- Ph.D., University of Toronto, 2001
- M.A., University of Toronto, 1996
- B.A., University of Maine, 1995
Jason Gold
Professor, Psychological and Brain Sciences
Director of Undergraduate Studies
**Not accepting graduate students**
- jgold@iu.edu
- (812) 855-4635
- PY 352
- Office Hours
Education
Areas of Study
- Sensation and Perception
- Psychophysics
Research Topics
- pattern vision
- object and face recognition
- perceptual learning
- perceptual grouping and completion
- visual memory
- encoding efficiency and information use
- ideal observer theory
About Jason Gold
One of the most important abilities we possess is our capacity to detect, discriminate and identify objects in our environment. It is difficult to imagine navigating through the world without the ability to reliably detect objects in our path; or having social interactions without the ability to recognize other people's faces. These are tasks that we perform with ease and on a continual basis every day. But how does our visual system translate the array of light that reaches our eyes into an organized representation of meaningful objects embedded within complex scenes?
My research is directed towards understanding some of these processes that are performed on visual patterns after the initial stages of sensory encoding. I am particularly interested in understanding what it is that limits our ability to use the information that is available to us when we are trying to detect or recognize visual patterns. My approach typically involves the use of a variety of psychophysical and signal-processing methods (such as ideal observer analysis and signal detection theory) to quantitatively characterize the mechanisms involved in various perceptual processes, such as perceptual learning, visual completion, face recognition and visual memory decay.
Representative Publications
Kim MJ, Gold JM & Murray RF (2018). What image features guide lightness perception? Journal of Vision 18(13):1, 1-20.
Nosofsky RM & Gold JM (2018). Biased Guessing in a Complete-Identification Visual-Working-Memory Task: Further Evidence for Mixed-State Models. JEP:HPP 44(4), 603-625.
Bromfield WD & Gold JM (2017). Efficiencies for parts and wholes in biological-motion perception. Journal of Vision 17(12):21, 1–16.
Bittner J & Gold JM (2017). The impact of symmetry on the efficiency of human face perception. Perception 46 (7), 830-859.
Bratch A, Barr S, Bromfield WD, Srinath A, Zhang J & Gold JM (2016). The impact of configural superiority on the processing of spatial information. JEP:HPP 42(9), 1388-1398.
Nosofsky RM & Gold JM (2015). Memory strength vs. memory variability in visual change detection. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics. 78 (1), 78-93.
Barr S & Gold JM (2014). Redundant visual information improves group decisions. JEP:HPP 40(6), 2124-2130.
Gold JM, Barker JD, Barr S, Bittner JL, Bratch A, Bromfield WD, Goode RA, Jones M, Lee D & Srinath A (2014). The perception of a familiar face is no more than the sum of its parts. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 21 (6), 1465-72.
Gold JM (2014). A perceptually completed whole is less than the sum of its parts. Psychological Science 25, 1206-1217.
Gold JM (2014). Information processing correlates of a size-contrast illusion. Frontiers in Psychology: Perception Science 5 (142), 1-13.
Donkin C, Nosofsky RM, Gold JM & Shiffrin R (2013). Discrete-slots models of working memory response times. Psychological Review 120 (4), 873-901.
Gold JM, Barker J, Barr S, Bittner J, Bromfield WD, Chu N, Goode RA, Lee D, Simmons M & Srinath A (2013). The efficiency of dynamic and static facial expression recognition. Journal of Vision, 13(5):23, 1-12.
Gold JM, Mundy PJ & Tjan, BS (2012). The perception of a face is no more than the sum of its parts. Psychological Science 23(4), 427-434.
Conrey B & Gold JM (2009). Pattern recognition in correlated and uncorrelated noise. Journal of the Optical Society of America: A 26 (11), B94-B109.
Gold JM, Tadin D, Cook SC & Blake R (2008). The efficiency of biological motion perception. Perception & Psychophysics 70 (1), 88-95.
Conrey B & Gold JM (2006). An ideal observer analysis of variability in visual-only speech. Vision Research 46, 3243–3258.
Gold JM, Cohen A & Shiffrin R. (2006) Visual noise reveals category representations. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 13 (4), 649-655
Gold JM & Shubel E (2006). The spatiotemporal properties of visual completion measured by response classification. Journal of Vision 6 (4), 356-365.
Gold JM, Sekuler R, Murray RF, Sekuler AB, Bennett PJ (2005). Visual memory decay is deterministic. Psychological Science 16 (10), 769-774.
Gold JM, Sekuler AB, Bennett PJ (2004). Characterizing perceptual learning with external noise. Cognitive Science, 28, 167-207.
Sekuler AB, Gaspar CG, Gold JM, Bennett PJ (2004). Inversion leads to quantitative, not qualitative, changes in face processing. Current Biology, 14, 391-396.
Gold JM, Murray RF, Bennett PJ & Sekuler AB (2000) Deriving behavioral receptive fields for visually completed contours. Current Biology 10, 663-666.
Gold J, Bennett PJ & Sekuler AB (1999) Signal but not noise changes with perceptual learning. Nature 402, 176-178.
Gold J, Bennett PJ & Sekuler AB (1999) Identification of band-pass filtered letters and faces by human and ideal observers. Vision Research 39(21), 3537-3560.
The College of Arts