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Edwin Burns

@edwinburns.bsky.social
338 followers 883 following 53 posts

Researcher and Senior Lecturer at Swansea University. Interested in prosopagnosia, aphantasia, autism, SDAM and other neurodivergent populations. Contact me here through a DM

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Reposted by Edwin Burns
Dan Carragher @danieljcarragher.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
We have a competitive funded PhD scholarship on offer at Adelaide University "When to Trust the Machine: Cognitive Drivers of Reliance on Automation in Security-Critical Decision-Making". Full details and how to apply: adelaide.edu.au/research/res... (Search "SRTSR0506"). Summary below. Due Sept 30!
adelaide.edu.au
Find a research project | Adelaide University
Explore cutting-edge research projects at Adelaide University. Join our community of world-leading researchers and contribute to impactful discoveries.
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Dr James Dunn @jamesdunn.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
We're looking for a Postdoc to join the Face Lab at UNSW Psychology! Ideal: someone with strong ML/deep learning expertise and an interest in how people perceive AI-generated faces. 📍 Sydney | Full-time, 18 months 📅 Apply by 3 Sept 2026 🔗 external-careers.jobs.unsw.edu.au/cw/en/job/54...
external-careers.jobs.unsw.edu.au
Research Associate - UNSW Face Research Lab
he Research Associate works within the UNSW Face Research lab located in the School of Psychology at UNSW and is responsible for taking a leading role in a collaborative ARC Discovery Project aiming t...
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Edwin Burns @edwinburns.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Are face recognition tests failing to identify difficulties in acquired prosopagnosia (face blindness)? 🧠👀 Our new study shows 50% of self-IDed cases fail to meet widely used criteria. We advocate for a more inclusive approach: www.mdpi.com/2076-3425/16... #Neuroscience #Prosopagnosia Thread 👉
mdpi.com
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Edwin Burns @edwinburns.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Are face recognition tests failing to identify difficulties in acquired prosopagnosia (face blindness)? 🧠👀 Our new study shows 50% of self-IDed cases fail to meet widely used criteria. We advocate for a more inclusive approach: www.mdpi.com/2076-3425/16... #Neuroscience #Prosopagnosia Thread 👉
mdpi.com
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The vOICe vision BCI 🧠🇪🇺 @seeingwithsound.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
(LinkedIn) In a review of 55 cases of cortical blindness, vivid imagery was repeatedly preserved despite complete or near-complete bilateral V1 damage. When imagery was impaired, lesions extended beyond V1, often into ventral temporal cortex. www.linkedin.com/posts/paolo-...
Schematic representation of the double dissociation between cortical blindness and neurological aphantasia. Left: bilateral V1 damage causes cortical blindness but can spare visual mental imagery when ventral temporal regions, including the fusiform imagery node (FIN), and frontoparietal networks remain intact. Center: schematic summary of the proposed dissociation between the impaired visualperception pathway, dependent on V1, and the preserved imagery pathway, supported by interactions between ventral temporal cortex/FIN and frontoparietal networks. Right: conversely, neurological aphantasia can follow lesion or disconnection of the FIN/ventral temporal cortex despite preserved V1 and visual perception. Together, these patterns argue against an obligatory role of V1 in visual mental imagery and support a heterarchical network model centered on ventral temporal and frontoparietal systems.
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Edwin Burns @edwinburns.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
I'm pleased to welcome Emmanuel Ale as a new PhD researcher at @swanseauni.bsky.social. We'll be researching severely deficient autobiographical memory (SDAM), so please send me message via the link below if you have SDAM and want to help with our work: swanseachhs.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...
swanseachhs.eu.qualtrics.com
Qualtrics Survey | Qualtrics Experience Management
The most powerful, simple and trusted way to gather experience data. Start your journey to experience management and try a free account today.
