Bio / CV / Etc.
  
Background  
I have been on the faculty at Yale in the Department of Psychology since 2001 (as Assistant Professor from 2001-2005, Associate Professor on Term from 2005-2006, Associate Professor with tenure since 2006). I also serve as the Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Cognitive Science major. Before coming to Yale I was at Harvard University, working as a postdoctoral fellow in the Vision Sciences Laboratory of the Department of Psychology. At Harvard I worked primarily with Ken Nakayama. I received my PhD from Rutgers University, where I worked with Zenon Pylyshyn, who was the director of the Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science. Earlier, I was an undergraduate at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota ("town of cows, colleges, and contentment"), where I studied computer science and also psychology. I grew up in what used to be a rural part of Hudson, Wisconsin. Here's a photo of the house where I grew up.  
 
Deeper Background  
Working back through my academic lineage uncovered some interesting facts -- e.g. that my academic great-great-great-great grandfather was the first student ever awarded a PhD in Psychology from Yale, in 1895; and that my academic great-great-great-great-great grandfather established the original Yale Psychological Laboratory.  
 
Biography  
The journal American Psychologist published this short professional biography in 2006.  
 
My CV  
If you'd like, you can download or view a copy of my CV.  
 

Recent Research Topics
 
Research in our laboratory spans several topics in cognitive science, with a primary focus in recent work on visual cognition. Much of our work involves computer-based psychophysical experiments with human adults. In collaboration with several other laboratories, we are also exploring several of the topics below in computational models, human infants, nonhuman primates, brain-damaged patients, and children with autism spectrum disorder. Below are descriptions of a few of the specific topics in this area which we are currently investigating. For detailed discussions of our interests in these areas, see the papers listed on the 'Papers / Books' page. Demonstrations of many of the phenomena and experimental paradigms used in our visual cognition research can be found on the Neat Vision Demos page, along with more detailed descriptions of various experiments.  
 
 
Visual Awareness  
A central interest of our laboratory in recent years has been the nature of visual awareness. How and when is it produced? What factors determine whether we will become conscious of a visual stimulus? We address such questions by employing several startling phenomena in which we lose conscious awareness of various aspects of visual scenes. In sustained inattentional blindness, observers fail to perceive unexpected objects in visual scenes even though the 'missed' objects are in full view for several seconds, are in motion, and have features that differ from all other items in the display. In motion-induced blindness, salient (and even attended) objects fluctuate into and out of conscious awareness repeatedly when superimposed onto certain global motion patterns. We have been exploring these phenomena and others, and we have developed a perceptual cycle account of sustained inattentional blindness, and the perceptual scotoma theory of motion-induced blindness. Such phenomena allow us to explore the roles of attention and 'unconscious inferences' as gateways to conscious perception, and also the nature of the processing which can occur without visual awareness.
Sample Papers

New, J. J., & Scholl, B. J. (under review). The functional nature of motion-induced blindness: Further explorations of the 'perceptual scotoma' hypothesis. Manuscript submitted for publication.

White, A. L., & Scholl, B. J. (under review). Inattentional blindness, object persistence, and foveal inhibition. Manuscript submitted for publication.

New, J. J., & Scholl, B. J. (2008). 'Perceptual scotomas': A functional account of motion-induced blindness. Psychological Science, 19(7), 653 - 659.

Most, S. B., Scholl, B. J., Clifford, E., & Simons, D. J. (2005). What you see is what you set: Sustained inattentional blindness and the capture of awareness. Psychological Review, 112(1), 217 - 242.

Mitroff, S. R., & Scholl, B. J. (2005). Forming and updating object representations without awareness: Evidence from motion-induced blindness. Vision Research, 45(8), 961 - 967.

Scholl, B. J., Simons, D. J., & Levin, D. T. (2004). 'Change blindness' blindness: An implicit measure of a metacognitive error. In D. T. Levin (Ed.), Thinking and seeing: Visual metacognition in adults and children (pp. 145-164). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Mitroff, S. R., & Scholl, B. J. (2004). Perceiving the disappearance of unseen objects. Perception, 33(10), 1267 - 1273.

Most, S. B., Simons, D. J., Scholl, B. J., Jiminez, R., Clifford, E., & Chabris, C. F. (2001). How not to be seen: The contribution of similarity and selective ignoring to sustained inattentional blindness. Psychological Science, 12(1), 9 - 17.

Most, S. B., Simons, D. J., Scholl, B. J., & Chabris, C. F. (2000). Sustained inattentional blindness: The role of location in the detection of unexpected dynamic events. Psyche, 6(14).

Scholl, B. J. (2000). Attenuated change blindness for exogenously attended items in a flicker paradigm. Visual Cognition, 7(1/2/3), 377 - 396.

