Professor Jules Davidoff

Jules researches the mental representation of objects, the relationship between our memory and recognition of them.

Staff details

Professor Jules Davidoff

Position

Professor

Department

Psychology

Email

j.davidoff (@gold.ac.uk)

Summary of research

Object recognition, colour, naming, cognitive neuropsychology

Conference Secretary Experimental Psychology Society (2002-2006)

 

Publications and research outputs

Book Section

Roberson, Debi; Davidoff, Jules B.; Davies, Ian and Shapiro, L.. 2006. Colour categories and category acquisition in Himba and English. In: Nicola Pitchford and Carole P. Biggam, eds. Progress in Colour Studies. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 159-172. ISBN 9027232407

Kentridge, Robert; Heywood, Charles and Davidoff, Jules B.. 2002. Color Perception. In: Michael A. Arbib, ed. The Handbook of Brain Theory and Neural Networks. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 230-233. ISBN 978-0-262-01197-6

Davidoff, Jules B.. 2002. Language forms the internal color space. In: Barbara Saunders and Jaap van Brakel, eds. Theories, Technologies, Instrumentalities of Color: Anthropological and Historiographic Perspectives. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, pp. 281-288. ISBN 978-0761822653

Article

Trémolière, Bastien; Davidoff, Jules B. and Caparos, Serge. 2022. A 21st century cognitive portrait of the Himba, a remote people of Namibia. British Journal of Psychology, 113(2), pp. 508-530. ISSN 0007-1269

Mylonas, Dimitris; Caparos, Serge and Davidoff, Jules B.. 2022. Augmenting a colour lexicon. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 9(1), 29. ISSN 2662-9992

Linnell, Karina J; Bremner, Andrew J.; Caparos, S.; Davidoff, Jules B. and De Fockert, J. W.. 2018. Urban experience alters lightness perception. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 44(1), pp. 2-6. ISSN 0096-1523

Research Interests

I am concerned with the mental representation of objects. My primary concern is to clarify the relationship between the stored (memory) knowledge concerning objects and their recognition, categorisation and nameability. The role of colour was addressed in my text Cognition through Color published by MIT Press (1991) and has been extended in current research. Working in cultures (Papua New Guinea and Namibia) with minimal colour lexicons we are studying the effects on the way speakers of the language perceive, categorise and remember colours. The issue is being addressed with infants with further funding from the ESRC and with monkeys in collaborative research with the CNRS Marseilles. Neuropsychological investigations have also played an important part of my research in object recognition and current work investigates difficulties in face and object recognition that result from brain damage.