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Dr Chris Benton

Senior Lecturer

telephone: +44 (0)117 92 88542 email: Chris.Benton@bris.ac.uk

Room 4D6

Biographical Details



I graduated in 1988 with a degree in Psychology from the University of Manchester. After some time away from academia I returned in 1992 and did a masters degree in Cognitive Science (again at the University of Manchester). My Master’s thesis involved modelling the acquisition of the plural morpheme using neural nets. From 1994 to 1997 I worked as an RA in the Department of Psychology at University College London under the supervision of Professor Alan Johnston. During this period I also completed my PhD which was awarded early in 1998. For my PhD work I looked at the perception of second-order motion. I continued working with Alan as a postdoctoral researcher for the following 3 years before taking up a lectureship here at Bristol in 2001.

Research interests

I’m interested in visual perception, in particular motion perception and face perception. I’ve also recently developed an interest in applying psychophysical methods to areas of research in which such techniques have not widely been used. In terms of motion perception I’ve spent much of my career looking at the hierarchical organisation of motion processing mechanism – in other words, what types of mechanisms do we need to account for our perception of motion over a wide variety of stimuli. Much of my current motion work tries to tease apart the contributions and interactions involved in the processing of local and global motion. In face perception I’ve been looking at face adaptation, specifically using face adaptation to investigate the nature of our underlying representation of facial identity and facial expression.

Current Collaborators



Will Curran, Colin Clifford, Justin O’Brien, Christine Mohr, Ian Penton-Voak, Tom Troscianko, Iain Gilchrist, Nick Scott-Samuel, Marcus Munafo, Neill Campbell and Stavri Nikolov.

Grant Income



2007 EPSRC & DSTL (Defense Science and Technology Laboratory): Natural dynamic scenes and human vision. £313,391 – with Tom Troscianko (PI) & Iain Gilchrist.

2007 Alcohol Education & Research Council: Are you looking at me II? Effects of alcohol consumption on the processing of perceptual cues of emotional expression. £41,970 – with Marcus Munafo (PI) and Ian Penton-Voak.

2006 Alcohol Education & Research Council: Effects of alcohol consumption on processing of perceptual cues of emotional expressions. £4,530 – with Marcus Munafo (PI) and Ian Penton-Voak.

2005 EPSRC: Understanding biological motion using moving light displays. £354,778 – with Neill Campbell (PI) and Nick Scott-Samuel.

2005 The British Academy: Testing for viewpoint dependence in the encoding of facial expressions. £7,128 – with Stavri Nikolov.

2005 The Nuffield Foundation: Do the cerebral hemispheres contribute differently to body image and its disturbances? £5,780 – with Dr Christine Mohr (PI).

2004 Wellcome Trust Vacation Scholarship: Adaptive Mechanisms for the Encoding of Facial Expression. £1,280

2003 DTC Postgraduate Studentship: Fusing Motion Information with Static images. £54,000 – with Dr Nick Scott-Samuel and Stavri Nikolov.

PhD Students



Andy Skinner – face perception.
Peter Etchells – motion and eye movements.
Martin Thirkettle – biological motion.
Jian Li – real-time optical flow and motion based image fusion.

Journal Articles

Thirkettle, M., Benton C.P. & Scott-Samuel, N.E. (in press) Contributions of form, motion and task to biological motion perception. Journal of Vision.

Attwood A. S., Ataya A., Benton C. P., Penton-Voak I. S. & Munafò M. R. (in press) Effects of alcohol and expectancy on the miscategorisation of facial cues of emotional expression. Journal of Psychopharmacology.

Attwood, A.S., Ohlson, C., Benton, C.P., Penton-Voak, I.S. & Munafò, M.R. (in press). Effects of acute alcohol consumption on processing of perceptual cues of emotional expression. Journal of Psychopharmacology.

Benton, C.P., & Curran, W. (2009). The dependence of perceived speed upon signal intensity. Vision Research, 49, 284-286.

Curran, W., Clifford, C.W.G. & Benton, C.P. (2009). The hierarchy of directional interactions in visual motion processing. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 276, 263-268.

Troscianko, T., Benton, C.P., Lovell, P.G., Tolhurst & D.J. & Pizlo, Z. (2009). Camouflage and visual perception. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 364, 449-461.

Craig, L.C., Attwood, A.S., Benton, C.P., Penton-Voak, I.S. & Munafò, M.R. (2009). Effects of alcohol consumption and alcohol expectancy on the processing of perceptual cues of emotional expression. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 23, 23-30.

Benton, C.P. & Burgess, E.C. (2008). The direction of measured face aftereffects. Journal of Vision, 8(15), 1-6.

Benton, C.P., Etchells, P.J., Porter, G., Clark, A.P., Penton-Voak, I.S. & Nikolov, S.G. (2007). Turning the other cheek: the viewpoint dependence of facial expression aftereffects. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 274, 2131-2137.

