Rhiannon Thomas

e-mail: Rhiannonlthomas@gmail.com

Research interests

I am interested in how the ability to combine multiple sources of perceptual information into a single unified percept develops. Recent studies have shown that human adults can weight visual & haptic and visual & auditory information according to their reliability, in a manner remarkably similar to statistical optimality as predicted by maximum likelihood estimation. Thus when noise is added to a signal, making it less reliable, participants weight it correspondingly less in their perceptual estimates. Percepts can be further optimised by combining sensory information with prior knowledge about the stimuli. How these abilities for ‘optimal’ perception develop is not known. In development, perceptual systems must come to represent (1) their own reliabilities, and (2) prior probabilities of events in the world, and to use both kinds of information in weighting information for perceptual judgements.

Curriculum vitae

Ba. Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, 2008.

MSc. Psychological Research Methods, Birkbeck college, University of London, 2009.

Publications

Thomas, R., Nardini, M., & Mareschal, D. (2010). Interactions between 'light-from-above' and convexity priors in visual development. Journal of Vision, 10(8):6, 1-7, http://journalofvision.org/content/10/8/6

M Nardini, R Thomas, V Knowland, O, Braddick, J Atkinson (2009). A viewpoint-independent process for spatial reorientation. Cognition, 112, 241-248

Posters

Thomas, R., Nardini, M. & Mareschal, D. (2009). Interactions between ‘light-from-above’ and convexity priors in visual development. Poster presented at the 14th AVA Christmas meeting, University of Bristol.

Thomas, R., Nardini, M. & Mareschal, D. (2010). Development of light-from-above and convexity priors for perception of shape-from-shading. Poster presented at the BPS Developmental section conference, Goldsmiths, University of London. (Awarded bursary to attend).

Thomas, R., Nardini, M. & Mareschal, D. (2010). Development of light-from-above and convexity priors for perception of shape-from-shading. Poster presented at Atkinson & Braddick Celebration, Magdalen College, Oxford.

Thomas, R., Nardini, M. & Mareschal, D. (2011). The interaction of two prior beliefs in children's developing judgments of shape from shading. Poster presented at the annual conference for the Society for Research in Child Development, Montreal.

Thomas, R., Mareschal, D. & Nardini, M. (2011). The role of prior knowledge in the development of visual-auditory integration. Poster presented at the annual Vision Sciences Society conference, Naples, Florida.