Dr Jan W. de Fockert MSc Phd

Research interests

My main research interest is human visual selective attention. I use a range of selective attention paradigms to investigate to what extent the attention system of the human brain is capable of selective processing of to-be-attended information. These paradigms include flanker distractor tasks, attentional capture by feature singletons, and tasks involving human face stimuli.

I am specifically interested in the control of selective attention. Working memory has been found to play an important role in maintaining attentional selectivity for to-be-attended information. Inhibition of irrelevant, to-be-ignored information is another frontal function which seems to be crucial for selective attention. I use negative priming (the finding that selection of recently ignored information is often impaired) and inhibition of return (the phenomenon that the visual system seems biased to explore new locations in the visual field, rather than re-visit previously attended locations) to investigate the involvement of inhibitory processes in selective attention. Finally, since the human frontal cortex is especially prone to show age-related structural and functional changes, I am interested in how frontal control and selective attention are affected by ageing.

In a separate line of research, I investigate the phenomenon that multiple items can be represented in the visual system in the form of a statistical summary, such as mean size. We have shown evidence for this effect using various measures and stimulus types, including human faces.

Selected publications