their speech in a number of ways. This project proposes a detailed comparison of factors that affect Audio-Visual (AV) facilitation of degraded speech detection and identification. Detection-based tasks should be more sensitive to signal based correlations whereas identification-based effects more sensitive to complementary information. The significance of the current proposal is that it offers both a strategy and a connected series of experiments for determining key behavioural constraints on AV speech integration. Understanding AV interactions will build links between neurophysiological processes and coherent perception and have important implications for AV application.Read moreRead less
Who may judge a book by its cover? This project aims to build a model of how and why people vary in their impressions of others and in the accuracy of these impressions. People readily form impressions of others from their faces and these impressions influence crucial decisions: election results, court case outcomes and partner choices. To build this model, the project will apply twin data and construct a psychometric test to measure variation in facial impressions. The research is expected to l ....Who may judge a book by its cover? This project aims to build a model of how and why people vary in their impressions of others and in the accuracy of these impressions. People readily form impressions of others from their faces and these impressions influence crucial decisions: election results, court case outcomes and partner choices. To build this model, the project will apply twin data and construct a psychometric test to measure variation in facial impressions. The research is expected to lead to insights into this aspect of social perception, and to identify the sources of atypical or inaccurate facial judgements. This has applications in health contexts (to identify social impairment) and in security contexts (for personnel selection).Read moreRead less
Filters reveal what flicker conceals: temporal processing in the human visual system. I have recently discovered a new form of camouflage using 10Hz luminance flicker. This project will quantify this effect and examine the extent to which it generalises across colour and spatial dimensions and to video sequences depicting natural scenes. This information is expected to provide foundational information to technologies relating to national security that rely on visual concealment. This research wi ....Filters reveal what flicker conceals: temporal processing in the human visual system. I have recently discovered a new form of camouflage using 10Hz luminance flicker. This project will quantify this effect and examine the extent to which it generalises across colour and spatial dimensions and to video sequences depicting natural scenes. This information is expected to provide foundational information to technologies relating to national security that rely on visual concealment. This research will examine the extent to which filtering out these camouflaging frequencies enhances our sensitivity to low temporal frequency information. This decamouflaging aspect of my research is expected to improve the clarity of digital video-based technologies including ultrasound, educational, info-tainment and defence applicationsRead moreRead less
Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment And Facilities - Grant ID: LE0347784
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$130,000.00
Summary
MOVEMENT & COMMUNICATION ANALYSIS LAB & PORTABLE AUDIENCE RESPONSE FACILITY. The equipment establishes an integrated movement analysis laboratory and audience response facility to support and extend ongoing collaborative research projects that investigate human visual and auditory communication through gestures of voice and body. This laboratory will allow recording and analysis of fine and gross motor activity in: caregiver-infant and therapist-client interaction; auditory-visual speech percept ....MOVEMENT & COMMUNICATION ANALYSIS LAB & PORTABLE AUDIENCE RESPONSE FACILITY. The equipment establishes an integrated movement analysis laboratory and audience response facility to support and extend ongoing collaborative research projects that investigate human visual and auditory communication through gestures of voice and body. This laboratory will allow recording and analysis of fine and gross motor activity in: caregiver-infant and therapist-client interaction; auditory-visual speech perception; audience reactions to gesture and dance. The audience response facility, a portable system of small keypads programmed to record discrete and continuous responses, brings precision to recording psychological responses in a naturalistic setting. The combined equipment allows concerted investigation of human communicative gesture.Read moreRead less
Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment And Facilities - Grant ID: LE0210995
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$100,000.00
Summary
The Creation of an Eye Movement Recording Facility in Queensland. There are countless uses for technology that records visual behaviour; these include reading and cognitive psychology research, ergonomic design, web site usability testing, and evaluation of visual information (for example advertising or in ?virtual? environments). As such, recording eye movements has applications in pure and applied research, and in teaching demonstrations for students.
This application proposes to purchase ey ....The Creation of an Eye Movement Recording Facility in Queensland. There are countless uses for technology that records visual behaviour; these include reading and cognitive psychology research, ergonomic design, web site usability testing, and evaluation of visual information (for example advertising or in ?virtual? environments). As such, recording eye movements has applications in pure and applied research, and in teaching demonstrations for students.
