Isabel Gauthier

I have the privilege to head the Object Perception Lab in the Psychology Department at Vanderbilt University.

I think of myself as a cognitive neuroscientist – I am interested in how we perceive, recognize and categorize objects (such as faces, letters, cars and novel objects such as Greebles). My laboratory is interested in the structure of individual differences in perceptual abilities. We also seek to understand perceptual expertise – defined as becoming very good at making perceptual judgments that started off as being very difficult – and investigates the behavioral and neural changes that occur during its acquisition.