Research

Our Research

In daily life, we are often overloaded by multiple competing stimuli and tasks. To function efficiently, we use mechanisms of attention to selectively process the most relevant sensory information and juggle our cognitive processing resources amongst the most important tasks. Our research focuses on understanding these attentional mechanisms using experiments that measure behavior, eye movements, and event-related potentials (ERPs). 

Our lab is housed in the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of Missouri. We are fortunate to have state-of-the-art facilities and equipment for our research. We are currently funded by the National Science Foundation. In the past, we have also been funded by the National Eye Institute.

Specific Interests

We are interested in a variety of topics related to attention. Specific interests include:

• Attention

• Cognitive Control

• Visual Search

• Eye Movements

• Event-Related Potentials (ERPs)

A Little History

Dr. Nicholas Gaspelin is the principal investigator.  As a graduate student, he studied in the cognitive neuroscience program at the University of New Mexico with Dr. Eric Ruthruff.  His early research focused on the control of visual attention and whether certain types of salient stimuli can automatically distract us. As a postdoctoral fellow, he studied at the Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California, Davis with Dr. Steven Luck. There, his research explored a specific model of attention which posits that people can learn to ignore salient distractions via a newly discovered inhibitory process. His postdoctoral research was funded by an individual NRSA from the National Eye Institute and the UC Davis Center for Vision Science. Recently, he won the prestigious NSF CAREER Award for his innovative research on attentional capture. He was recently hired at the University of Missouri via the MizzouForward initiative, which aims to strengthen innovation in a variety of research disciplines.