Object Persistence  
A central lesson of cognitive science is that we typically take for granted some of our most important underlying cognitive processes. One example of this, we maintain, is the mental computation of object persistence -- the automatic representation of parts of visual scenes as the same enduring individual objects over time, motion, occlusion, and featural change. Without the ability to compute object persistence, visual experience would be incoherent -- yet such processing has received surprisingly little study in recent decades. As such, a major recent research thrust in our lab has been the attempt to determine the nature of such processing. In particular, we are exploring (1) the dynamic visual properties which cause a part of the visual field to be treated as the same object over time, and (2) the related principles which help solve correspondence problems -- 'which went where?' -- in complex dynamic scenes. This research project has involved many different experimental paradigms, including multiple object tracking, object reviewing, change detection, and the tunnel effect. Theoretically, we've developed an account of object persistence that encompasses the nature of such processing in adults, infants, and monkeys, and we've argued that this body of research can provide important constraints on classical philosophical theories of persistence. This work continues in our laboratory as an ongoing 'case study' in cognitive science.
Sample Papers

Cheries, E. W., Feigenson, L., Scholl, B. J., & Carey, S. (under review). Cues to object persistence in infancy: Tracking objects through occlusion vs. implosion. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Ellner, S., Flombaum, J. I., & Scholl, B. J. (under review). Extrapolation vs. individuation in multiple object tracking. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Scholl, B. J., & Flombaum, J. I. (in press). Object persistence. In B. Goldstein (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Perception. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications

Gao, T., & Scholl, B. J. (in press). Are objects required for object files?: Roles of segmentation and spatiotemporal continuity in computing object persistence. Visual Cognition.

Cheries, E. W., Mitroff, S. R., Wynn, K., & Scholl, B. J. (2009). Do the same principles constrain persisting object representations in infant cognition and adult perception?: The cases of continuity and cohesion. In B. Hood & L. Santos (Eds.), The Origins of Object Knowledge (pp. 107 - 134). Oxford University Press.

Flombaum, J. I., Scholl, B. J., & Santos, L. R. (2009). Spatiotemporal priority as a fundamental principle of object persistence. In B. Hood & L. Santos (Eds.), The Origins of Object Knowledge (pp. 135 - 164). Oxford University Press.

Yi, D-J., Turk-Browne, N. B., Flombaum, J. I., Kim, M., Scholl, B. J., & Chun, M. M. (2008). Spatiotemporal object continuity in human ventral visual cortex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(26), 8840 - 8845.

Flombaum, J. I., Scholl, B. J., & Pylyshyn, Z. W. (2008). Attentional resources in tracking through occlusion: The high-beams effect. Cognition, 107(3), 904 - 931.

Cheries, E. W., Mitroff, S. R., Wynn, K., & Scholl, B. J. (2008). Cohesion as a principle of object persistence in infancy. Developmental Science, 11(3), 427 - 432.

Scholl, B. J. (2007). Object persistence in philosophy and psychology. Mind & Language, 22(5), 563 - 591.

Flombaum, J. I., & Scholl, B. J. (2006). A temporal same-object advantage in the tunnel effect: Facilitated change detection for persisting objects. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 32(4), 840 - 853.

Cheries, E. W., Wynn, K., & Scholl, B. J. (2006). Interrupting infants' persisting object representations: An object-based limit? Developmental Science, 9(5), F50 - F58.

Mitroff, S. R., Scholl, B. J., & Wynn, K. (2005). The relationship between object files and conscious perception. Cognition, 96(1), 67 - 92.

Noles, N. S., Scholl, B. J., & Mitroff, S. R. (2005). The persistence of object file representations. Perception & Psychophysics, 67(2), 324 - 334.

Flombaum, J. I., Kundey, S. M., Santos, L. R., & Scholl, B. J. (2004). Dynamic object individuation in rhesus macaques: A study of the tunnel effect. Psychological Science, 15(12), 795 - 800.

Mitroff, S. R., Scholl, B. J., & Wynn, K. (2004). Divide and conquer: How object files adapt when a persisting object splits into two. Psychological Science, 15(6), 420 - 425.

Scholl, B. J., & Pylyshyn, Z. W. (1999). Tracking multiple items through occlusion: Clues to visual objecthood. Cognitive Psychology, 38, 259 - 290.

