Visual Cognition and Human Performance Division

Visual cognition, perception, attention, and memory. Most of my recent research has focused on the cognitive underpinnings of our experience of a stable and continuous visual world. One line of research focuses on change blindness. These failures to notice large changes to scenes suggest that we are aware of far less of our visual world than we think. Related studies explore what aspects of our environment automatically capture attention and what objects and events go unnoticed. Such studies reveal the surprising extent of inattentional blindness - the failure to notice unusual and salient events in their visual world when attention is otherwise engaged and the events are unexpected. Other active research interests include scene perception, object recognition, visual memory, visual fading, attention, and driving and distraction. Research in my laboratory adopts methods ranging from real-world and video-based approaches to computer-based psychophysical techniques, and it includes basic behavioral measures, eye tracking, simulator studies, and training studies. This diversity of approaches helps establish closer links between basic research on the mechanisms of attention and the real-world implications and consequences of our findings.

Representative Publications:

• Simons, D. J., & Jensen, M. S. (2009). The effects of individual differences and task difficulty on inattentional blindness. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 16(2), 398-403.
• Simons, D., Lleras, A., Martinez-Conde, S., Slichter, D., Caddigan, E., & Nevarez, G. (2006). Induced visual fading of complex images. Journal of Vision, 6(10), 1093-1101, http://journalofvision.org/6/10/9/, doi:10.1167/6.10.9.
• Most, S. B., Scholl, B. J., Clifford, E. R., & Simons, D. J. (2005). What you see is what you set: Sustained inattentional blindness and the capture of awareness. Psychological Review, 112(1), 217-242.
• Simons, D. J., & Rensink, R. A. (2005). Change blindness: Past, present, and future. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9(1), 16-20.
• Simons, D. J., & Chabris, C. F. (1999). Gorillas in our midst: Sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events. Perception, 28, 1059-1074.

Classes Recently Taught:

• Introduction to Visual Cognition
• Introduction to Experimental Psychology (Psych 103)
• Grad seminars on perception and on professional issues