Biography:
After completing my undergraduate degree at Dundee, I liked it so much I decided to come back and do my PhD! Throughout my undergraduate years I'd developed a strong interest in how people interact non-verbally and how these non-verbal cues like body language and gaze direction could give information contrary to what a person was actually saying. Pairing this with my interest in magic seemed like the perfect idea as magicians are some of the most skilled people in the art of non-verbal communication. As I learned more about the Psychology of Magic, I discovered it is an area rich with questions to be asked and answered through psychological research. My own project investigates how people learn magic tricks. I think it's a really exciting project because magic is one of the only skills people learn in the real world where vision and action are decoupled - that is, you can't look at what you're doing while you're doing it less you give the game away! Learning skills where vision is decoupled from action hasn't really been investigated to any great extent, and certainly not with a task that's used in the real world. I'm excited to see what happens and to learn some new tricks myself along the way.

Biography:
I attained my BSc in Psychology and my MSc in Eye Movements and Cognition from the University of Dundee. For my undergraduate dissertation I studied the effects of speaking multiple dialects on language production. My Masters research was conducted in the AVL and investigated the role of gaze in communication, using a real-world eye-tracking paradigm. My current research expands on my MSc work and focuses on the role of gaze and dialogue in natural collaboration.

Biography:
My Ph.D., co-supervised by Prof. Sylvane Faure (University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis, France) and Prof. Sergio Morra (University of Genoa, Italy), considered hemispheric asymmetry as well as the influence of perceptual and semantic properties in detecting visual changes. I then went on a 1 year postdoctoral project in Nice on multi-format (verbal and non-verbal) representations, studying the role of the cerebral hemispheres and the contribution of repetitive bilateral saccades to the memory of this type of information.

At the AVL I am now working as a postdoctoral researcher on a project examining how scene context and object information are used during a search task in real world images. In particular, we investigate whether both types of information can be processed simultaneously during the first fixation. We are also interested in analyzing what the functional goal of the visual system is when utilising each high-level information source over the course of viewing a scene.

I continue to collaborate with Sylvane Faure (Nice) and with Sergio Morra and Francesco Benso (Genoa) on hemispheric functional specialization and interaction in the processing of verbal and non-verbal information and in visual change detection.

Ben Tatler has been made a member of the newly established Royal Society of Edinburgh Young Academy of Scotland. The establishment of the Young Academy brings together 68 young academics, entrepreneurs, artists and professionals in Scotland.

The aim of this initiative is to stimulate creative ideas and collaborative working that will help address some of the key challenges facing Scotland and contribute to solving some of the global challenges of the 21st Century. The Young Academy will provide a platform for Scotland’s best and most forward-looking young scholars. It will provide a unique forum for its members to engage with talented individuals beyond their own discipline or profession.

We are delighted that four new members will be joining the AVL this summer. Dr Sara Spotorno joins the lab on a 1-year project funded by the ESRC. Katy Inglis, Clare Kirtley, Ross Macdonald will all join to start PhDs in the lab at the end of the summer.

More details about these new members and their projects will follow soon.

Tatler, B. W., Hayhoe, M. M., Land, M. F., & Ballard, D. H. (2011). Eye guidance in natural vision: Reinterpreting salience. Journal of Vision, 11(5):5, 1–23, http://www.journalofvision.org/content/11/5/5, doi:10.1167/11.5.5.

This article is an invited review for the 10th anniversary edition of the Journal of Vision. In it we review current models and understanding of scene viewing and consider the limitations of using these models to understand eye guidance in the context of natural behavioural settings. We highlight the principles of selection that any model of natural eye guidance needs to be able to explain and discuss the emerging theoretical framework for gaze allocation on the basis of reward maximization and uncertainty reduction.

Applications are invited for an ESRC-funded postdoc position in the AVL. The project is entitled “The timecourse of utilising high-level information in scene perception.”

The aim of the research is to understand how we use different sources of information in a scene to guide where we look. In particular we are interested in whether scene context and target template information are utilised simultaneously or sequentially, when we first encounter a scene. We will consider the functional goal of the visual system when utilising target template and scene context information in order to gain insights into the situations in which each of these sources of information is utilised. These findings will allow insights into the moment-to-moment decision making processes as we search natural images for a target object. 