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Jianghao Liu @jianghaoliu.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
🔊 New preprint 🧠 for the first time we show congenital #aphantasia has physical brain anatomy alterations. Surprisingly, they have structurally intact #visual pathways. Structural alterations instead found in the fronto-temporal and cingulate systems. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧵
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Edwin Burns @edwinburns.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
Looking forward to Themis Karaminis @themiskaraminis.bsky.social as today's guest speaker in the Swansea University Research Seminar series. He's going to be talking about how autism is portrayed in the British press. You can join here swanseauniversity.zoom.us/j/9288183180...
swanseauniversity.zoom.us
Join our Cloud HD Video Meeting
Zoom is the leader in modern enterprise cloud communications.
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Michelle Dawson @autismcrisis.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
Autistics (vs non-autistics) "are less likely to make errors in self-assessments of their cognitive performance"? onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... "findings provide valuable insights into both the cognitive strengths of autistic individuals and the mechanisms underlying metacognitive biases"
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Reduced Susceptibility to the Dunning–Kruger Effect in Autistic Employees
Evidence indicates that autistic individuals are less susceptible to social influence and cognitive biases than non-autistic individuals. However, no studies have been conducted on the Dunning–Kruger....
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Sam Schwarzkopf @sampendu.bsky.social · 20/10/2025
SAVE THE DATE! Australasian Society for Experimental Psychology (EPC) & Asia-Pacific Conference on Vision (APCV) Joint Meeting from 1-4 July at the University of Auckland, NZ. #PsychSciSky #VisionScience #neuroskyence More information to follow! visualneuroscience.auckland.ac.nz/epc-apcv-2026/
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Kat Chapman @katrionachapman.bsky.social · 10/11/2025
A comic I made when I realised I have aphantasia, and lots of things seemed to make sense suddenly
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Edwin Burns @edwinburns.bsky.social · 29/10/2025
Interesting qualitative paper shows people with aphantasia report troubles with faces, autobiographical memory and navigation. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... Aligns with a preprint we released this year that shows faceblindness is a common complaint amongst this group. tinyurl.com/efkshpt3
tandfonline.com
“I just see nothing. It’s literally just black”: a qualitative investigation into congenital aphantasia
Aphantasia, the inability to form voluntary sensory imagery, is a newly emerging field. While quantitative evidence regarding the prevalence and profile of aphantasia is increasing, few studies hav...
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Jackie Andrade @profjackieandrade.bsky.social · 18/09/2025
40 minutes of functional imagery training reduced anxiety and motivated students with high anxiety achieve their goals. Here's the evidence: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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Edwin Burns @edwinburns.bsky.social · 02/10/2025
Paper suggests multilingualism may improve mental imagery. emerginginvestigators.org/articles/24-... Given multilinguals also exhibit improvements in face recognition (e.g., Burns et al., 2019), possibly by enhancing domain general attention, I wonder if that is responsible here too? #aphantasia
emerginginvestigators.org
The relationship between multilingualism and visual imagery: Investigating aphantasia using the VVIQ | Journal of Emerging Investigators
JEI is a scientific journal for middle and high school scientists
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Brent Pitchford @bpitchford.bsky.social · 23/09/2025
Excited to share a new article from @icevislab.bsky.social! In a sample of over 60 people, we found distinct neural differences underlying object and face recognition in dyslexia. These findings highlight crucial domain-general visual processes that may contribute to word reading challenges.
sciencedirect.com
Distinct neural processing underlying visual face and object perception in dyslexia
Developmental dyslexia is a disorder marked by difficulties in reading, spelling, and connecting sounds to written language. The high-level visual dys…
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Edwin Burns @edwinburns.bsky.social · 15/09/2025
Feel like this has just captured the attachment style of respondents.