Carving the World at its Joints with Attention  
In recent years we have been exploring a basic visual process, by which the continuous incoming retinal input is parsed into discrete object representations. We have focused in particular on demonstrating how visual attention interacts in rich and interesting ways with the underlying structure of visual scenes. Attention is often allocated not only to spatial regions of the visual field, but to discrete visual objects. Whereas vision scientists have traditionally studied the recognition of specific objects, we are using computer-based experiments to determine what can count as an attended object in the first place, and thus to determine the nature of the fundamental units over which visual attention can operate. Our recent research has shown how object-based effects can be independently strengthened or weakened by multiple types of visual structure, and has begun to illustrate how the 'objects' of object-based attention are formed from simpler visual features. This research is closely connected to issues in many other areas of cognitive science. As one example of this, we have recently suggested that the study of the infant's 'object concept' and the study of mid-level object-based visual processing in adults may have much more to do with each other than has been previously suspected.
Sample Papers

Flombaum, J. I., & Scholl, B. J. (under review). The influence of motion on attention. Manuscript submitted for publication

Scholl, B. J. (2009). What have we learned about attention from multiple object tracking (and vice versa)? In D. Dedrick & L. Trick (Eds.), Computation, cognition, and Pylyshyn (pp. 49 - 78). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Doran, M. M., Hoffman, J. E., & Scholl, B. J. (2009). The role of eye fixations in concentration and amplification effects during multiple object tracking. Visual Cognition, 17(4), 574 - 597.

Ben-Shahar, O., Scholl, B. J., & Zucker, S. W. (2007). Attention, segregation, and textons: Bridging the gap between object-based attention and texton-based segregation. Vision Research, 47(6), 845 - 860.

Cheries, E. W., Newman, G. E., Santos, L. R., & Scholl, B. J. (2006). Units of visual individuation in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta): Objects or unbound visual features? Perception, 35(8), 1057 - 1071.

Alvarez, G. A., & Scholl, B. J. (2005). How does attention select and track spatially extended objects?: New effects of attentional concentration and amplification. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 134(4), 461 - 476.

Marino, A. C., & Scholl, B. J. (2005). The role of closure in defining the 'objects' of object-based attention. Perception & Psychophysics, 67(7), 1140 - 1149.

vanMarle, K., & Scholl, B. J. (2003). Attentive tracking of objects vs. substances. Psychological Science, 14(5), 498 - 504.

Scholl, B. J. (2001). Objects and attention: The state of the art. Cognition, 80(1/2), 1 - 46.

Scholl, B. J., Pylyshyn, Z. W., & Feldman, J. (2001). What is a visual object? Evidence from target merging in multiple object tracking. Cognition, 80(1/2), 159 - 177.

Scholl, B. J., & Leslie, A. M. (1999). Explaining the infant's object concept: Beyond the perception/cognition dichotomy. In E. Lepore & Z. Pylyshyn (Eds.), What is cognitive science? (pp. 26 - 73). Oxford: Blackwell.

Perceiving Animacy and Causality  
We experience the world not only in terms of visual objects, but also in terms of discrete but dynamic visual events. As case studies of higher-level event perception and cognition, we are also exploring the nature of phenomena wherein dynamic displays consisting only of simple geometric shapes nevertheless give rise to rich percepts involving causation, animacy, and goal-directedness. Such phenomena are of particular interest because they seem to reflect primarily perceptual processing rather than higher-level inference, despite the high-level nature of the resulting interpretations. These effects emphasize that perception concerns not only a recovery of the physical structure of the world, but also a recovery of its causal and social structure. Our latest projects in the perception of causality focus on how this phenomenon interacts in rich ways with other types of visual cognition, such as attention and grouping. Our latest projects in the perception of animacy focus on the "psychophysics of chasing", and on how perceiving animacy irresistibly influences various types of interactive behavior.
Sample Papers

Gao, T., McCarthy, G., & Scholl, B. J. (under review). Perception of animacy irresistibly influences interactive behavior. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Gao, T., Newman, G. E., & Scholl, B. J. (in press). The psychophysics of chasing: A case study in the perception of animacy. Cognitive Psychology.

Newman, G. E., Choi, H., Wynn, K., & Scholl, B. J. (2008). The origins of causal perception: Evidence from postdictive processing in infancy. Cognitive Psychology, 57(3), 262 - 291.

Choi, H., & Scholl, B. J. (2006). Perceiving causality after the fact: Postdiction in the temporal dynamics of causal perception. Perception, 35(3), 385 - 399.

Wagemans, J., Van Lier, R., & Scholl, B. J. (2006). Introduction to Michotte's heritage in perception and cognition research. Acta Psychologica, 123(1-2), 1 - 19.

Choi, H., & Scholl, B. J. (2006). Measuring causal perception: Links to representational momentum? Acta Psychologica, 123(1-2), 91 - 111.

Scholl, B. J., & Nakayama, K. (2004). Illusory causal crescents: Misperceived spatial relations due to perceived causality. Perception, 33(4), 455 - 469.

