Nipissing University Research Talk - Dr. Jeff Nicol

Nipissing University Research Talk welcomes psychology professor Dr. Jeff Nicol on Friday, December 2, from 2 – 3 p.m. in room A122.

Nicol will discussInfluences of Emotion on Visual Perception in Older and Younger Adults.

Here is the abstract:

The visual system does not treat all stimuli in our surroundings equally. Emotional and neutral visual stimuli, for example, are perceived differently. Visual perception is biased toward emotional stimuli and the visual system prioritizes processing of emotional stimuli over neutral stimuli. Recently, researchers have gone beyond the investigation of how emotional and neutral stimuli are differentially processed by the visual system, and have begun to consider how visual perception is subsequently influenced by brief exposure to emotional or neutral stimuli. In this talk I will present the results of some of my own research in this emerging area of vision research. In particular I will be discussing the extent to which the finding that emotion enhances visual perception generalizes across different emotions, across different types of affective stimuli, and across different age groups.