Faculty
Aaron P. Johnson, Ph.D.
Associate Professor & Chair, Psychology
Prof. Johnson has been at Concordia since 2006. His research investigates human vision in real-world environments while performing real-world tasks. His research spans a range of areas from low-level computational models of vision, to applied research in the fields of marketing, aviation, and low vision rehabilitation.
Rick Gurnsey, Ph.D.
Professor, Psychology
Prof. Gurnsey has been a professor at Concordia since 1992. His research focuses on vision across the visual field, and on improving statistical analysis used in the field of Psychology. He has recently published a new textbook on Statistics for Research in Psychology , which focuses on confidence interval estimations.
Lucia Farisello, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Psychology
Dr. Farisello has been at Concordia since 2014. Her research investigates psychophysiological and self-report measures of arousal to visually explicit sexual imagery and videos. She is also developing better self-report questionnaires to explore sexuality and arousal.
Walter Wittich, Ph.D.
Affiliate Professor, Psychology / Assistant Professor, Optometry and Vision Science.
Prof. Wittich has been at the University of Montreal since 2014. His research investigates dual sensory impairments (e.g., vision and hearing loss), and how these may impact other areas of older adults health (e.g., Cognition).
Visual Impairment Research Lab @ UdM
Postdoctoral Fellows
Caitlin Murphy, Ph.D.
Postdoc, Psychology / Applied Human Sciences
Dr. Murphy research investigates the physiology of the retina in individuals with visual impairment using the Scanning Laser Opthamoloscope imaging modality. Her research is building a database of images of individuals with visual impairment, with behavioural and cognitive measures, allowing both researchers and clinicians to better understand how vision loss impacts other areas of health.
Leon Franzen, Ph.D.
Postdoc, Psychology / JMSB
Dr. Franzen is a horizon postdoctoral fellow with Prof. Johnson and Prof. Grohmann (JMSB). His doctoral research at the University of Glasgow investigated the perceptual mechanisms involved in Dyslexia. At Concordia, he will be working on visual marketing behaviour.
Graduate Students
Elliott Morrice, MA.
PhD Candidate (Clinical & Research Option), Psychology
Elliott’s research investigates the impact of colour and light on reading in older adults, and those with visual impairment. Although frequently used in vision rehabilitation, the use of coloured lighting does not have much scientific basis. Elliott aims to provide the first evidence of the impact of coloured lighting, and which devices can be used to generate changes in reading performance. More information
Maria Santaguida.
PhD Candidate (Research Option), Psychology
Maria’s research investigates the acute effects of alcohol on individuals’ subjective and psychophysiological responses to visual sexual stimuli, using eye-tracking, genital thermography, and self-report measures. Her research also focuses on the role of sex-related alcohol expectancies in risky sexual decision making. More information
Simon Dubé.
PhD Candidate (Research Option), Psychology
Simon’s research investigates how individuals’ psychophysiological and subjective responses to sexual stimuli relates to their sexual preferences using eye-tracking, EEG, genital thermography, and self-report questionnaires. His research is also interested in the emergence of new interactive/immersive sexual technologies (e.g., sociosexual artificial intelligence/robotics, virtual/augmented sexual reality). More information
Karine Elalouf, M.A.
PhD Candidate (Research Option), Psychology
Karine’s research investigates how arousal can change our choices during decision making. She uses the delayed discounting paradigm to explore this, exploring different commodities including money and sex.
Sam Clement-Coulson, M.A.
PhD Candidate (Research Option), Psychology
Sam’s research investigates human factors involved in aviation. He is interested in pilot training and the layout of the aviation flight deck (e.g., instrumentation). He also has interests in using physiological measures (eye tracking, heart-rate, EEG) to assess pilot proficiency and ability to handle stressful situations that arise in the cockpit. More information
Zoey Stark
MA Candidate (Research and Clinical Option), Psychology
Zoey’s research investigates how different font types (e.g., OpenDyslexic, Times New Roman) impacts reading performance in a Dyslexic population. She uses eye tracking to observe if the different fonts lead to changes in the characteristics of the eye movements, and changes to the attentional window.
Austin Trudeau
MSc Marketing Candidate, JMSB
Undergraduate Students
Vanessa Soldano
Undergraduate / CURSA, Psychology
/>Vanessa’s research is investigating the psychometric properties of the Adult Dyslexia Checklist. Although used by many as a quick checklist for Dyslexia symptoms, the psychometric properties have not been adequately validated.Using previously collected data, plus online testing during COVID-19, Vanessa aims to collect enough data to conduct a validity analysis.
Sophie Hallot
Undergraduate, Psychology
Sophie’s work investigates how the Drusen in the retina on eye movement stability and funcaitonal vision.
