We investigated the factors associated with subjective temporal distance of pandemic-related events in a sample of healthcare workers. A total of 257 healthcare workers were asked to recall two COVID-19 pandemic-related events that impacted them the most at the beginning of the pandemic (April--May 2020), and rated event centrality,…

We examined whether visual disfluency, as elicited by presenting text on flickering slides, affects learning positively and the global judgment of learning (JOL) negatively. Participants (N = 202 in Experiment 1, between-subjects design; N = 53 in Experiment 2, within-subjects design) saw in an online session multiple slides including textual…

Witnesses to crime often experience stress during the witnessed event. However, most laboratory studies examining eyewitness memory do not include a stressful encoding event. Participants (N = 129) completed an experimental stress induction procedure--a modified version of the Trier Social Stress Test. We designed three conditions to manipulate…

There are many situations in which a person must accurately estimate a stranger's age. For example, a salesperson must accurately estimate the age of a stranger who wishes to purchase age-restricted goods. Information from a stranger's eyes and hair can indicate their likely age. Here, two experiments examined whether adult participants' accuracy…

The "prevalence effect" is a phenomenon whereby target prevalence impacts performance in visual search (e.g., baggage screening) and visual comparison (e.g., face-matching) tasks -- people more often 'miss' infrequent target stimuli. The current study investigated prevalence effects in fingerprint identification -- an important visual…

For lifeguards, recognizing a swimmer in trouble is a key factor in the rescue process. Although reports show that lifeguards outperform non-lifeguards in their surveillance task, it is unclear to what extent this difference is reflected in gaze behaviour. In the current study, gaze behaviour of nine novice and seven experienced beach lifeguards…

Mind-wandering (MW) has a negative impact on tasks requiring sustained and divided attention like driving. During MW, drivers experience perceptual decoupling. As driving is mainly a visual activity, it would seem to be appropriate to evaluate stages of visual information processing impaired during MW, using event-related potential techniques. The…

Change blindness is the striking inability to detect seemingly obvious changes that occur between views of a scene. The current study assessed perceptual load as a factor that may affect change blindness for human faces. The study had participants (n = 103) interact with a researcher in a testing room that imposed low or high perceptual load.…

A prominent topic is whether visual or motor expertise makes greater contribution to expert visual anticipation in sport. This stems from psychological theories, such as common coding theory, which predicts perception and action can inform each other in a bidirectional manner. This paper reviews the literature that has investigated visual and…

Echocardiographers are highly specialised, skilled practitioners who play a critical role in medical imaging diagnostics. Yet, little is known about the cognitive and perceptual attributes of experts within this domain. This study was designed to examine the role of individual differences in expertise. Specifically, the contribution of a domain…

Recent work suggests that some aspects of lung nodule detection ability may relate to object recognition ability. However, this work only sampled radiological novices. Here, we further investigate whether object recognition ability predicts lung nodule detection ability (as measured by the Vanderbilt Chest Radiograph Test or VCRT), after…

In recent years, there has been increasing interest in people with superior face recognition skills. Yet identification of these individuals has mostly relied on criterion performance on a single attempt at a single measure of face memory. The current investigation aimed to examine the consistency of superior face recognition skills in 30 police…

Threat detection is an important skill for police officers, but few studies have examined the impact of processing strategies on this ability. The first aim of our study was to compare the visual detection of threatening and neutral targets in 38 police trainees and 53 police officers. The other aims were to examine the effect of emotional or…

This study aimed to examine how different forms (still pictures vs. animations) of seductive illustrations impact text-and-graphic learning processes, perceptions, and outcomes. An eye-tracking experiment of three groups (static, dynamic, and control) was conducted with 60 college and graduate students while learning with PowerPoint slides about…