Take a look at your hand. Go on, just a quick glance. So, what did you see? Did you see a complex assembly of hundreds if not thousands of edges and contours? Did you see a patchwork of different skin colors? Did your hand seem to change size as you moved it? Probably not. In all likelihood you simply saw your “hand.” Clearly, a great deal more information meets the eye than reaches conscious awareness. In fact, the visual world is so richly complex that without focused visual attention to guide and limit processing, we would be overwhelmed by a dizzying influx of information. Focused attention, then, can be thought of as a window through which we perceive and interact with our world. In that critical role, attention must mirror and accommodate the full complexity of visual perception. In the VCA Lab, we employ behavioural and psychophysical techniques to examine attention and how it enables us to efficiently and effectively interact with our environment. To read more about the research going on in the lab, please click on the Research link below.