Graduated from Edinburgh in neuroscience and then moved to UCL as a Wellcome Prize Student to study visual neurophysiology. Awarded a PhD from the Department of Psychology at the University of Nottingham. Post-doctoral research fellow at the University of St Andrews. Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Hull before moving to the University of York, now a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of York. Current research investigates the brain mechanisms underlying perception of motion, human actions and social stimuli. Supervisors: Semir Zeki, Andrew Derrington, and David Perrett Phone: +441904323141 Address: Department of Psychology University of York Heslington, York, YO10 5DD UK
Prolonged exposure, or adaptation, to a stimulus in 1 modality can bias, but also enhance, percep... more Prolonged exposure, or adaptation, to a stimulus in 1 modality can bias, but also enhance, perception of a subsequent stimulus presented within the same modality. However, recent research has also found that adaptation in 1 modality can bias perception in another modality. Here, we show a novel crossmodal adaptation effect, where adaptation to a visual stimulus enhances subsequent auditory perception. We found that when compared to no adaptation, prior adaptation to visual, auditory, or audiovisual hand actions enhanced discrimination between 2 subsequently presented hand action sounds. Discrimination was most enhanced when the visual action Bmatched^ the auditory action. In addition, prior adaptation to a visual, auditory, or audiovisual action caused subsequent ambiguous action sounds to be perceived as less like the adaptor. In contrast, these crossmodal action aftereffects were not generated by adaptation to the names of actions. Enhanced crossmodal discrimination and crossmodal perceptual aftereffects may result from separate mechanisms operating in audiovisual action sensitive neurons within perceptual systems. Adaptation-induced crossmodal enhancements cannot be explained by postperceptual responses or decisions. More generally, these results together indicate that adaptation is a ubiquitous mechanism for optimizing perceptual processing of multisensory stimuli.
When observing another individual's actions, we can both recognize their actions and infer their ... more When observing another individual's actions, we can both recognize their actions and infer their beliefs concerning the physical and social environment. The extent to which visual adaptation influences action recognition and conceptually later stages of processing involved in deriving the belief state of the actor remains unknown. To explore this we used virtual reality (life-size photorealistic actors presented in stereoscopic three dimensions) to see how visual adaptation influences the perception of individuals in naturally unfolding social scenes at increasingly higher levels of action understanding. We presented scenes in which one actor picked up boxes (of varying number and weight), after which a second actor picked up a single box. Adaptation to the first actor's behavior systematically changed perception of the second actor. Aftereffects increased with the duration of the first actor's behavior, declined exponentially over time, and were independent of view direction. Inferences about the second actor's expectation of box weight were also distorted by adaptation to the first actor. Distortions in action recognition and actor expectations did not, however, extend across different actions, indicating that adaptation is not acting at an action-independent abstract level but rather at an action-dependent level. We conclude that although adaptation influences more complex inferences about belief states of individuals, this is likely to be a result of adaptation at an earlier action recognition stage rather than adaptation operating at a higher, more abstract level in mentalizing or simulation systems.
Accurate perception of an individual's identity and emotion derived from their actions and behavi... more Accurate perception of an individual's identity and emotion derived from their actions and behavior is essential for successful social functioning. Here we determined the role of identity in the representation of emotional whole-body actions using visual adaptation paradigms. Participants adapted to actors performing different whole-body actions in a happy and sad fashion. Following adaptation subsequent neutral actions appeared to convey the opposite emotion. We demonstrate two different emotional action aftereffects showing distinctive adaptation characteristics. For one short-lived aftereffect, adaptation to the emotion expressed by an individual resulted in biases in the perception of the expression of emotion by other individuals, indicating an identity-independent representation of emotional actions. A second, longer lasting, aftereffect was observed where adaptation to the emotion expressed by an individual resulted in longer-term biases in the perception of the expressions of emotion only by the same individual; this indicated an additional identity-dependent representation of emotional actions. Together, the presence of these two aftereffects indicates the existence of two mechanisms for coding emotional actions, only one of which takes into account the actor's identity. The results that we observe might parallel processing of emotion from face and voice.
