Dr Andrew Edmonds

I am a member of the British Psychological Society (BPS), and also of the BPS Cognitive Section.

• PhD Psychology (Cardiff University)

• MSc Psychological Research Methods (University of Stirling)

• BSc (Hons) Psychology (Manchester Metropolitan University)

The process of recognising the faces of people we know has been extensively studied and is now well understood, but a previously neglected question was that of how we detect a face in the visual field, or simply decide that what we are seeing is a face, rather than a visually similar object. My work at Cardiff represented the first extensive investigation into this question, and showed how face detection is guided by relevant information in the visual scene, the importance of the eyes over other facial features, and the detrimental effects of luminance reversal and blurring upon this process (Lewis & Edmonds, 2003). We confirmed this detrimental effect of luminance reversal in a series of visual search tasks, which showed that luminance may be important for the pre-attentive stages of face detection (Lewis & Edmonds, 2005). More recently I have become interested in another question which remains poorly understood; we encounter many faces every day, and recognise the faces of people we know easily, through changes in viewpoint, expression and lighting (see Johnston & Edmonds, 2009), but how do we learn these new faces, and what processes are involved in an unfamiliar face becoming familiar to us over time?

Undergraduate

• PSYC50672 Cognitive & Biological Determinants of Behaviour

• PSYC50684 Further Research Methods

• PSYC50680 Research Assistantship

• PSYC40641 Foundations of Psychology

• PSYC40642 Perspectives in Psychology

Book chapters

Baguley, T. & Edmonds, A. J. (2010). Memory. Book chapter in Banyard, P., Davies, M. N. O., Norman, C. & Winder, B. (Eds) Essential Psychology: A Concise Introduction. Sage, London.

Papers

Baguley, T., Edmonds, A. J., & Lansdale, M. (in preparation). Semantic association and distinctiveness of cues: examining the exclusivity effect in location memory

Edmonds, A. J., Baguley, T., & Lansdale, M. (in preparation). Spot the ball: an effect of instruction on the exclusivity effect in location memory?

Edmonds, A.J., Johnston, R.A., & Clutterbuck, R. (2013). The influence of familiarity on sex decisions. Visual Cognition, 21, 853-875.

Johnston, R. A. & Edmonds, A. J. (2009). Familiar and unfamiliar face recognition. A review. Memory, 17, 577-596

Edmonds, A. J. & Lewis, M. B. (2007). The effect of rotation on configural encoding in a face matching task. Perception, 36, 446-460

Lewis, M. B. & Edmonds, A. J. (2005). Searching for faces in scrambled scenes. Visual Cognition, 12, 1309-1336

Lewis, M. B. & Edmonds, A. J. (2003). Face detection: Mapping human performance. Perception, 32, 903-920

Posters

Edmonds., A. J., & Johnston, R.A. (2009). An own-race bias in face detection? Poster presentation, Experimental Psychological Society, University College London.

Edmonds., A. J., & Lewis, M.B. (2004). Exploring the effects of face rotation. Poster presentation, British Psychological Society Cognitive Section Conference, University of Leeds.

Lewis, M.B. & Edmonds, A.J. (2002). Localisation and detection of faces in naturalistic scenes. Poster presentation, European Conference on Visual Perception, University of Glasgow.

Conference talks

Edmonds, A. J., Baguley, T., Lansdale, M. (2011). Semantic association and distinctiveness of cues: examining the exclusivity effect in location memory. British Psychological Society Cognitive Section Conference, Keele University.

Edmonds, A. J., Baguley, T., Lansdale, M., & Pettit, A. (2010). Spot the ball: Exploring the exclusivity effect in location memory. British Psychological Society Cognitive Section Conference, Cardiff University.

Edmonds., A. J., & Lewis, M.B. (2005). The effect of rotation on configural encoding in face perception. British Psychological Society Cognitive Section Conference, University of Leeds.