Research Areas
Screen Time & Child Development
How do babies and young children learn to watch and understand screen media, e.g. TV, film, and touchscreen devices? Does their use of screen media influence cognitive and behavioural development? How might the features of the screen content and the way that the device is used effect these impacts?
Film Cognition
What is going on in the mind of a viewer when they watch an audiovisual narrative? Film and TV evolved formal techniques to minimise the effort involved in processing their highly unnatural flow of sensory information. Here we study cinematic techniques such as cinematography, editing, and sound design as well as their moment-by-moment influences on cognition and emotion to both understand why film evolved the way it did and what this tells us about how we process real-world dynamic scenes.
Eye Movements & Scene Perception
Making sense of the world around us is a highly active process that involves the continuous reconstruction of a perceptual representation of the world from fragmented and ever changing sensory information. In this line of research we study this dynamic interactive process and the eye movements involved.
Technological Interventions in Development
How might new technologies be used to aid cognitive development? Can we develop technologies to mitigate the impact of developmental disorders like ADHD and ASD on a child’s wellbeing? In this line of research we both develop and evaluate new technologies including conducting Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs) of intervention efficacy.