Accurate perception of an individual's identity and emotion derived from their actions and behavi... more Accurate perception of an individual's identity and emotion derived from their actions and behavior is essential for successful social functioning. Here we determined the role of identity in the representation of emotional whole-body actions using visual adaptation paradigms. Participants adapted to actors performing different whole-body actions in a happy and sad fashion. Following adaptation subsequent neutral actions appeared to convey the opposite emotion. We demonstrate two different emotional action aftereffects showing distinctive adaptation characteristics. For one short-lived aftereffect, adaptation to the emotion expressed by an individual resulted in biases in the perception of the expression of emotion by other individuals, indicating an identity-independent representation of emotional actions. A second, longer lasting, aftereffect was observed where adaptation to the emotion expressed by an individual resulted in longer-term biases in the perception of the expressions of emotion only by the same individual; this indicated an additional identity-dependent representation of emotional actions. Together, the presence of these two aftereffects indicates the existence of two mechanisms for coding emotional actions, only one of which takes into account the actor's identity. The results that we observe might parallel processing of emotion from face and voice.
Actions can be perceived through multiple sensory modalities including vision and audition. It is... more Actions can be perceived through multiple sensory modalities including vision and audition. It is currently uncertain if audiovisual actions are coded multimodally or in discrete unimodal areas. In order to test if actions are coded multimodally, we used a crossmodal adaptation paradigm to test whether the perception of hand action sounds was influenced by prior adaptation to visual and auditory actions. We generated an action sound continuum between the sound of a hand knocking and slapping by blending the sounds between the two action extremes. Following adaptation to auditory knocks, subsequent ambiguous test sounds appeared more like slaps; following adaptation to auditory slaps, subsequent ambiguous test sounds appeared more like knocks. Smaller but significant auditory aftereffects were generated by adaptation to purely visual information, whilst visual adaptation to visually presented orthographic action information did not generate auditory aftereffects. We also tested whether crossmodal adaptation improved action sound sensitivity around the adapting stimulus to rule out the possibility of observer response bias (Morgan 2013). Just-noticeable differences (JNDs) were calculated for knock sounds after participants adapted to auditory, visual, and audiovisual knocks, or did not adapt. Participants completed a two-interval forced-choice (2-IFC) adaptive staircase procedure, in which they judged which sound was more like a knock. JNDs were derived from a psychometric function fitted to the data. Auditory, audiovisual, and importantly visual only adaptation improved sensitivity to knock sounds when compared to no adaptation. A further experiment confirmed that auditory sensitivity to knock sounds was most enhanced following adaptation to visual knock actions compared to visual slap actions. These results suggest that adaptation to actions, irrespective of the adaptor modality can selectively enhance mechanisms underlying the coding of actions to improve perceptual sensitivity. Such crossmodal action aftereffects may result from adaptation of multimodal neurons tuned to specific actions. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.
We present a database of high-definition (HD) videos for the study of traits inferred from whole-... more We present a database of high-definition (HD) videos for the study of traits inferred from whole-body actions. Twenty-nine actors (19 female) were filmed performing different actions-walking, picking up a box, putting down a box, jumping, sitting down, and standing and acting-while conveying different traits, including four emotions (anger, fear, happiness, sadness), untrustworthiness, and neutral, where no specific trait was conveyed. For the actions conveying the four emotions and untrustworthiness, the actions were filmed multiple times, with the actor conveying the traits with different levels of intensity. In total, we made 2,783 action videos (in both two-dimensional and three-dimensional format), each lasting 7 s with a frame rate of 50 fps. All videos were filmed in a green-screen studio in order to isolate the action information from all contextual detail and to provide a flexible stimulus set for future use. In order to validate the traits conveyed by each action, we asked...
