Welcome to the Atkinson lab for Social Perception

About me:

I am a Professor in the Department of Psychology, Durham University, UK.

I am originally from New Zealand, where I completed BSc and MSc degrees in Psychology at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch. I moved to the UK to undertake a doctorate in the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, under the supervision of Martin Davies, who was then Wilde Reader in Mental Philosophy. I then took up a lectureship in Psychology at King Alfred’s College Winchester (now University of Winchester). From there I moved to Durham University, where I have been since 2003. I have held visiting research fellowships at the University of York (2001; host: Prof Andy Young) and the University of Iowa (2004; host: Prof Ralph Adolphs).

I am a member of the Durham Centre for Imaging (DCI), of Durham University’s Centre for Vision and Visual Cognition, and of the Department of Psychology’s Cognitive Neuroscience research group.

About the lab:

Our research focuses on the visual perception of social information, investigating the psychological and neural mechanisms underpinning our ability to infer information about others’ emotions, identity, personality traits, actions, and interactions, from their facial and bodily postures and movement. Current projects include:

• foveal vs. extrafoveal processing of features within faces underpinning emotion perception. This work is guided by the principles that vision is active rather than passive and that there are quantitative and qualitative differences between foveal and extrafoveal (or peripheral) vision that determine how we see and how we interact with the world. Our experiments address questions such as: What are the distinct contributions of foveal and extrafoveal visual processing to the ability to decipher what emotion a face is expressing? When deciding what emotion a face is expressing, do people direct their gaze to the most informative facial features for the emotion or emotions in question? What are the distinct contributions of foveal and extrafoveal vision to determining where people direct their gaze on faces (during emotion judgments)? Collaborators on this work have included Hannah Smithson (Oxford University) and Nazire Duran (Durham University).
• visual perception of social interactions, with Quoc Vuong (Newcastle University). This work centres on the hypothesis that pairs or groups of interacting people are ‘special’ for the human visual system, that is, that they are processed differently (e.g., more efficiently) than are people who are acting independently. Our experiments seek to discover the visual cues (especially the spatio-temporal contingencies) underpinning these visual processing differences and the neural systems that are involved in processing these visual cues.

We are also engaging in collaborative work on visual attention and cognition in Progressive Supranuclear Palsy and Parkinson’s disease (with Dan Smith, Alison Lane and postdoc Alexis Cheviet), on facial and gestural communication (with Zanna Clay, Mariska Kret and Raphaela Heesen), and cross-cultural variation in friendship habits and emotion recognition (with Philip Howlett, former PhD student at Queen’s University Belfast, supervised by Magdalena Rychlowska, Gülseli Baysu, and me). I have also previously been involved in work on visuomotor control (with Dorothy Cowie and former PhD student Rachel Mowbray).

Current funding:

• Dunhill Medical Trust, “Can cognitive tests differentiate Progressive Supranuclear Palsy from Parkinson’s Disease?” Co-I (PI: Dr Daniel Smith, Durham University; Co-I: Dr Alison Lane, Durham University), PDRA: Dr Alexis Cheviet. £148,494, 2022-2024. Click here for project website.

Some past funding:

• ESRC/Open Research Area (ORA). “’EmoOrigin’: Production and perception of expressions of emotions in humans and their closest relatives.” Team member (PI: Dr Mariska Kret, Leiden University; PI: Dr Zanna Clay, Durham); 2020-2023. • A Network Grant from the Arts & Humanities Research Council (UK), in collaboration with Prof. Matthew Ratcliffe • A Short-Term Fellowship from the Human Frontiers Science Program • Membership of the McDonnell Project in Philosophy and the Neurosciences • A Research Fellowship grant from the Leverhulme Trust