Research Interests for Stephen R Mitroff

Research Interests: Visual Cognition and Cognitive Development

My primary research interests are in visual cognition – the relationship between what we see and what we know. I explore various aspects of visual memory, attention, and perception. In my recent research, I ask questions such as how do we track distinct objects as the same persisting individuals from one moment to the next, how do we detect visual changes, and what is the relationship between awareness and perception. Further, we are currently exploring the nature of rare target visual search (e.g., how does a baggage screener find a rarely present gun?) and the impact of prior experiences and training on the malleability of visual cognition (e.g., what are the effects of extensive video game playing and sports training?) I also have a strong research interest in cognitive development and have been using various developmental paradigms to explore some of these same questions in infants and the elderly. In collaborations with other labs at Duke, we also use cognitive neuroscience techniques as yet another tool for exploring these issues of visual cognition.

Keywords:
Visual Cognition, Cognitive Development, Visual Search, Individual Differences, Visual Attention, Cognitive effects of Videogame playing
Representative Publications
  1. Fleck, M. S., & Mitroff, S. R., Rare targets are rarely missed in correctable search, Psychological Science, vol. 18 (2007), pp. 943-947.
  2. Mitroff, S. R. & Alvarez, G. A., Space and time, not surface features, underlie object persistence, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, vol. 14 (2007), pp. 1199-1204.
  3. Mitroff, S. R., Scholl, B. J., & Noles, N. S., Object files can be purely episodic, Perception, vol. 36 (2007), pp. 1730-1735.
  4. Cheries, E., Mitroff, S. R., Wynn, K., & Scholl, B. J., Cohesion as a principle of object persistence in infancy., Developmental Science, vol. 11 no. 427-432 (2008).
  5. Mitroff, S. R., Sobel D. M., & Gopnik, A., Reversing how to think about ambiguous figure reversals: Spontaneous alternating by uninformed observers, Perception, vol. 35 no. 5 (2006), pp. 709-715.
  6. Mitroff, S. R. & Scholl, B. J., Forming and updating object representations without awareness: Evidence from motion-induced blindness, Vision Research, vol. 45 no. 8 (2005), pp. 961-967 [pdf].
  7. Mitroff, S. R., Scholl, B. J., & Wynn, K., The relationship between object files and conscious perception, Cognition, vol. 96 no. 1 (2005), pp. 67-92 [pdf].
  8. Mitroff S. R., Simons, D. J., & Levin, D. T., Nothing compares 2 views: Change blindness can occur despite preserved access to the changed information, Perception & Psychophysics, vol. 66 (2004), pp. 1268-1281 [pdf].
  9. Mitroff, S. R., Scholl, B. J., & Wynn, K., Divide and Conquer: How object files adapt when a persisting object splits into two, Psychological Science, vol. 15 no. 6 (2004), pp. 420-425 [pdf].
  10. Mitroff, S. R. & Scholl, B. J., Seeing the disappearance of unseen objects, Perception, vol. 33 (2004), pp. 1267-1273.
  11. Mitroff, S. R., Simons, D. J., & Franconeri, S. L., The siren song of implicit change detection, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, vol. 28 no. 4 (2002), pp. 798-815 [pdf].