The successful applicant will be responsible for eye movement data collection, analysis and dissemination of outcomes through publications and conference presentations. 

The post is available from 15th July 2011 for a fixed-term period of 11 months (earlier start dates can be arranged if necessary).

Closing date: 11th May 2011.

For more information visit the job advert or contact Ben Tatler.

Matt Stainer will be presenting a poster entitled "Expertise in CCTV Control Room operation as revealed by eye movements" at the EPS workshop "Expertise as Revealed by Oculomotor Behaviour" in Portsmouth on 12th April 2011. The poster summarises what we have learnt about how expert police CCTV operators monitor multiple video displays in a control room. We recorded data from two operators while they carried out their normal monitoring duties during. This work is part of Matt's PhD project, which is jointly supervised by Ben Tatler and Ken Scott-Brown and is in collaboration with Tayside Police.

I have neglected this site for quite some time. Over the next few days I will be bringing it up to date and ironing out the issues that had crept in like broken links. Please feel free to let me know if you find any problems or omissions. Thanks for your patience.

From 19th-23rd October, Ben Tatler will be visiting Kenneth Holmqvist at the Humanities Lab in Lund, Sweden. We hope that this trip will be the start of future collaborations between the Active Vision Lab and the Humanities Lab. Kenneth is also working on what looks set to become a leading book on eye tracking methodology, which will be essential reading both for those wanting to move into eye movement research and for established researchers in the field.

The recent special issue of Visual Cognition, edited by Ben Tatler, is now available as a hard-backed book. Find out more details about the contents of this special issue here.

A new special issue of Visual Cognition, edited by Ben Tatler is now available.

Looking and Acting: vision in natural behaviour is the new book by Land and Tatler. This book was published by Oxford University Press in July 2009. This book covers a wide range of natural settings, considering how we use our eyes to gather the information we need to perform these activities. A central theme is that the eye movement system has its own knowledge about where to find the most appropriate information for guiding action - information not usually available to conscious scrutiny. Thus each type of action has its own specific repertoire of linked eye movements, acquired in parallel with the motor skills themselves.

Yesterday the BBC's ONE show came up to Dundee to film Ben Tatler and Gustav Kuhn running a demonstration of our work on eye movements and misdirection in magic. Gustav performed a couple of tricks to camera and then we eye tracked four volunteers as they watched Gustav make a cigarette lighter disappear. Both Gustav and Ben were also filmed having brief chats with Marty Jopson, science correspondent for the ONE show.

A new special issue of Perception, edited by Ben Tatler, Peter Thompson, Tom Troscianko, has now been published.

Ben Tatler will be speaking at a workshop on gaze patterns in dynamic displays in Leipzig, Germany, on June 19-20th. The remit of the workshop is as follows: “To date most experimental paradigms have focused on gaze in static situations. With improvements in technology and increasingly sophisticated models it has become feasible to investigate more complex dynamic situations. By bringing together experts on eye movement tracking, virtual reality, gaze modeling, and clinical applications we hope to facilitate cross-disciplinary exchange and to discuss new paradigms.” More information about the workshop can be found here.

Ben Tatler will be joining the editorial board of Perception in July 2009.

This journal has a proud history of publishing experimental results and theoretical ideas ranging over the fields of human, animal, and machine perception. Perception was founded in 1972 by Richard Gregory.

Impact factor (2007): 1.617

Ben Tatler will be giving a talk at the Philipps-Universität in Marburg, Germany on 9th June 2009. The talk is entitled “Eye guidance in natural behaviour” and will discuss the limitations of static scene viewing paradigms and the need to study eye movements in the context of natural behaviour.

We are launching this new AVL website. This site contains more information than our previous site about the current research projects we are involved in and our publications. We hope you find this useful and informative. If you spot any problems, broken links etc then please email Ben Tatler.

We will try to keep this news page up to date for upcoming events we are involved in and papers as they come out. To keep updated, why not subscribe to the RSS feed?

Thanks.
Ben Tatler