Prolonged exposure, or adaptation, to a stimulus in 1 modality can bias, but also enhance, percep... more Prolonged exposure, or adaptation, to a stimulus in 1 modality can bias, but also enhance, perception of a subsequent stimulus presented within the same modality. However, recent research has also found that adaptation in 1 modality can bias perception in another modality. Here, we show a novel crossmodal adaptation effect, where adaptation to a visual stimulus enhances subsequent auditory perception. We found that when compared to no adaptation, prior adaptation to visual, auditory, or audiovisual hand actions enhanced discrimination between 2 subsequently presented hand action sounds. Discrimination was most enhanced when the visual action Bmatched^ the auditory action. In addition, prior adaptation to a visual, auditory, or audiovisual action caused subsequent ambiguous action sounds to be perceived as less like the adaptor. In contrast, these crossmodal action aftereffects were not generated by adaptation to the names of actions. Enhanced crossmodal discrimination and crossmodal perceptual aftereffects may result from separate mechanisms operating in audiovisual action sensitive neurons within perceptual systems. Adaptation-induced crossmodal enhancements cannot be explained by postperceptual responses or decisions. More generally, these results together indicate that adaptation is a ubiquitous mechanism for optimizing perceptual processing of multisensory stimuli.
When observing another individual's actions, we can both recognize their actions and infer their ... more When observing another individual's actions, we can both recognize their actions and infer their beliefs concerning the physical and social environment. The extent to which visual adaptation influences action recognition and conceptually later stages of processing involved in deriving the belief state of the actor remains unknown. To explore this we used virtual reality (life-size photorealistic actors presented in stereoscopic three dimensions) to see how visual adaptation influences the perception of individuals in naturally unfolding social scenes at increasingly higher levels of action understanding. We presented scenes in which one actor picked up boxes (of varying number and weight), after which a second actor picked up a single box. Adaptation to the first actor's behavior systematically changed perception of the second actor. Aftereffects increased with the duration of the first actor's behavior, declined exponentially over time, and were independent of view direction. Inferences about the second actor's expectation of box weight were also distorted by adaptation to the first actor. Distortions in action recognition and actor expectations did not, however, extend across different actions, indicating that adaptation is not acting at an action-independent abstract level but rather at an action-dependent level. We conclude that although adaptation influences more complex inferences about belief states of individuals, this is likely to be a result of adaptation at an earlier action recognition stage rather than adaptation operating at a higher, more abstract level in mentalizing or simulation systems.
Accurate perception of an individual's identity and emotion derived from their actions and behavi... more Accurate perception of an individual's identity and emotion derived from their actions and behavior is essential for successful social functioning. Here we determined the role of identity in the representation of emotional whole-body actions using visual adaptation paradigms. Participants adapted to actors performing different whole-body actions in a happy and sad fashion. Following adaptation subsequent neutral actions appeared to convey the opposite emotion. We demonstrate two different emotional action aftereffects showing distinctive adaptation characteristics. For one short-lived aftereffect, adaptation to the emotion expressed by an individual resulted in biases in the perception of the expression of emotion by other individuals, indicating an identity-independent representation of emotional actions. A second, longer lasting, aftereffect was observed where adaptation to the emotion expressed by an individual resulted in longer-term biases in the perception of the expressions of emotion only by the same individual; this indicated an additional identity-dependent representation of emotional actions. Together, the presence of these two aftereffects indicates the existence of two mechanisms for coding emotional actions, only one of which takes into account the actor's identity. The results that we observe might parallel processing of emotion from face and voice.
Accurate perception of an individual's identity and emotion derived from their actions and behavi... more Accurate perception of an individual's identity and emotion derived from their actions and behavior is essential for successful social functioning. Here we determined the role of identity in the representation of emotional whole-body actions using visual adaptation paradigms. Participants adapted to actors performing different whole-body actions in a happy and sad fashion. Following adaptation subsequent neutral actions appeared to convey the opposite emotion. We demonstrate two different emotional action aftereffects showing distinctive adaptation characteristics. For one short-lived aftereffect, adaptation to the emotion expressed by an individual resulted in biases in the perception of the expression of emotion by other individuals, indicating an identity-independent representation of emotional actions. A second, longer lasting, aftereffect was observed where adaptation to the emotion expressed by an individual resulted in longer-term biases in the perception of the expressions of emotion only by the same individual; this indicated an additional identity-dependent representation of emotional actions. Together, the presence of these two aftereffects indicates the existence of two mechanisms for coding emotional actions, only one of which takes into account the actor's identity. The results that we observe might parallel processing of emotion from face and voice.
