Hoover,
Would you be so kind as to post this message to CVNet?
Thanks, Kimron Shapiro
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This is to announce the availability of a postdoctoral position to be
jointly held at the School of Psychology at the University of Wales
(Bangor) and Charing Cross Hospital (London) in the UK. Researchers
working at these two institutions, Drs. Kimron Shapiro and Masud Husain,
recently have been awarded funding by the Wellcome Trust for a
three-year postdoctoral position. The title of the project is ìTemporal
Dynamics of Attention Affect Visual Processingî and a summary of the
project follows this announcement.
The postdoctoral position will require the investigator to spend a
majority of his or her time at the University of Wales working with Dr.
Shapiro. The School of Psychology (http://www.psych.bangor.ac.uk/) at
the University of Wales has a speciality in Cognitive Science,
specifically in attention, memory and motor performance and recently
received a 5A rating placing it among the top Psychology Departments in
the UK. Notable research staff in the Cognitive Group include Steve
Tipper, Jane Raymond, Robert Ward, Steve Lindsay, Steve Jackson, and
Georgina Jackson. The University is located in the Northern part of
Wales on the Irish Sea and is surrounded by spectacular sea and mountain
wilderness areas. The remainder of the time required by this position
will be spent in London at Charing Cross Hospital working under the
supervision of Dr. Masud Husain. Dr. Husain will supervise the
postdoctoral person as she or he tests patients with focal brain
lesions, including those with neglect. London is approximately 4 hours
from Bangor.
The successful applicant will be required to have a specialisation in
visual attention and related areas. As patient testing will form a core
part of this personís duties, the appropriate personality and dedication
are required. Furthermore, we consider the ability to program on a
Macintosh computer to be a significant asset but not essential. We
expect the post to be taken up within the next four months. Please write
jointly by post or email to Dr. Kimron Shapiro and Dr. Masud Husain
expressing your interest and suitability for the position. Thank you.
Dr. Kimron Shapiro Dr. Masud Husain
School of Psychology Academic Unit of Neuroscience
University of Wales, Bangor Fulham Place Road
Bangor, Wales London, England
United Kingdom United Kingdom
LL57 2DG W6 8RF
k.shapiro@bangor.ac.uk ragt001@s1.cxwms.ac.uk
Project Summary
The purpose of the project is to undertake a series of behavioural and
neuropsychological studies into the nature of very short-term visual
processing (attention) within the larger domain of human cognitive
science. In the past few years, many investigators have employed the
rapid serial visual presentation technique to explore a phenomenon
called the ìattentional blinkî (AB). The basic finding is that once
humans have selected for report a specified target from among a set of
briefly presented nontargets, they experience a profound inability to
report a second target for nearly half a second. Thus the AB phenomenon
provides insight into the domain of temporal or time-based, as opposed
to the more commonly studied spatial, attention. In the present
three-year project, we intend to investigate various theoretical
accounts which have been proposed by the many laboratories working on
the AB phenomenon. We intend to accomplish this by undertaking two lines
of behavioural studies and one line of neuropsychological study.
Husain, M., Shapiro, K. L., Martin, J., and Kennard, C. (1997).
Temporal dynamics of visual attention reveal a non-spatial abnormality
in spatial neglect. Nature, 385, 154-156.
Shapiro, K. L., Raymond, J. E., and Arnell, K. M. (1994). Attention to
visual pattern information produces the attentional blink in RSVP.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance,
20, 357-371.