My new research found when trying to distinguish real faces from AI-generated ones, people with average face-recognition ability performed at chance, and while super-recognisers performed better than other participants, it was only by a slim margin. Read more 🔗 www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/new...

Bluesky is the new science Twitter, new study by @whysharksmatter.bsky.social and Julia Wester concludes! "Results show that for every reported professional benefit that scientists once gained from Twitter, scientists can now gain that benefit more effectively on Bluesky than on Twitter."

substack.com/@gavanmcnall... scathing piece on the state of research funding in Australia

🧠👀 Dr Rachel Bennetts, our expert in face processing at Brunel psychology, shared her thoughts in @theguardian.com on a fascinating new study exploring what makes some people exceptional at recognising faces 😶‍🌫️ 🔗 👇

Super-recognizers sample visual information of superior computational value for facial recognition royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... | #ProcB #Cognition #FaceRecognition

New research out today is written up in The Guardian! We show that the basis of super-recognisers advantage for face recognition is not just about looking everywhere – it’s about looking smarter, at more useful information for identification. Read the full text here: doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

Our team just secured an ARC Discovery Project funding for "The Psychology of Perceiving Artificial People", where we ask how human cognition adapts to spotting AI-generated people? Glad to be a part of this all-star team led by Amy Dawel. Stay tuned for Postdoc opportunities! #ARCDiscovery

A very nice write-up by UNSW of our recent joint meeting of the Australasian Society for Experimental Psychology and the Asia-Pacific Conference on Vision, which we hosted at UNSW www.unsw.edu.au/news/2025/07...

Proud to have been part of the small but mighty team behind this year’s EPC/APCV with @sbmost.bsky.social, Branka Spehar & @popwatson.bsky.social. Pulling off a 400+ person event with just a few academics wasn’t easy, but we managed to do it while keeping that classic EPC warmth and supportiveness.

Great talk by @bethanygrowns.bsky.social looking at overlap between face super-recognizers and object super-matchers #epc2025 @expsyanz.bsky.social

Amy Dawel kicking off the #epc2025 Face Perception session off with great work looking at how difficult it is to identify AI-generated faces, especially across different races @expsyanz.bsky.social

Great talk by @dongwonoh.bsky.social demonstrating improved detection of AI faces using different visual attention strategies #epc2025 @expsyanz.bsky.social

Kateryna Marchenko showing perceptions of face pareidolia follows the classic three dot pattern in noise images #epc2025 @expsyanz.bsky.social

Fantastic talk by David White showing that super-recognizers don't pay extra attention to all social cues (e.g. bodies), just to faces #ecp2025 @expsyanz.bsky.social

And that's a wrap!! #epc2025 is in the books, with a lovely closing speech from @visnerd.bsky.social. SO many thanks to the organising committee for building such a successful conference 🙌 We'll see you next year in Auckland 🇳🇿

This year's David Badcock EMC lecture, given by Rachel Searston, talking about conducting research that has both theoretical impact and practical applications #epc2025

Great talk by Julia Haile showing that indirect eye gaze impacts the believability of expressions in both static and dynamic expressions #epc2025 @expsyanz.bsky.social

David White kicking us off at the EPC Face and Person Perception preconference 🎉

A terrific opening day to our conference! Welcome, everyone!

Hey ECRs at @expsyanz.bsky.social this week - if you're interested in object perception and/or neural decoding, come find me for a chat about an upcoming postdoc spot at the @marcsinstitute.bsky.social 👀

EPC President @sbmost.bsky.social officially opening the conference

Fascinating talk by Ben Steward at #epc2025 looking at how emotional faces and bodies are weighted in judgements. @expsyanz.bsky.social

Awesome talk at #epc2025 by @kyepalmer.bsky.social talking about how parents and children recognize each other's expressions. @expsyanz.bsky.social

Super interesting talk by Imogen Holdsworth looking at whether AQ score influences children's emotion recognition! #epc2025 @expsyanz.bsky.social

A great talk by Ishi Jamdagni at @expsyanz.bsky.social - the main takeaway: participants' rate the cold-pressor task as less stressful than everyday stressors; ethics board might need to reconsider their assumptions around pain and stress!

Great #epc2025 talk by Toby Prike showing how misinformation is transmitted across people @expsyanz.bsky.social

Full room for symposium 'Reasoning from the opinion of others' @scondes.bsky.social @expsyanz.bsky.social

Dan Carragher talking about how humans are the weak link in human/algorithm teaming when identifying faces 🙃 #epc2025 @expsyanz.bsky.social

@alicetowler.bsky.social showing double-digit improvement in face recognition using a short training based on expert information #epc2025 @expsyanz.bsky.social

Great talk by @jamesdunn.bsky.social looking at how police officer's visual attention is related to memory in stressful situations #epc2025 @expsyanz.bsky.social

Australasian Experimental Psychology Conference/Asia-Pacific Conference on Vision kicks off tomorrow! We're all very excited. See the programme it looks fantastic drive.google.com/file/d/1d0KE... website: conference.unsw.edu.au/en/epc-apcv-... follow us here: @expsyanz.bsky.social

We're looking forward to seeing you this week at the joint meeting of the 𝘈𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘭𝘢𝘴𝘪𝘢𝘯 𝘚𝘰𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘵𝘺 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘌𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘗𝘴𝘺𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘺 and the 𝘈𝘴𝘪𝘢-𝘗𝘢𝘤𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤 𝘊𝘰𝘯𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘯 𝘝𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯! Don't forget to tag us on your conference-related Bluesky posts, so we can help you share with our wonderful community! 😀

🚨 UNSW Face Lab is hiring 3-year post-doc 🚨 Please repost and contact David White for informal enquiries external-careers.jobs.unsw.edu.au/cw/en/job/53...

Our latest study in JEPHPP explores how we detect #facepareidolia under different task demands. Results like these keep providing clues that we are equipped to build multiple representations in parallel to flexibly support a diverse range of behavioural goals. psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/...

Excited to share that my research at UNSW Science is featured in a recent article by The Australian Financial Review highlighting innovative projects supported by the Australian Research Council and how more funding should be directed to early career researchers (which I agree wholeheartedly)

A report on this👆 was written by Julie Hare today in the AFR👇

Hello, Psychonomics! Come share your work in Australia. I'm co-organizing the 2025 meeting of the Australasian Society for Experimental Psych, which will be joint with the Asia-Pacific Conference on Vision. A week later, Human Brain Mapping is in Brisbane. There's never been a better time! #psynom24

🚀 New Research! 🚀 🔍 Title: Flexible Use of Facial Features Supports Face Identity Processing Our study reveals that the key to accurate face recognition lies in the flexibility of using different facial features. #Research #FaceRecognition #Psychology #Forensics #Security #AcademicResearch

The Australasian Experimental Psychology Conference (EPC) and Asia Pacific Conference on Vision (APCV) are holding a joint meeting in 2025, to be held at UNSW in Sydney, from June 17-20. Abstract and symposium submissions are open! epc.psy.unsw.edu.au/index.html