Actions can be perceived through multiple sensory modalities including vision and audition. It is... more Actions can be perceived through multiple sensory modalities including vision and audition. It is currently uncertain if audiovisual actions are coded multimodally or in discrete unimodal areas. In order to test if actions are coded multimodally, we used a crossmodal adaptation paradigm to test whether the perception of hand action sounds was influenced by prior adaptation to visual and auditory actions. We generated an action sound continuum between the sound of a hand knocking and slapping by blending the sounds between the two action extremes. Following adaptation to auditory knocks, subsequent ambiguous test sounds appeared more like slaps; following adaptation to auditory slaps, subsequent ambiguous test sounds appeared more like knocks. Smaller but significant auditory aftereffects were generated by adaptation to purely visual information, whilst visual adaptation to visually presented orthographic action information did not generate auditory aftereffects. We also tested whether crossmodal adaptation improved action sound sensitivity around the adapting stimulus to rule out the possibility of observer response bias (Morgan 2013). Just-noticeable differences (JNDs) were calculated for knock sounds after participants adapted to auditory, visual, and audiovisual knocks, or did not adapt. Participants completed a two-interval forced-choice (2-IFC) adaptive staircase procedure, in which they judged which sound was more like a knock. JNDs were derived from a psychometric function fitted to the data. Auditory, audiovisual, and importantly visual only adaptation improved sensitivity to knock sounds when compared to no adaptation. A further experiment confirmed that auditory sensitivity to knock sounds was most enhanced following adaptation to visual knock actions compared to visual slap actions. These results suggest that adaptation to actions, irrespective of the adaptor modality can selectively enhance mechanisms underlying the coding of actions to improve perceptual sensitivity. Such crossmodal action aftereffects may result from adaptation of multimodal neurons tuned to specific actions. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.
We present a database of high-definition (HD) videos for the study of traits inferred from whole-... more We present a database of high-definition (HD) videos for the study of traits inferred from whole-body actions. Twenty-nine actors (19 female) were filmed performing different actions-walking, picking up a box, putting down a box, jumping, sitting down, and standing and acting-while conveying different traits, including four emotions (anger, fear, happiness, sadness), untrustworthiness, and neutral, where no specific trait was conveyed. For the actions conveying the four emotions and untrustworthiness, the actions were filmed multiple times, with the actor conveying the traits with different levels of intensity. In total, we made 2,783 action videos (in both two-dimensional and three-dimensional format), each lasting 7 s with a frame rate of 50 fps. All videos were filmed in a green-screen studio in order to isolate the action information from all contextual detail and to provide a flexible stimulus set for future use. In order to validate the traits conveyed by each action, we asked...
A project funded under the AHRC's 'Care for the Future' Theme (£1.8m).
This project's objectiv... more A project funded under the AHRC's 'Care for the Future' Theme (£1.8m).
This project's objective is to bring recently rediscovered musical, theatrical and literary works by Jewish artists back to the attention of scholars and the public, and to stimulate the creation of new works based on archives. This scholarly work and artistic practice will engage with and re-theorise traditional archives, ethnographic archives, and artistic works themselves. The multi-disciplinary team will focus on the years 1880-1950, an intense period of Jewish displacement, in order to illuminate the role of art in displacement.
Uploads
This project's objective is to bring recently rediscovered musical, theatrical and literary works by Jewish artists back to the attention of scholars and the public, and to stimulate the creation of new works based on archives. This scholarly work and artistic practice will engage with and re-theorise traditional archives, ethnographic archives, and artistic works themselves. The multi-disciplinary team will focus on the years 1880-1950, an intense period of Jewish displacement, in order to illuminate the role of art in displacement.