Benton, C.P., O’Brien, J.M.D. & Curran, W. (2007). Fractal rotation isolates mechanisms for form-dependent motion in human vision. Biology Letters, 3, 306-308.

Mohr, C., Porter, G. & Benton, C.P. (2007). Psychophysics reveals a right hemispheric contribution to body image distortions in women but not men. Neuropsychologia, 45, 2942-2950.

Li, J., Benton, C.P., Nikolov, S.G. & Scott-Samuel, N.E. (2007). Adaptive multiscale optical flow estimation. Proceedings of the 2007 IEEE International Conference on Image Processing. San Antonio, Texas, USA, 16-19 September, 2007.

Li, J., Nikolov, S.G., Benton, C.P. & Scott-Samuel, N.E. (2007). Adaptive summarisation of surveillance video sequences. Proceedings of the 2007 IEEE International Conference on Advanced Video and Signal based Surveillance, London, U.K., 5-7 September, 2007.

Curran, W., Clifford, C.W.G. & Benton C.P. (2006). New binary direction aftereffect doesn’t add up. Journal of Vision, 6, 1451-1458.

Curran, W., Clifford, C.W.G. & Benton, C.P. (2006). The direction aftereffect is driven by adaptation of local motion detectors. Vision Research, 46, 4270-4278.

Benton, C.P., Jennings, S.J. & Chatting, D.J. (2006). Viewpoint dependence in adaptation to facial identity. Vision Research, 46, 3313-3325.

Curran, W. & Benton, C.P. (2006). Test stimulus characteristics determine the perceived speed of the dynamic motion aftereffect. Vision Research, 46, 3284-3290.

Li, J., Nikolov, S.G., Benton C.P., Scott-Samuel, N.E. (2006) Motion-based video fusion using optical flow information. Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Information Fusion, Florence, Italy, 10-13 July, 2006.

Li, J., Nikolov, S.G., Scott-Samuel, N.E. & Benton, C.P. (2006). Reliable real-time optical flow estimation for surveillance applications. Proceedings of the IEE Conference on Crime and Security: Imaging for Crime Detection and Prevention (ICDP 2006), 402-407, London, 13-14 June, 2006.

Benton, C.P. (2004). A role for contrast-normalisation in second-order motion perception. Vision Research, 44, 91-98.

Johnston, A. Benton, C.P. & Nishida, S. (2003) Golfers may have to overcome a persistent visuospatial illusion. Perception, 32, 1151-1154.

Johnston, A., McOwan, P.W. & Benton, C.P. (2003) Biological computation of image motion from flows over boundaries. Journal of Physiology – Paris, 97, 325-334.

Curran, W. & Benton, C.P. (2003) Speed tuning of direction repulsion describes an inverted U-function. Vision Research, 43, 1847-1853.

Benton, C.P. & Curran, W. (2003) Direction repulsion goes global. Current Biology, 13(9), 767-771.

Benton, C.P. (2002) Gradient-based analysis of non-Fourier motion. Vision Research, 42, 2869-2877.

Benton, C.P. & Johnston, A. (2001) A new approach to analysing texture-defined motion. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 268, 2435-2443.

Benton, C.P., Johnston, A., McOwan, P.W. & Victor, J.D. (2001) Computational modelling of non-Fourier motion: further evidence for a single luminance based mechanism. Journal of the Optical Society of America, Series A, 18, 2204-2208.

Benton, C.P., Johnston, A. & McOwan, P.W. (2000) Computational modelling of interleaved first- and second-order motion sequences and translating 3f + 4f beat patterns. Vision Research, 40, 1135-1142.

McOwan, P.W., Benton, C.P., Dale, J. & Johnston, A. (1999). A multi-differential neuromorphic approach to motion detection. International Journal of Neural Systems, 9, 429-434.

Johnston, A., Benton, C.P. & McOwan, P.W. (1999) Induced motion at texture-defined motion boundaries. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 266, 2441-2450.

Benton, C.P. & Johnston, A. (1999). Contrast inconstancy across changes in polarity. Vision Research, 39, 4076-4084.

Johnston, A., Benton, C.P. & Morgan, M.J. (1999). Concurrent measurement of perceived speed and speed discrimination threshold using the method of single stimuli. Vision Research, 39, 3849-3854.

Johnston, A., McOwan, P.W. & Benton, C.P. (1999). Robust velocity computation from a biologically motivated model of motion perception. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 266, 509-518.

Benton, C.P. & Johnston, A. (1997). First-order motion from contrast modulated noise? Vision Research, 37, 3073-3078.

Benton, C.P., Johnston, A.& McOwan, P.W. (1997). Perception of motion direction in luminance- and contrast-defined motion sequences. Vision Research, 37, 2381-2399.

Johnston, A. & Benton, C.P. (1997). Speed discrimination thresholds for first- and second-order bars and edges. Vision Research, 37, 2217-2226.

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