Doctoral Researcher Brad Mattan Invited to International workshop
Doctoral Researcher, Brad Mattan has been invited to participate in an international workshop for advanced PhD students and post-docs in social neuroscience at the Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati in Trieste, Italy from July 15-28th (http://www.sissa.it/about/news/1044-scone)
About Brad’s research
For his PhD, Brad (and colleagues) focused on two lines of research. Building on his previous research and coursework on face-processing, he analyzed an fMRI-Adaptation study on the Cross Race Effect (CRE). Individual differences in CRE resulted in important differences in the core face network. At the Summer School, he would enjoy the opportunity to contribute to discussions on how research on the CRE can inform current models of category and identity representation in face perception.
A second line of research involves what is known as self tagging (see Sui, He, & Humphreys, 2012). On the basis of evidence for more efficient processing of novel self-associated stimuli, Brad proposed that novel self-associations may also affect higher-order behaviors such as perspective taking. To that end, he adapted an existing visual perspective-taking paradigm (Samson, Apperly, Braithwaite, Andrews, & Bodley Scott, 2010) to include a self-associated and an other-associated avatar. Results revealed more efficient perspective-taking for the self relative to other avatar while replicating previous findings for congruent trials. Though further research is required to pinpoint the mechanisms underlying this "third-person" self advantage, Brad suspects there may be influence from motivation.