Courses taught: Psychology 1001: Introductory Psychology Research interests: My main research interest lies in the integration of perception and action. Specifically, I am interested in how action information and other kinds of non-visual information can bias the visual identification of objects. I am also interested in how object information can impact the production and identification of actions. To study these processes I have developed a set of novel objects called ‘blobs’ that vary on specific dimensions (curvature, tapering and thickness). In a typical study, participants are taught to associate each novel object with an action and a name, and when participants make identification errors, I look at the kinds of errors that people make. For example I would look at which two objects were confused, or which two actions were confused. I am also looking at how these errors change as people gain more experience with the objects. My second research stream focuses on multisensory integration and in how the brain integrates different kinds of sensory information during object identification. I use the blobs described above and ask people to learn to identify the blobs by vision or by touch. I can then look at what happens when people try to identify blobs by vision or by touch, and are presented with two different blobs at once (one to the hand and one to the eyes). That way, I can look at how touch information can affect visual identification, and how visual information can affect tactile identification. Recent publications: Desmarais, G., Fisher, M.J., & Nicol, J. (2010). Reciprocal interference from sound and form information in stimulus identification. Journal of Vision, 10( 7), 887. Desmarais, G., Dixon, M.J., and Myles, K. (2009). Combined effects of semantic and visual proximity on visual object identification in Alzheimer’s disease and Mild Cognitive Impairment. Journal of Vision, 9 (8), 1052. Desmarais, G., Dixon, M.J., & Roy, E.A (2008). Task characteristics modulate the impact of action similarity on visual object identification. Journal of Vision, 8 (6), 521. Karthaus, C., Desmarais, G., & Roy, E. (2008). Action and Semantic Attributes in Object Identification. Journal of Vision, 8(6), 1166. Desmarais, G., Pensa, M.C., Dixon, M.J., & Roy, E.A. (2008). Adding and omitting components of actions: differences in salience between pulling, twisting, and sliding. Brain and Cognition, 67, S1, 18-19. Painter, R., Desmarais, G., Stamenova, V., Roy, E.A., Park, N., Gold, D.A. and Lombardi, S. (2008). The impact of dementia on apraxia and function in daily living. Brain and Cognition, 67, S1, 34. Desmarais, G., Pensa, M. C., Dixon, M. .J., Roy, E A. (2007). The effect of object similarity on action production and action identification. The Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 13 (6), 1021-1034. Desmarais, G., Dixon, M. J., & Roy, E. A. (2007). A role for action knowledge in visual object identification. Memory and Cognition, 35 (7), 1712-1723. Desmarais, G., & Dixon, M. J. (2005). Understanding structural determinants of object confusion in memory: An assessment of psychophysical approaches to estimating visual similarity. Perception and Psychophysics, 67 (6), 980-996. Dixon, M. J., Desmarais, G., Gojmerac, C., Schweizer, T. A., & Bub, D. N. (2002). The role of premorbid expertise on object identification in category-specific visual agnosia. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 19 (5), 401-419. |
