Welcome to the Vecera lab
Whether you’re searching for a friend in a crowd or merging into heavy traffic on the interstate, your ability to selectively attend to relevant objects and events is critical to your ongoing behavior. We study many aspects of how selective attention works, with most of our recent work focusing on attentional control (how attention knows where to go) and distraction (how attention goes to the wrong place). Our work uses traditional behavioral studies and eye tracking methods with diverse groups (adolescents, brain-damaged patients, and aging adults) to understand how attention operates. We have applied our research on attentional processes to understanding driver distraction and cognition in the car.
Information for potential graduate students
If you are interested in graduate training in visual attention and want to learn more about the work in my laboratory, please do not hesitate to contact me. I will be happy to discuss your research interests and send you recent reprints. Some of my reprints can be downloaded from the papers section.
If you are thinking about applying to Iowa’s Ph.D. program in Cognition and want to learn more about this programs, please feel free to contact me. You can also learn more about the department’s Vision Group and about faculty members in the Cognition program by visiting the department's home page.