Professor Jules Davidoff - Research projects

(co-supervised by Dr Karina Linnell)

Seeing with our hands

Judgements of the size of a central object are influenced by the size of surround objects such that, the larger the surround objects, the smaller the central circle is perceived to be. However, this perceptual distortion does not impair our actions: when we reach out to grasp the central object, we shape our hands to match the real, and not the perceived, size of the object (see Carey, 2001). We have recently acquired data from a remote African tribe called the Himba showing that their perceptions of size are considerably less distorted than ours. The purpose of this project is to ask whether the unique accuracy of the Himba’s perception stems from a greater facility at ‘seeing with their hands’.

References

Carey, D.P. (2001). Do action systems resist visual illusions? Trends in Cognitive Science, 5, 109-113.

The development of the global bias in westerners

Our tendency to perceive global structure (or to see the ‘forest before the trees’) is well documented (Navon, 1977). Limited cross-cultural work (e.g., Rivers, 1905) replicated in our lab (Davidoff et al, 2008) suggests that this global bias is however less strong in remote peoples. Developmental work has suggested that it is also less strong in Western children than in Western adults but reports do not agree about when the global bias develops. This PhD will examine the developmental trajectory of the global bias in Western children and teenagers with a view to understanding the origins of the Western global bias and cultural differences.

References

Davidoff, J., Fonteneau, E. & Fagot, J. (2008). Local and global processing: observations from a remote culture. Cognition, 108, 702-709

Navon, D. (1977). Forest before trees: Precedence of global perception in visual perception.
Cognitive Psychology, 9, 353-383.

Rivers, W.H.R. (1905). Observations on the senses of the Todas. British Journal of Psychology, 1, 321-396.