(We're esthetically challenged... Actually I'd like to think that we're to busy doing research)
Cognitive Aging
Virtually all projects in the lab relate in some way to the general question of how cognitive processing changes as a result of the aging process. This is tackled in several ways including standard laboratory experiments, eye tracking, and computational modeling. We (and others) are interested in cognitive aging for two very different reasons. First, we all get older (if we're lucky) and there is some inherent interest in understanding the influence of aging on cognition. Second, theories in cognitive psychology will be more complete to the extent that we understand the developmental trajectory of cognition across the lifespan.Visual Attention
In trying to add such a developmental perspective, we often find that the original cognitive theory needs substantial modification. Thus, consideration of aging has benefits even for researchers interested solely in cognitive science. Underlying all of this is an assumption that cognition is not just the stuff that happens in 18 to 21 year old college students that are the participants in the vast majority of cognitive psychological studies.
This focus is shared by many other faculty in the School of Psychology at Georgia Tech.
Click on the link below to learn more about the Cognitive Aging Program
What are the processes that allow individuals to select relevant information sources in the environment and ignore or inhibit other competing information and how are these processes influenced by aging?
Projects in this area range from some of the simplest cognitive paradigms such as two choice response time tasks, traditional visual search tasks on up to considerably more complex visual scene processing.
Language Processing
Communication is obviously central to almost everything we do during our waking hours. Our interest is in how processes of language comprehension and production are influenced by the aging process. This turns out to be an extremely interesting issue. Much of cognitive aging basically asks "How badly does aging influence process X?" However, as individuals age, their linguistic knowledge frequently increases as does their expertise in a particular area. This has a hugely beneficial impact on communicative ability that may largely offset the influence of age-related decline in some of the component processes of production.
Studies within this area examine single visual word recognition, semantic priming, word and sentence production. Some of this research is carried out in collaboration with Zenzi Griffin, also at Georgia Tech.
Working in the lab
Graduate Students in Psychology
If you are interested in graduate school in the School of Psychology at Georgia Tech, I strongly urge you to look at the Department Pages, Faculty Pages, and to contact me (daniel.spieler@psych.gatech.edu) if you are specifically interested in work in our lab.Undergraduates at Georgia Tech
If you are interested in getting hands on research experience, we can always use a helping hand. Typically students can work on a range of projects and get experience in experimental design, data collection, and data analyses. The time commitment is generally a minimum of 10 hours per week. The mechanism for working in the lab varies. Occasionally paid positions are available. Students may also work as part of an independent study or senior thesis.Undergraduates at other Atlanta Universities
If interested, contact me.
There are a variety of ways that students at other area universities can get involved in research in the lab. The details depend a great deal depending on which university/college you are at (e.g., Spellman, GSU, Morehouse, etc). If you are seriously interested, contact me and we can talk about research opportunities.Graduate Research Assistantships
We currently support 4 graduate students in departments outside of Psychology. We do not have any available positions.
Laboratory Facilities
We are located in several rooms in the Psychology Building at Georgia Tech.
Eye Tracking
Computing Hardware
ISCAN corneal reflection remove video eye tracker running at 120 Hz.
SMI Eyelink head mounted binocular eye tracker running at 250 Hz.
Both trackers are used for lab projects as well as some projects run by other students and faculty in the Psychology Department at Tech. Experiment generation and data collection is done using our software that we developed both at Tech and at Stanford (Thanks to Amit Mookerjee, Stanford and Madan Jampani and Jini Khetan, Tech). Currently this software (called Eye6) allows us to set up experiments that involve the simultaneous presentation of video and auditory stimuli while we record eye movements, digitize speech, and other events such as button presses or mouse movements all with very high temporal resolution. Software is writtin in C++ and versions runs in Linux on kernels 2.4.x with low latency patches applied. This was considerably easier and sufficient for our purposes compared to using a hard real-time system like RTLinux (FSM Labs).
Most of our non-data collection machines are the standard Dell Pentium 4s mostly running Fedora Core 2. The data collection machines are mostly Red Hat 7.2/8. There are also a few Apple Mac OS X machines in various offices, and 2 or 3 powerbooks floating around. Computing Software
Experiment software
Mostly we use eye6 or variants of this software to run both eye tracking and noneye tracking experiments.
Analysis
Parsing of eye position data into fixations and saccades is done using several programs written in Matlab. Other programs also written in Matlab allow us to fairly easily conduct analyses of eye position relative to picture coordinates and the data is output in a format so it can be imported into other programs such as SPSS or S+.
We also have Matlab routines for measuring voice onset time within a digitized sound file. More detailed speech measurements (e.g., measurement of the time until onset of a word embedded in speech) can be done using CMU-Sphinx software.
Research Funding is provided by
National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Aging
National Science Foundation