Department of Psychology

People in the Lab

Monica Castelhano

Associate Professor
Principal Investigator

I came to Queen's in July 2007 after a position as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst with Keith Rayner and Sandy Pollatsek. I completed my doctorate degree at Michigan State Univerisity in 2005 while working with John Henderson.

My main research interests include: scene perception, memory for high-level information, visual attention, eye movement control, visual search, object recognition, and reading.

Nida Latif

Graduate Student

I am a first year PhD student in the area of Brain, Behaviour and Cognitive Science. I received my Bachelor's degree in Psychology from McMaster University and completed my Master's degree at Queen's University with a focus on visual and cognitive social perception. My research interests lie within the area of perceptual and cognitive processes associated with the mental representations of non-verbal cues that enable us to make social judgments.

Interests outside of the lab include music, theatre and film and most geekily, finding the connections between art and Psychology.

Effie Pereira

Graduate Student

I'm a first year MSc student in the Brain, Behaviour and Cognitive Science field, and received my BAH in Psychology and BA in Economics from Queen's University in 2008. I've been at the QVCL for five years now, previously working as a lab coordinator and research assistant, before starting my current graduate program to pursue my interests in visual search and real-world scene perception.

My main research is focused on how we utilize high-level and low-level information in directed search tasks, but I am also fascinated by aspects of eye movement planning and fixation prediction in scene exploration. Aside from being a complete workaholic, I'm a statistics nerd, baseball fan, music lover, book peruser, and dessert devourer.

Yu Qing Liu

Research Assistant

I am a second year Psychology student with a passion to understand the human psyche. After receiving my Bachelor of Science degree I hope to pursue graduate studies in clinical psychology/neuroscience. I am currently working on a project examining negative priming with the QVCL group. In my free time, I like to read, swim and play guitar.

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Laura

Research Assistant

I'm currently a second year student pursuing a degree in psychology with a minor in art history. In the lab, I'm responsible for running various experiments and designing graphic elements used for scenes. Outside of QVCL, my psychology interests lie in psychopathy and experimental research. When not in the lab, I also do volunteer graphic design work for the Cataraqui Archeological Research Foundation, visit art galleries and see the occasional film at The Screening Room. I hope that Queen's and QVCL help me explore the discipline of psychology as a mediator between the arts and sciences.

Nathan Braniff

Computer Programmer

I am currently in my fourth year of a Cognitive Science degree. At the QVCL, I am presently working on a program designed to be used for eye tracking analyses.

I am the coding King.