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