Research Interests

I am interested in how the visual system quickly and accurately discriminates between objects in the world. For example, what characterize the visual mechanisms that facilitate discrimination between visually homogeneous object categories, such as different faces, different types of birds, cars, dogs, and so on. I'm particularly interested in how these mechanisms are influenced by the experience of the observer, either naturally acquired (e.g., faces) or by own volition (e.g., bird watchers). Specifically, can experience tune the visual discrimination mechanisms to become more sensitive to category specific information, such as the colors, shapes, and motion associated with the trained object category?

Publications

Hagen, S., Vuong, Q. C., Scott, L. S., Curran, T., & Tanaka, J. W. (2016). The role of spatial frequency in expert object recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 42(3), 413.

Hagen, S., & Tanaka, J. W. (2015). Perceptual learning and expertise. In: Hoffmann, R. R., Hancock, A. P., Scerbo, M., Szalma, J. L., & Parasuraman, R. (Eds). Cambridge Handbook of Applied Perception Research, Cambridge, U.K.

Hagen, S., Vuong, Q. C., Scott, L. S., Curran, T., & Tanaka, J. W. (2014). The role of color in expert object recognition. Journal of Vision, 14(9), 9-9.

Tanaka, J. W., Kaiser, M. D., Hagen, S., & Pierce, L. J. (2014). Losing face: impaired discrimination of featural and configural information in the mouth region of an inverted face. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 76(4), 1000-1014.