Sarah Shuwairi, Ph.D.
sarah.shuwairi AT lehman.cuny.edu
Now Residing at... Lehman College, The City University of New York
Department of Psychology * 113 Gillet Hall * 250 Bedford Park Blvd. West * Bronx, NY 10468
Research Interests:
I am interested in how infants represent solid objects and their position in space as well as how these mechanisms operate in early development. For example, how do we come to understand that objects are 3-dimensionally coherent and spatiotemporally continuous? What are the visual features that infants register, and how do they integrate these cues to recognize objects? Which parts of the brain are functioning to support these mechanisms in infants and adults?
In one line of research I am investigating how we perceive objects as continuous and complete despite various types of occlusion. I am examining the effects of training as well as the constraints of memory on the formation of object representations in early infancy. We use an eye-tracker to measure anticipatory saccades to the location of re-emergence during dynamic object occlusion events. These anticipatory eye movements may serve as an index of object knowledge in young infants. We have complemented this research using a functional MRI task with adults aimed at identifying cognitive and neural mechanisms subserving our ability to keep track of moving objects as they undergo temporary occlusion.
In the second line of research I have been testing whether very young infants can discriminate between 2D depictions of 3-dimensionally possible and impossible objects. To accomplish this, I am measuring looking times and eye movements (using an eye-tracker) to evaluate exactly where infants allocate their attentional resources when viewing picture displays of structurally coherent versus incoherent objects. Results indicate that very young infants appear to make use of several kinds of pictorial depth cues present in pictures of objects and rely on this information to differentiate between possible and impossible figures.T1-weighted Axial Images of My
Brain
Publications
Shuwairi, S. M., & Johnson, S. P. (in preparation). Infants’ oculomotor analysis of possible and impossible object pairs.
Shuwairi, S. M., Johnson, S. P., & DeLoache, J. S. (in preparation). Infants' response to impossible objects in pictures.
Shuwairi, S. M. (in press). Preference for impossible figures in 4-month-old infants. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.
Johnson, S. P. & Shuwairi, S. M. (in press). Learning and memory facilitate predictive tracking in 4-month-olds. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.
Shuwairi, S. M., Curtis, C. E., & Johnson, S. P. (2007). Neural substrates of dynamic object occlusion. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 19, 1275-1285.
Shuwairi, S. M., Albert, M. K., & Johnson, S. P. (2007). Discrimination of possible and impossible objects in infancy. Psychological Science, 18, 303-307.
Johnson, S. P., Amso, D., Frank, M. C., & Shuwairi, S. M. (2007). Perceptual development in infancy as the foundation of event perception. In T. F. Shipley & J. Zacks (Eds.), Understanding events: How humans see, represent, and act on events. New York: Oxford University Press.
Holopigian,
K., Shuwairi, S. M., Greenstein, V. C., Winn, B. J., Zhang, X., Carr, R. E., & Hood, D. C. (2005). Multifocal visual evoked potentials to cone specific stimuli
in patients with retinitis pigmentosa (RP).
Shuwairi,
S. M., Cronin-Golomb, A., O'Donnell, B. F., & McCarley, R. W. (2002). Color discrimination
in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Research, 55, 197-204. [pdf]
Balcer, L. J., Baier,
M. L., Pelak, V. S., Fox, R. J., Shuwairi, S. M., Galetta, S. L., Cutter, G. R., & Maguire, M. G.
(2000). New low contrast vision charts: Reliability and test
characteristics in patients with MS. Multiple Sclerosis, 6, 163-171.
Psychology Study Offers New Insights Into Visual Ability of Infants (NYU Today)
http://agutie.homestead.com/files/escher/escher_illusion.html