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Edwin Burns @edwinburns.bsky.social · 11/09/2025
Are you, or someone you know, looking for a funded PhD position? I'm interested in supervising PhDs on topics related to my work, e.g., emerging neurodivergent populations, prosopagnosia, validity of psychological science, or political violence. Get in touch if interested: e.j.burns@swansea.ac.uk
wgsss.ac.uk
Student-led General Competition – Welsh Graduate School for the Social Sciences
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Edwin Burns @edwinburns.bsky.social · 11/09/2025
Are you, or someone you know, looking for a funded PhD position? I'm interested in supervising PhDs on topics related to my work, e.g., emerging neurodivergent populations, prosopagnosia, validity of psychological science, or political violence. Get in touch if interested: e.j.burns@swansea.ac.uk
wgsss.ac.uk
Student-led General Competition – Welsh Graduate School for the Social Sciences
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andymckilliam.bsky.social @andymckilliam.bsky.social · 04/09/2025
New paper with @ManuKirberg 💭 Is “unconscious mental imagery” real? The evidence is weaker than it seems. We explain why—and how to move the debate forward. 🔗 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Aphantasia and the unconscious imagery hypothesis
Until recently, mental imagery has largely been regarded as an exclusively conscious phenomenon. However, recent empirical results suggest that mental…
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Edwin Burns @edwinburns.bsky.social · 17/08/2025
Teilo the corgi out for brunch in Swansea.
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Edwin Burns @edwinburns.bsky.social · 07/08/2025
A striking personal account of someone's experiences with severely deficient autobiographical memory. While memory conditions rightly garner considerable research interest, the paucity of papers on SDAM is notable, despite difficulties associated with its presence. substack.com/inbox/post/1...
substack.com
The Life I Can’t Remember
I was born in the 1940s, in the last days of Empire.
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JASP @jaspstats.bsky.social · 02/08/2025
Just out: JASP 0.95! With sandboxing, a new plot builder, ESCI, and more. jasp-stats.org/2025/08/02/i...
jasp-stats.org
Introducing JASP 0.95: Sandboxing, Plotbuilder, ESCI, Parametric Survival Analysis, and Much More - JASP - Free and User-Friendly Statistical Software
We are proud to announce that JASP 0.95 has been released and is now available on our download page. JASP 0.95 presents a big step forwards, as you can see from the full release notes. Some of the hig...
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Edwin Burns @edwinburns.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
Interesting personal account of what living with prosopagnosia is like.
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Nadine Dijkstra @nadinedijkstra.bsky.social · 23/07/2025
After five years of confused staring at Greek letters, it is my absolute pleasure to finally share our (with @smfleming.bsky.social) computational model of mental imagery and reality monitoring: Perceptual Reality Monitoring as Higher-Order inference on Sensory Precision ✨ osf.io/preprints/ps...
osf.io
OSF
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Edwin Burns @edwinburns.bsky.social · 20/07/2025
Someone with aphantasia talks movingly about how difficult it is being in a Big Brother House with no mental imagery of loved ones. Mentions she does not know what family members look like, but some aphants online say they do know. So why do these differences exist? Thread 1/2 #bb27 #aphantasia
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Emiko J Muraki @emij.bsky.social · 17/07/2025
🧠 Just out with @pennypexman.bsky.social “Simulation in the ‘Blind’ Mind”. We found that even without conscious imagery (aphantasia), people still simulate sensorimotor info when processing language. 💭🔤
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Michelle Dawson @autismcrisis.bsky.social · 13/07/2025
"when primary care clinicians classified a child as having definite autism... they were 100% accurate, but only 57% accurate when they indicated a child definitely did not have autism"? journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... diagnostic impressions of toddlers referred for developmental concerns
journals.sagepub.com
Short report: Autism diagnostic impressions in young children formed by primary care clinicians and through telemedicine expert assessments - Andrea Trubanova Wieckowski, Ashley de Marchena, Alexia F ...
Formal autism diagnosis is often critical for children to access early, autism-specific services and supports. However, barriers to traditional in-person evalua...
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Edwin Burns @edwinburns.bsky.social · 10/07/2025
New study suggests aphantasia may be associated with qualitative differences in early visual cortex responses. Suggest there's something unique about how aphantasics' brains respond, and retrieve information, when attempting to generate imagery. www.cell.com/current-biol...
cell.com
Imageless imagery in aphantasia revealed by early visual cortex decoding
Chang et al. report that during imagery attempts, those with validated aphantasia have decreased perceptual BOLD response and higher ipsilateral imagery response. Imagery content could be decoded usin...
