Research

I study how brief temporal intervals support perception, with a particular focus on gaze duration, social meaning, and individual differences in timing sensitivity.

Research narrative

The central problem

Direct gaze is usually treated as a social signal, but it is also a timed signal. A glance and a sustained look can differ by fractions of a second, yet that difference can alter how attention, intention, and social presence are interpreted.

My doctoral work asks whether those brief socially meaningful intervals are processed by a broad general timing mechanism, by a set of duration-sensitive channels similar to those proposed in visual timing, or by a partly distinct architecture shaped by the social relevance of gaze.

Current project

PhD research

PhD Research — ESRC Midlands Graduate School DTP

Individual Differences in Socially Relevant Timing

Oct 2025 to Sep 2029

My PhD examines how brief temporal intervals shape perception and behaviour, and how these processes vary across people. I focus on the short windows that support fast social judgements: gaze timing, rapid facial dynamics, and how arousal and attention gate temporal sensitivity.

I use psychophysics, eye-tracking, and computational modelling to understand the latent structure of timing ability across tasks and individuals.

Experiment 1 - PhD Research

Gaze-Duration Discrimination and Social Timing

Jan 2026 to Present

This study uses dynamic ABABA gaze sequences to test how people discriminate brief direct-gaze intervals. The key question is whether performance across duration levels reflects one broad timing source, multiple duration-sensitive processes, or a partly distinct social-timing architecture.

The analysis focuses on duration-level covariance, order effects, reliability, and comparison with a non-social Gabor timing benchmark. Reaction time is not treated as a primary outcome.

Experiment 1

Gaze-duration discrimination

The first online study uses dynamic ABABA gaze sequences. Participants judge which of two direct-gaze intervals lasted longer across five log-spaced duration levels. The main interest is not reaction time, but the structure of performance across durations.

If one general timing source dominates, performance should correlate broadly across duration levels. If duration-sensitive channels contribute, nearby durations should show stronger relationships than distant durations. If social meaning changes the architecture, gaze may depart from the non-social benchmark.

TaskTwo-interval forced choice gaze-duration judgement
FocusAccuracy structure, order effects, and duration-level covariance
ComparisonExisting Gabor duration benchmark
Core questions

What the programme tests

One clock or many?

Does social duration judgement reflect a broad general source of timing ability, or a more structured set of duration-sensitive processes?

Where do biases enter?

Order effects are treated as theoretically important because they could mimic or mask duration-level individual-differences structure.

What is socially specific?

By comparing gaze with a non-social visual benchmark, the work asks what is shared with low-level timing and what is specific to social cues.

Methods

Approach

Experimental methods

Online psychophysicsLaboratory psychophysicsEyeLink eye trackingGaze-contingent displaysTiming validation

Analysis

Mixed-effects modelsBayesian modellingLatent structureOrder effectsReliability checks

Tools

PythonRMATLABPsychtoolboxLaTeX
Previous work

Visual instability and reading

MRes Research — University of Leicester

Visual Instability and Reading

My MRes project investigated how visual instability affects reading using gaze-contingent manipulations. Intra-saccadic displacements of 0–20px were applied in random directions. Results showed direction-contingent tolerance: leftward/up-left shifts increased fixation durations, downward shifts shortened them.

Presented as a poster at ECVP 2025 and AVA Spring Meeting 2026.

Lab

Vision and Time Lab

I am based in the Vision and Time Lab Group at the University of Leicester. My doctoral supervision is led by Dr Aurelio Bruno, with Professor Neil Roach and Dr Richard Leadbeater as co-supervisors.

The wider research environment supports work on perception, timing, attention, vision, and social cognition.