Choi, H., & Scholl, B. J. (2004). Effects of grouping and attention on the perception of causality. Perception & Psychophysics, 66(6), 926 - 942.

Scholl, B. J., & Nakayama, K. (2002). Causal capture: Contextual effects on the perception of collision events. Psychological Science, 13(6), 493 - 498.

Scholl, B. J., & Tremoulet, P. (2000). Perceptual causality and animacy. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4(8), 299 - 309.

Statistical Learning  
We typically think of perception as the recovery of increasingly rich information about individual objects, but there are also massive amounts of information about relations between objects in space and time. Recent studies of visual statistical learning (VSL) have suggested that subtle statistical regularities can be extracted from temporal sequences of perceptual input, without observers even being consciously aware that such information exists. This learning appears to be largely automatic, occurring unintentionally even for temporal sequences of nonsense items that appear to be randomly ordered. We have been exploring the underlying nature of VSL, determining (1) the automaticity of VSL; (2) the units over which it operates; (3) the nature of the mental representations that are stored as a result of VSL; (4) the neural bases of VSL; (5) the influence of VSL on other aspects of perception; and (6) how VSL is effectively turned on and off by changing statistical patterns in the world.
Sample Papers

Turk-Browne, N. B., Scholl, B. J., Johnson, M. K., & Chun, M. M. (under review). Statistical learning triggers implicit perceptual anticipation. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Scholl, B. J., & Turk-Browne, N. B. (in press). Statistical learning. In B. Goldstein (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Perception. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications

Turk-Browne, N. B., Scholl, B. J., Chun, M. M., & Johnson, M. K. (in press). Neural evidence of statistical learning: Efficient detection of visual regularities without awareness. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

Turk-Browne, N. B., & Scholl, B. J. (2009). Flexible visual statistical learning: Transfer across space and time. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 35(1), 195 - 202.

Turk-Browne, N. B., Isola, P. J., Scholl, B. J., & Treat, T. A. (2008). Multidimensional visual statistical learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 34(2), 399 - 407.

Fiser, J., Scholl, B. J., & Aslin, R. N. (2007). Perceived object trajectories during occlusion constrain visual statistical learning. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 14(1), 173 - 178.

Junge, J. A., Scholl, B. J., & Chun, M. M. (2007). How is spatial context learning integrated over time?: A primacy effect in contextual cueing. Visual Cognition, 15(1), 1 - 11.

Turk-Browne, N. B., Junge, J. A., & Scholl, B. J. (2005). The automaticity of visual statistical learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 134(4), 552 - 564.

Endress, A. D., Scholl, B. J., & Mehler, J. (2005). The role of salience in the extraction of algebraic rules. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 134(3), 406 - 419.

Other Active Research Interests  
Our laboratory also maintains several other active research interests, including cognitive development and 'theory of mind', modularity and innateness, subjective time dilation, perceptual averaging, Bayesian models of perception, the efficient communication of visual information, visual processing in autism spectrum disorder, and the foundations of cognitive science. We are particularly interested in the questions of (1) how perception can be distinguished from cognition, and (2) how cognitive science succeeds as a coherent, unified discipline.
Sample Papers

Albrecht, A. R., & Scholl, B. J. (in press). Perceptually averaging in a continuous visual world: Extracting statistical summary representations over time. Psychological Science.

New, J. J., Schultz, R. T., Wolf, J., Niehaus, J. L., Klin, A., German, T. C., & Scholl, B. J. (in press). The scope of social attention deficits in autism: Prioritized orienting to people and animals in static natural scenes. Neuropsychologia.

New, J. J., & Scholl, B. J. (2009). Subjective time dilation: Spatially local, object-based, or a global visual experience? Journal of Vision, 9(2):4, 1 - 11, http://journalofvision.org/9/2/4/.

Turk-Browne, N. B., Scholl, B. J., & Chun, M. M. (2008). Babies and brains: Habituation in infant cognition and functional neuroimaging. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2, Article 16

Scholl, B. J. (2005). Innateness and (Bayesian) visual perception: Reconciling nativism and development. In P. Carruthers, S. Laurence, & S. Stich (Eds.), The innate mind: Structure and contents (pp. 34 - 52). Oxford University Press.

Scholl, B. J. (2004). Can infants' object concepts be trained? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8(2), 49 - 51.

Scholl, B. J., & Leslie, A. M. (2001). Minds, modules, and meta-analysis. Child Development, 72(3), 696 - 701.

Scholl, B. J., & Leslie, A. M. (1999). Modularity, development, and 'Theory of Mind'. Mind & Language, 14(1), 131 - 153.