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Bence Nanay @bencenanay.bsky.social · 25/06/2025
My first publication in Trends in Cognitive Sciences: Varieties of aphantasia www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Varieties of aphantasia
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Dr Reshanne Reeder @kerblooee.bsky.social · 21/06/2025
What a cool preprint! From @gaenplancher.bsky.social Different subtypes of aphantasia show different performance on spatial, verbal & perceptual tasks: www.researchgate.net/publication/...
researchgate.net
(PDF) Uncovering spatial and verbal cognitive profiles in aphantasia through unsupervised clustering
PDF | Mental images are a ubiquitous phenomenon for many people. In recent years, attention has focused on a condition defined by the absence of mental... | Find, read and cite all the research you ne...
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Edwin Burns @edwinburns.bsky.social · 18/06/2025
New preprint from our lab! 🚨 Developmental aphantasia is characterised by a lifelong absence of mental imagery. In our preprint on PsyArXiv below, we ask is aphantasia a neurodevelopmental condition, like autism, ADHD, and dyslexia? But how would you show this? Thread 👇
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Edwin Burns @edwinburns.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
Developmental coordination disorder is a lifelong condition characterised by problems with movement. It has been associated with social problems, which can contribute to DCD's diagnostic process. However, our recent research shows these issues could be due to developmental prosopagnosia (thread)
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Edwin Burns @edwinburns.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
Touched that I was nominated for a teaching excellence award in my first full year at Swansea University. I would like to thank the students who took the time to nominate me for the award, and also my new colleagues at Swansea whose training and support really sets you up to succeed. 🥳
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samuel mehr @mehr.nz · 13/06/2025
the psych department at Waikato (in Hamilton, New Zealand) is recruiting at the junior level, in developmental and/or perception/cognition (in NZ 'lecturer' means 'assistant professor', and is a permanent role)
timeshighereducation.com
Lecturer in Psychology - Hamilton, New Zealand job with UNIVERSITY OF WAIKATO | 394487
We are looking for a stellar individual who will bring professional and academic experience to facilitate our portfolio of research ...
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Jianghao Liu @jianghaoliu.bsky.social · 05/06/2025
📢"Aphantasia as a functional disconnection"! in TICS A disconnection between the Fusiform Imagery Node (FIN) & the left PFC may explain retained memory for objects, despite lacking subjective imagery in aphantasics. left PFC, awareness, attention network...🧵 authors.elsevier.com/a/1lCs3_V1r-...
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Edwin Burns @edwinburns.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
We recently published a review paper on the strengths in neurodiverse populations like autism, dyslexia, ADHD and developmental coordination disorder (Maw etc al., 2024, Neuropsychologia). This week Prof Amanda Kirby wrote a nice piece on it in her Neurodiversity newsletter. Link 👇 lnkd.in/eannVxKF
lnkd.in
Neurodiversity 101:
Superpowers or not..
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Jess Taubert @jesstaubert.bsky.social · 12/05/2025
🧠📣 New deadline! Submissions to our Scientific Reports special issue on Face Recognition & Prosopagnosia are now open until July 26, 2025. We're looking for cutting-edge work on the neural and cognitive basis of face perception—both typical and impaired. 🔗 www.nature.com/collections/...
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Dr Jud Lowes @judlowes.bsky.social · 01/05/2025
New paper out. We asked 29 people with developmental #prosopagnosia (face blindness) what it was like living with the condition and also analysed their objective scores on lab tests of face recognition dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...
A group of researchers standing outside a building. At first glance they look like different people because they have distinctive hairstyles and are wearing different clothes. But their faces are in fact identical and were generated by averaging many faces. This image illustrates how some people with face blindness (prosopagnosia) find it very difficult to tell faces apart despite seeing them clearly.
