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Dr Nick Scott-Samuel

Senior Lecturer

telephone: +44 (0)117 92 88557 email: N.E.Scott-Samuel@bris.ac.uk

Room 4D9

Biographical details

After degrees in Philosophy (BA) at the University of Bristol and Cognitive Science (MSc) at the University of Birmingham, my PhD (supervised by Mark Georgeson at the University of Birmingham) addressed human visual motion processing. I was a postdoc for four years, working first with Andy Smith (at Royal Holloway, University of London) and then with Robert Hess (at McGill University). I was appointed Lecturer in Psychology here in 2001.


Research interests

My research was initially concerned with the visual perception of motion by humans, but I've become sidetracked over time by various other things, including the perception of food and drink, camouflage, visual search and the estimation of numerosity.

Recent and current grants

EPSRC (2006-9)
Understanding biological motion using moving light displays
Campbell, Scott-Samuel, Benton

BBSRC studentship (2007-10)
Now you see it, now you don't: camouflage, movement and ecology
Scott-Samuel, Cuthill

EPSRC/QinetiQ CASE studentship (2007-10)
Animal camouflage
Baddeley, Cuthill, Scott-Samuel, Shohet

Alcohol Education and Research Council (2010)
Effect of glass shape on drinking rate and drinking topography in social alcohol drinkers
Attwood, Scott-Samuel, Munafo

Some external collaborators

Valérie Camos (Université de Fribourg, Switzerland)
Daniel Osorio (University of Sussex)
Adam Shohet (QinetiQ)
Tatsuya Yoshizawa (Kanazawa Institute of Technology, Japan)


Teaching and administration

I teach on the Level 1 unit "Introduction to Psychological Experiments", the Level 2 unit "Perception", the Level 3 "Visual Perception" and the MSc unit "Issues in Psychology". I am the Level 1 Undergraduate Coordinator and an Admissions Tutor for Philosophy and Psychology joint honours.


Publications

Georgeson, M.A., Freeman, T.C.A. & Scott-Samuel, N.E. (1996). Sub-pixel accuracy: psychophysical validation of an algorithm for fine positioning and movement of dots on visual displays. Vision Research, 36, 605-612.

Smith, A.T. & Scott-Samuel, N.E. (1998). Stereoscopic and contrast-defined motion in human vision. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 265, 1573-1581.

Georgeson, M.A. & Scott-Samuel, N.E. (1999).Motion contrast: a new metric for direction discrimination. Vision Research, 39, 4393-4402.

Scott-Samuel, N.E. & Georgeson, M.A. (1999). Does early non-linearity account for second-order motion? Vision Research, 39, 2853-2865.

Scott-Samuel, N.E. & Georgeson, M.A. (1999). Feature matching and segmentation in motion perception. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 266, 2289-2294.

Georgeson, M.A. & Scott-Samuel, N.E. (2000).Spatial resolution and receptive field height of motion sensors in human vision. Vision Research, 40, 745-758.

Scott-Samuel, N.E. & Smith, A.T. (2000). No localcancellation between directionally opposed first-order and second-order motion signals. Vision Research, 40, 3495-3500.

Smith, A.T., Scott-Samuel, N.E. & Singh, K.D.(2000). Global motion adaptation. Vision Research, 40, 1069-1075.

Scott-Samuel, N.E. & Hess, R.F. (2001). What does the Ternus display tell us about motion processing in human vision? Perception, 30, 1179-1188.

Smith, A.T. & Scott-Samuel, N.E. (2001). First-order and second-order signals combine to improve perceptual accuracy. Journal of the Optical Society of America A, 18, 2267-2272.

Scott-Samuel, N.E. & Hess, R.F. (2002). Orientation sensitivity in human visual motion processing. Vision Research, 42, 613-620.

Rainville, S.J.M., Scott-Samuel, N.E. & Makous, W.L. (2002). The spatial tuning of opponent-motion normalization. Vision Research, 42, 1727-1738.

Leonards, U. & Scott-Samuel, N.E. (2005). Idiosyncratic initiation of saccadic face exploration in humans. Vision Research, 45, 2677-2684.

Rainville, S.J.M., Makous, W.L. & Scott-Samuel, N.E. (2005). Opponent-motion mechanisms are self-normalizing. Vision Research, 45, 1115-1127.

Jarrold, C. & Scott-Samuel, N.E. (2005). Motion perception in autism spectrum disorder: we’ll move forward once the data become more coherent. Current Psychology of Cognition, 23, 122-131.

Correani, A., Scott-Samuel, N.E. & Leonards, U. (2006). Luminosity - a perceptual "feature" of light-emitting objects? Vision Research, 46, 3915-3925.

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, 402-407.

Li, J., Nikolov, S.G., Benton, C.P. &Scott-Samuel, N.E. (2006). Motion-based video fusion using optical flow information. 9th International Conference on Information Fusion, Vols.1-4, 1786-1793.

Li, J., Nikolov, S.G., Benton, C.P. & Scott-Samuel, N.E. (2007). Adaptive summarisation of surveillance video sequences. IEEE Conference on Advanced Video and Signal Based Surveillance Systems, 546-551.

Li, J., Benton, C.P., Nikolov, S.G. & Scott-Samuel, N.E. (2007). Adaptive multiscale optical flow estimation. lEEE Conference on Image Processing, Vols.1-7, 1073-1076.

Wallace, J.M. & Scott-Samuel, N.E. (2007). Spatial versus temporal grouping in a modified Ternus display. Vision Research, 47, 2353-2366.

Brunstrom, J.M., Shakeshaft, N. & Scott-Samuel, N.E. (2008). Measuring ‘expected satiety’ in arange of common foods using a method of constant stimuli. Appetite, 51, 604-614.

Thirkettle, M., Benton, C.P. & Scott-Samuel, N.E.(2009). Contributions of form, motion and task to biological motion perception. Journal of Vision, 9(3):28, 1-11.

Thirkettle, M., Scott-Samuel, N.E. & Benton, C.P. (2010). Form overshadows ‘opponent motion’ information in processing of biological motion from point light walker stimuli. Vision Research, 50, 118-126.

Allen, W.L., Cuthill, I.C., Scott-Samuel, N.E. & Baddeley, R. (2011). Why the leopard got its spots: relating pattern development to ecology in felids. Proceedings of the Royal Society London B, 278, 1373-1380.

Scott-Samuel, N.E., Baddeley, R., Palmer, C.E. & Cuthill, I.C. (2011). Dazzle camouflage affects speed perception. PLoS ONE, 6(6):e20233. http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0020233

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