Alexander Marchant

Supervisors: Jan de Fockert, Jose van Velzen 

Research interests 

My general area of interest is visual perception, specifically scene perception. The quick comprehension of scene gist necessitates the processing of a remarkable amount of information in a very brief period of time and involves the integration of many aspects of contextual analysis (the interrelationship of objects, scene, and observer). During my PhD I have focussed extensively on the area of set representation by statistical properties. This is the idea that the visual system holds a summary representation of sets of similar objects instead of information about the individual members of that set. This area of research is of particular interest as this mechanism has been proposed to play a role in scene perception by reducing the amount of redundant information in the visual world. 

In the short term my future work will look to break new ground by investigating the time course of set representation by statistical properties using electroencephalography (EEG). However in the long term I wish to broaden my research profile not only by investigating visual perception and its associated processes on a real-world scale, but also gaining experience with new techniques and possibly different participant groups to explore the broader spectrum of perception 

Publications 

Marchant, A.P., & De Fockert, J.W. (2009). Priming by the mean representation of a set. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 62 (10), 1889-1895. 

De Fockert, J.W., & Marchant, A.P. (2008). Attention modulates set representation by statistical properties. Perception and Psychophysics, 70 (5), 789-794.

In progress:

Marchant, A.P., & De Fockert, J.W. (in preparation). Effects of set size and heterogeneity in set representation by statistical properties.

Jenkins, R., Van Montfort, X., Marchant, A.P., & De Fockert, J.W. (in preparation). Face perception of Dutch celebrities by British and Dutch observers supports face perception by averaging.

Grants and Awards

University of London, Central Research Fund (June 2009) 

Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Overseas University Visit (June 2008)
Three month funding extension to my PhD to work in the lab of Prof Dan Simons (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA) 

Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) competitive +3 PhD studentship (Aug 2006) 

Goldsmiths, University of London departmental fees bursary for MSc in Research Methods (Aug 2005) 

University of London Carpenter Prize (July 2005)
Best final year psychology project within the University of London