How does the brain decide where to look next?
We study how visual and linguistic information guides saccade targeting, including return-sweep eye movements during multiline reading.
University College London · Experimental Psychology
How do our eyes reveal what the mind is doing?
We study attention, reading and visual cognition through eye movements. Our research combines laboratory and webcam eye tracking, large-scale experiments, computational modelling and open-source tool development.
Prospective PhD students
We are developing projects for students interested in eye tracking, attention, reading and computational methods. You do not need to arrive with a complete proposal.
A real example of a participant viewing a dynamic scene. The moving red dot shows gaze position.
Research questions
We use the eyes to study cognition in real time
Eye movements provide a millisecond-by-millisecond record of where attention is directed. We use them to ask questions that span fundamental cognitive science, language processing and new measurement technology.
What happens to attention when we are distracted?
We examine how unexpected and irrelevant sounds alter the timing of eye movements and moment-to-moment cognitive control.
Can we measure attention outside the laboratory?
We develop and validate webcam-based eye tracking so that eye-movement experiments can reach much larger and more diverse samples.
Why do people differ in attentional control?
We combine eye tracking with computational methods to study individual differences, including applications to ADHD and reading.
Featured project
OpenEyeTrack: open webcam eye tracking for behavioural research
OpenEyeTrack is our open-source project to develop browser-based webcam eye tracking for research. The aim is to make scalable eye-movement measurement possible without specialist laboratory hardware.
The project brings together experimental psychology, computer vision, web development and quantitative validation.
Webcam eye tracking
Computer vision
Open source
Large-N research
From lab studies to research at scale
We are interested not only in reproducing laboratory effects online, but in asking new questions that become possible when eye tracking can be deployed to hundreds or thousands of participants.
Interested in joining?
Start with the research question, not a finished proposal.
If your interests overlap with ours, send a short description of what you would like to study and your CV. We can discuss how the idea might develop into a PhD project and which funding routes may fit.