This application proposes to purchase eye movement recording equipment to form a dedicated and truly collaborative facility to measure visual behaviour. The facility would be unique in Australia and would be invaluable to both further understand visual/cognitive processes and how individuals interact with their environments.Read moreRead less
Establishing how head and face movement properties contribute to the perception of speech and identity. The proposed studies provide an extensive research program into audio-visual speech processing and person identification: key components of face-to-face communication. The likely impact and benefits of the project concern its contribution to perceptual theory (linking signal, brain and behaviour) and its practical implications: For determining the viability of multimodal biometric identificati ....Establishing how head and face movement properties contribute to the perception of speech and identity. The proposed studies provide an extensive research program into audio-visual speech processing and person identification: key components of face-to-face communication. The likely impact and benefits of the project concern its contribution to perceptual theory (linking signal, brain and behaviour) and its practical implications: For determining the viability of multimodal biometric identification procedures by assessing the distinctiveness and permanence of AV speech characteristics. In the development of a visual dubbing technique that has potential for communication in noisy environments (and for the deaf) and for the development of a morphable model for AV presentation that has application for both first and second language learning.Read moreRead less
When immigrants and converts are not truly one of us: Examining the social psychology and developmental antecedents of marginalizing racism. Marginalizing Racism, the simultaneous acceptance and rejection of others, is clearly present in Australia. It is not just a matter of thugs on the streets of Cronulla, but of elected politicians expressing Marginalizing Racist views. We believe that examining the social psychology and developmental causes of this insidious form of racism will pave the way ....When immigrants and converts are not truly one of us: Examining the social psychology and developmental antecedents of marginalizing racism. Marginalizing Racism, the simultaneous acceptance and rejection of others, is clearly present in Australia. It is not just a matter of thugs on the streets of Cronulla, but of elected politicians expressing Marginalizing Racist views. We believe that examining the social psychology and developmental causes of this insidious form of racism will pave the way for positive social change. This is not just an academic exercise, but a chance to expose and tackle a form of racism to which the broader public and our own profession appears to turn a blind eye. Moreover, as we expect this research to yield timely and influential discoveries, it will help maintain Australia's position as a world leader in the field of social psychology.Read moreRead less
Captions for the Deaf and Hearing Impaired: Availability versus Accessibility. The availability of educational, informational and recreational services for deaf and hearing-impaired people has been dramatically facilitated by (i) increased television captioning due to the 2001 introduction of the Television Broadcasting Services Act; and (ii) trial introduction of real-time captioning in educational settings. These innovations must be matched by equally innovative ways of increasing the accessib ....Captions for the Deaf and Hearing Impaired: Availability versus Accessibility. The availability of educational, informational and recreational services for deaf and hearing-impaired people has been dramatically facilitated by (i) increased television captioning due to the 2001 introduction of the Television Broadcasting Services Act; and (ii) trial introduction of real-time captioning in educational settings. These innovations must be matched by equally innovative ways of increasing the accessibility of captions, which is currently limited by English literacy, caption speed, and caption reduction techniques. Here, systematic manipulation of these factors in experiments on television captioning with adults and educational captioning with children will determine how resources might best be directed to improving caption accessibility.Read moreRead less
Children's Intergroup Prejudice: The Roles of Cognitive Representations and Self-presentation. Research indicates that intergroup prejudice remains a problem in most Australian schools. For example, children as young as 5-6 years assign negative attributes to indigenous Australians and Pacific Islander children, they prefer not to play with these children, and they do not even want them living nearby. The proposed research will examine the possible basis of age effects in these attitudes. It wi ....Children's Intergroup Prejudice: The Roles of Cognitive Representations and Self-presentation. Research indicates that intergroup prejudice remains a problem in most Australian schools. For example, children as young as 5-6 years assign negative attributes to indigenous Australians and Pacific Islander children, they prefer not to play with these children, and they do not even want them living nearby. The proposed research will examine the possible basis of age effects in these attitudes. It will have a substantial national benefit because it will increase our understanding of this insidious social phenomenon and provide a basis for developing an intervention that will minimise a problem that has the potential to devastate community relations.
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