Goals
Our brain receives information from the outside world (sounds, images, etc.) as well as from our own body (fatigue, hunger, etc.). Far from passive receivers, we act on this information: we direct our gaze towards things that attract attention; we take a nap when we are tired. The link betweenperception and action is one of the most fundamental topics in psychology. Several members of the experimental psychology unit are trying to better understand these processes. Olaf Dimigen studies eye movements and visual perception. Tassos Sarampalis studies hearing. Sebastiaan Mathôt studies pupil size and visual attention. All with technical support from Mark Span.
Although we act on what we perceive, we do not always do so immediately. We often store information in memory to do something with it later. Moreover, perception is colored by memories – the smell of a dish might suddenly propel us back to our grandmother’s kitchen. Memory, both temporary (working memory) and semi-permanent (long-term memory), is another key focus of the experimental psychology unit. Elkan Akyürek is trying to disentangle the fundamental cognitive and neural processes underlying working memory. Hedderik van Rijn tries to understand how we can measure control and optimize memory functioning. Mark Nieuwenstein tries to understand why some things are remembered better than others.
Cognitive abilities are not constant. They differ between individuals. And they fluctuate over time, for example as a function of what we experienced in the past, how tired we are – or even what we just ate or drank. Within the experimental psychology unit, Wouter Kruijne studies how past experiences shape perception and action, with a focus on time perception. Monicque Lorist studies cognition as a dynamic system that develops with age and learning, and across individuals.
The experimental psychology unit also takes the study of cognition from the lab into the real world. For example, Hedderik van Rijn turned his research on memory into a learning (MemoryLab) and memory assessment (Precision Cognition Labs) platform, which is used in schools by millions of students (to enhance learning) and in clinical settings (to diagnose, for example, early phases of Alzheimer’s disease). Elkan Akyürek and Sebastiaan Mathôt work together with the Dutch police to develop techniques to objectively measure what crime-related information witnesses and suspects do (and do not) have.
We moreover support the field of cognitive neuroscience by the development of open-source scientific software. Sebastiaan Mathôt has developed OpenSesame, a user-friendly program used by researchers and teachers to create psychology and neuroscience experiments. OpenSesame is one of the most widely used programs of its kind worldwide, with tens of thousands of active users. Olaf Dimigen has developed Unfold, a state-of-the-art toolbox to analyze electroencephalographic (EEG) and eye-movement data.
In sum, we study cognition: the human capacity to process and act upon information that we perceive or have perceived before.