Professor Ben Tatler

Biography

I obtained my undergraduate degree in Natural Sciences (Biological) at the University of Cambridge in 1998 and my DPhil in Neuroscience at the University of Sussex in 2002. After obtaining my PhD I worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Sussex before moving to the University of Dundee in 2004, where I held the positions of Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and Reader. I have been a Professor of Psychology at the University of Aberdeen since 2015.

Research Overview

Many of our everyday behaviours require visual input to guide them. My research focuses on two key questions that we must address to understand how vision supports natural behaviour: (1) where we look and (2) what we encode and retain from the objects we look at. A particular emphasis within this work is the importance of studying vision in the context of natural behaviour in real environments, rather than exclusively in laboratory settings. My research has contributed to our theoretical understanding of the factors that underlie decisions about where to look in complex scenes and to our theoretical understanding of the representations that underlie natural vision.

I apply these research interests to a range of real-world problems including hazard perception in driving, CCTV surveillance, and how comics can be used for conveying public health information.

Funding and Grants

Recent funding:

Tatler, B. W. & Murray, C. (2021-2024). Comics vs. Covid: informing and evaluating the design of public health information comics SGSSS [PhD studentship]

Chu, M. & Tatler, B. W. (2020-2021). Giving cognition a helping hand: how gesture facilitates spatial thinking. The Leverhulme Trust. Awarded: £118,822

Phillips, L., Tatler, B. W., & Henry, J. (2017-2020). Adult aging and social attention: the role of cognitive decline and social motivation. ESRC. Awarded: £625,615