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Peter Etchells

2nd Year Postgraduate

Supervisors:
Dr Chris Benton
Professor Iain Gilchrist

telephone: +44 (0)117 92 88494 email: peter.etchells@bristol.ac.uk

Room 1.4, 5 Priory Road

Biographical Details

I graduated from the University of Bristol in 2006 with a BSc(Hons) in Psychology. My final year project looked at whether or not visual search is more efficient in dynamic environments. During the summers of 2005 and 2006 I worked as a part-time research assistant in the department, aiding in psychophysical experiments on food perception and face perception respectively. I completed a Masters degree in Research Methods in Psychology in 2007. My dissertation research built upon work from my final year undergraduate project, looking at if and how visual search efficiency differs between dynamic and static displays. I am currently in the second year of a BBSRC-funded PhD studentship.

Research Details

My principle research interests focus on motion processing and saccadic eye movements – specifically, how speed information is integrated in the run-up to a saccade being generated to a moving stimulus. This is an important issue in the consideration of so-called ‘when’ and ‘where’ processes in saccade programming. Even in highly constrained experimental situations, saccade latency is subject to a large amount of trial-by-trial variability, which has a direct effect on the displacement of moving targets, and as such the determination and accuracy of saccade endpoints. By looking at how the human visual system utilises the motion information available to it prior to a saccade being generated, we can hopefully gain a better understanding of the perceptual decision-making process.


Publications



Etchells, P.J., Benton, C.P., Ludwig, C.J.H. & Gilchrist, I.D. (2008). Hitting a moving target: interaction between 'when' and 'where' in saccade programming. Perception, S37, 132-132. (Conference Abstract)

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 after-effects. Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences, 274(1622), 2131-2137.

Etchells, P. (2007). Basic vision: An introduction to visual perception. Perception, 36(1), 161-162. (Book Review)

Scott-Samuel, N.E., Etchells, P.J. & Leonards, U. (2006). Is visual search more efficient in dynamic environments? Perception, S35, 64-64. (Conference Abstract)

Posters & Presentations

Etchells, P.J., Benton, C.P., Ludwig, C.J.H. & Gilchrist, I.D. (2008) Hitting a moving target: interaction between 'when' and 'where' in saccade programming. Presented at the 31st European Conference on Visual Perception, Utrecht, the Netherlands, August 2008.

Etchells, P.J., Benton, C.P., Ludwig, C.J.H. & Gilchrist, I.D. (2008) Interaction between 'when' and 'where' in saccade programming. Presented at the Experimental Psychology Postgraduate Conference, University of Bristol, Bristol, July 2008.

people | academic and research staff | support staff | PhD students