Research

Emotion perception in Parkinson’s Disease

Most people think of Parkinson’s Disease as a movement disorder, however there are other symptoms that are equally problematic for the patient. For example, people with Parkinson’s show an impairment in the recognition of facial expressions. I am currently investigating how sensitive are people with Parkinson’s to emotional signals conveyed by the face and whether the disease progression affects this sensitivity (SPiEs study). To find out more about research on emotion recognition in Parkinson’s Disease please visit the SPiEs study website.

Action perception

How do we integrate different aspects of social behaviour, such as information about the identity of the observed individual with information about their emotional state? I am investigating the perceptual mechanisms that underlie our understanding of actions and emotions of other people. I am also interested in examining how our judgement is influenced by the perceptual history.

Face perception

I am interested in how people perceive and respond to social cues such as trustworthiness, health or attractiveness visible in faces. Using computer graphics techniques we can manipulate faces to study how we perceive and interpret these cues and how they impact our behaviour. I am also interested whether experimentally measured face preferences translate into real-life behaviour and partner choice.