Erik Blaser
Dr. Blaser studies human perception, specifically visual psychophysics. Some current studies focus on visual attention (how do you program your mental ‘autopilot’ for complicated visual tasks, such as driving?), depth and scale perception (might there be ‘clues’ to how big an object is, hidden in the texture on that object’s surface?), perceptual learning (when you learn a task, how should we characterize the underlying neural changes?), and cognitive development (which features - color, shape, size, texture - do infants rely on most for remembering and comparing objects?).
Teaching
Perception (Psych 255); Advanced Visual Perception (Psych 451); Introduction to Cognitive Science (Psych/CS L271).
Selected publications
Blaser, E., Papathomas, T.V., & Vidnyanszky, Z. (2005). Binding of motion and colour is local and automatic. European Journal of Neuroscience, 21, 2040-2044
Kaldy, Z., Blaser, E., & Leslie, A., (2006). A new method for calibrating perceptual salience across dimensions in infants: the case of color vs. luminance. Developmental Science, 9:5, 482–489
Blaser, E., Pylyshyn, Z.W., & Holcombe, A. (2000). Tracking an object through feature-space. Nature, 408, 196-199.
Home Page
web.mac.com/visionlab/iWeb/Blaser/Blaser_home.html
Office: McCormack, 4th floor, Room 211
Lab: McCormack, 3rd floor, Room 524
Email: erik.blaser@umb.edu
Phone: 617-287-6420
Office Hours: T, TH 3:45-5:15