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ECVP 2026 @ecvp.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
🐣 Due to the Easter holidays and the high volume of late registrations, we have decided to extend the deadline one final time: Early bird registration & abstract submission 👉 April 23 at 11:59 PM This is the final extension — no further deadlines will follow ecvp2025.uni-mainz.de/submissions
ecvp2025.uni-mainz.de
Submissions – 47th ECVP 2025 Mainz
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Tom Stafford @tomstafford.mastodon.online.ap.brid.gy · 04/04/2025
Statistics with JASP: First Steps for Psychology Students by Rebecca Denniss and Stanislava Naneva sheffield.pressbooks.pub/help4jasp An open (free!) textbook guide to using the open source (free!) statistics software package #OEM #Statistics #Psychology #JASP
Book cover: doodles of graphs and arrows
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Edwin Burns @edwinburns.bsky.social · 14/04/2025
Interesting preprint shows aphantasia is associated with a 20% increase in time it takes to read text. Suggests aphantasic students would benefit from similar reasonable adjustments in exam settings (e.g., extra time) as provided to other neurodevelopmental populations. osf.io/preprints/ps...
osf.io
OSF
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Australasian Society for Experimental Psychology @expsyanz.bsky.social · 11/04/2025
Only a few more days until the submission deadline—15th April! The conference is shaping up to be something special. Come join us at UNSW Sydney from 17-20 June! Conference website: conference.unsw.edu.au/en/epc-apcv-...
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Marie Martel @mariefmartel.bsky.social · 20/03/2025
📢 #PhD available Are you passionate about #robotics, neural control of movement and #dyspraxia / #DCD? Apply now to this funded position at the University of Surrey. Co-supervised by me! www.surrey.ac.uk/fees-and-fun...
surrey.ac.uk
Neuro-muscular state estimation and control for physical human-robot interaction | University of Surrey
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Edwin Burns @edwinburns.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
Was great presenting our work that highlights some of the challenges facing people with aphantasia to the IRCA yesterday. In the talk, I argued that aphantasia deserves the right to be classified as a neurodevelopmental condition, much like autism, prosopagnosia and ADHD.
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Edwin Burns @edwinburns.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
Augmented reality may offer people with prosopagnosia a hope of alleviating their problems with faces. New research from Taiwan. www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/14...
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Prof. Ian Walker @ianwalker.bsky.social · 19/03/2025
PhD position studying food psychology at Swansea University! This is a great opportunity www.linkedin.com/posts/alecia...
linkedin.com
📣 I have a fully funded PhD studentship available in the School of… | Alecia Cousins
📣 I have a fully funded PhD studentship available in the School of Psychology with Dr Hayley Young and Dr Menna Brown (of School of Health and Social Care)…
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Martyn Quigley (martynquigley.co.uk) @martynquigley.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
Fantastic 𝗳𝘂𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗳𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗱 PhD studentship opportunity at Swansea University with potential for significant impact on such an important topic: food insecurity, foodbank service use and mental health! A great team to work with too! Further details below: www.swansea.ac.uk/postgraduate...
swansea.ac.uk
Psychology: Fully Funded PhD Studentship in Closing the gap in access to fresh food produce to improve the mental health of food bank service users (RS793) - Swansea UniversityMenu
We offer a wide range of funded and fully funded research scholarships in all subject areas. Explore your options and apply now.
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Mark Rubin @markrubin.bsky.social · 15/09/2024
List of psychology-related starter packs! #Psychology #AcademicSky 🧪 🧵 Cross-Cultural Psychology and Quant Anthropology by @drboothroyd.bsky.social
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The British Neuropsychological Society @britishneuropsych.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
The BNS is delighted to present this first look at the 🧠 SPRING MEETING 🧠 2025 programme, and announce we've an 🚨 EXTENDED ABSTRACT DEADLINE (Feb 17th)! 🚨 All this great science for just a £15 registration fee. Or for free if your a BNS member. Visit www.the-BNS.org. #neuroskyence #psychscisky
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Anna Bobak @akbobak.bsky.social · 20/11/2024
'Automated face recognition assists with low‐prevalence face identity mismatches but can bias users'- our new paper funded by the EPS Graduate Bursary to Melina Mueller and Anna Bobak is now online! @rjwatt42.bsky.social @pjbhancock.bsky.social bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
<em>British Journal of Psychology</em> | Wiley Online Library
We present three experiments to study the effects of giving information about the decision of an automated face recognition (AFR) system to participants attempting to decide whether two face images s....
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