I am interested in how sensory information is turned into perceptions of other people—and the tentative perceptions that may get partially computed along the way. My work, then, looks at how the person perception process evolves over time and how, during this process, multiple perceptual cues (most importantly facial cues, but also cues of the voice and body) are rapidly integrated into coherent construals of others. This involves examining the underlying neural mechanisms that mediate these construals (using fMRI), as well as the real-time evolution of the cognitive and neural processing that gives rise to them (using computer mouse-tracking and EEG/ERPs).

Thus, my work investigates the cognitive and neural basis of how people come to arrive at their ultimate judgments of others, as well as the perceptual underpinnings that permit these judgments in the first place.  I use a diverse set of methodologies to do this, including fMRI, EEG/ERPs, computer mouse-tracking, computational modeling, as well as traditional behavioral paradigms. I use these in tandem with a variety of stimuli, including percepts that are precisely controlled using 3D facial synthesis and morphing, or vocal manipulation, in combination with others that are more naturalistically sampled from real people.

My research consistently points to the idea that person perception is a dynamic, interactive process. It is dynamic, in that perceptions are gradually built up over hundreds of milliseconds—in competition with other possible perceptions—until stabilizing over time. It is also interactive, in that top-down factors (e.g., prior knowledge, stereotypes, one's learned cultural environment, one's motivations) fluidly interact with bottom-up sensory information (e.g., facial, vocal, and bodily cues) to shape the basic ways we see and understand other people. My approach incorporates insights and techniques across social and cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and dynamical cognitive science, which I hope enhances the overall quality of the research.