Alumni
Brandon Huard
MSc Marketing, John Molson School of Business
Current Position:
Arash Sharma
MSc Marketing, John Molson School of Business
Current Position: Innovation, Science and Economic Development, Government of Canada
Mathew Martin
MA (Research Option), Psychology
Matt’s MA thesis investigated how summary statistics are impacted by splitting attention across multiple visual features (e.g., size, orientation, colour).
Current Position: PhD Analytics, UQAM.
Julie Shilhan
Ph.D. (Clinical and Research Option), Psychology
Julie’s PhD thesis investigated the development of the a sexual Stroop task to psychophysically measure arousal in men and women.
Current Position: Clinical Private Practice, Sudbury / Assistant Professor, Guelph University.
Bruno Richard
MA & Ph.D. (Research Option), Psychology
Bruno’s PhD thesis investigated the mechanisms involved in the detection of manipulations in broadband spatial frequency contrast in images containing natural scene statistical relationships.
Current Position: Faculty, Rutgers University
John Brand
Ph.D. (Research Option), Psychology
John’s PhD thesis investigated the impact that attention has on rapid scene perception (i.e., scene gist).
Current Position: Research Associate, Dartmouth University.
Florian Grond
Postdoc, Psychology
Florian’s research investigated the development and use of a mobile-phone friendly audio beacon for navigating around an indoor shopping mall.
Current Position: Research Associate, McGill University
Afroditi Panagapoulos
M.A. & Ph.D. (Research Option), Psychology
Afroditi’s PhD thesis explored how the splitting of attention impacts task performance.
Current Position: Faculty, John Abbott University
Angela Vavassis
M.A. & Ph.D. (Research Option), Psychology
Undergraduate Thesis Students (thesis topic, Current Position)
2019-2020
Alaa Boutelaa Impact of Laser Strike on Cognitive Load in Pilots
Amanda Cabugao Pupilometry to measure known and unknown branded objects.
Lisa Thomasse Does repetitive exposure to pornography reduce arousal?
Zoe Yarymowich Association Between Men’s Sexual Attitudes and Behaviours Towards Women and Sexual Arousal to Sexually Aggressive Visual Stimuli
2018-2019
Corina Lacombe Anxiety Natural Scenes Current Position: PhD Clin. Psych. Ottawa U.
Alexandra Connor Arousal Decision Making. Current Position: MA Clin. Psych. University of Montreal.
Zoey Stark Dyslexia reading Current Position: MA Clin. Psych Concordia.
Aude Rouisse Retina scan visual function Current Position: Low Vision Rehabilitation Program, UdM.
Stephanie Pietrangelo Retina scan cognitive function Current Position: Low Vision Rehabilitation Program, UdM.
2017-2018
Brandon Huard Driving Simulator
Austin Trudeau Delayed Discounting.
Sarah Raimi Digital Pegboard Low Vision
2016-2017
Julien Hughes Cognitive Screen Low Vision. Current Position: McGill Medical School.
2015-2016
Lauren Gazzard Eye movement arousal. Current Position: PhD Clinical Psyc. McGill University.
Julien Rice EEG Scenes. Current Position: Ubisoft.
Joella Martire Low vision SLO-OCT, Current Position: New England College of Optometry in Boston
Saida Adisa Hearing and assistive device. Current Position:
Arash Sharma Eye movement marketing. Current Position: Gov. Canada.
2014-2015
Sarah Rassi Low vision shopping
Jake Applebaum Eye movement arousal
Yvette Essess Hybrid Search
Jessica Wilson Low vision iPad
Karine Elalouf Eye movement variability in video
2013-2014
Michelle Bauer Sex arousal. Current Position: PhD Clinical Psyc. Ottawa U.
Cassandra Fehr Colour Scene Processing. Current Position: PhD Clinical Psyc. Ottawa U.
Marie-Eve Leclerc Sex arousal. Current Position: PhD Clinical Psyc. Ottawa U.
Christina Nadon Low vision iPad. Current Position: Low Vision Rehabilitation, Lethbridge-Layton-Mackay Rehabilitation Centre, Montreal, QC.
Anna Sotnikova Low vision iPad
2012-2013
Charlie Ohayon Scene Processing
Dara Heather tDSC Vision
2010-2011
Johnathan Greggain Scene perception and attention
Heather Woods-Fry Macular Degeneration
Ata Hatami Rapid scene perception
2009-2010
Dmitre Novikov Eye movement magic
James Graves Perceptual Learning
2008-2009
Bruno Richard Concussion
Vanessa Doyon-Cadieux Macular Degeneration
Sylvie Labertie Leaning tower illusion
2007-2008
Sylvie Labertie Perception of Art
David Derry Contrast Natural Scenes
Anthony Paventi Properties fixated Scenes
Jessica Zang Colour Scene Recognition
Germaine Lam Amplitude discrimination
