William Simpson

Dr William Simpson

Job title: Associate Professor (Reader), School of Psychology (Faculty of Science and Technology)
Address: ,
Postal address: B227, 22 Portland Square, Drake Circus,
Plymouth, Devon, PL4 8AA
Telephone: +441752584856
Email: william.simpson@plymouth.ac.uk

Qualifications & background
PhD Psychology University of Toronto

Research interests
My lab studies how human vision works, using direct measurements of brain activity (fNIRS) and psychophysics. Research topics include pattern perception, motion perception, visual reaction time, ideal observer models, perceptual development, and individual differences in vision.

Research page

Grants & contracts
2005-2010 Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (Canada) Research Grant. Noise in the visual system. $100,000 total.

2002 Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (UK) Research Grant. European Conference on Visual Perception. Co-investigator, with P. Mamassian, F. Pollick, & D. Simmons. £16,711 total.

2001-2003 EPSRC Research Grant . Efficiency of human suprathreshold visual detection. £56,135 total.

2000-2002 Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (UK) Research Grant. Dynamics of visual processing of first- and second-order spatial information. Co-investigator, with V. Manahilov. £106,100 total.

Publications

Tucha, L., & Simpson, W. (2011). The role of time on task performance in modifying the effects of gum chewing on attention. Appetite, 56, 299-301.

Tucha, L., Simpson, W., Evans, L., Birrel, L., Sontag, T.A., Lange, K.W., & Tucha, O. (2010). Detrimental effects of gum chewing on vigilance in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Appetite, 55, 679-684.

Northway N., Manahilov V., & Simpson WA. (2010). Coloured filters improve exclusion of perceptual noise in visually symptomatic dyslexics. Journal of Research in Reading, 33, 223-230.

Simpson, W. A., Manahilov, V. & Shahani, U. (2009). Two eyes: sqrt(2) better than one? Acta Psychologica, 131, 93-98.

Mihaylov P., Manahilov V., Simpson W.A., Strang N.C. (2007) Induced internal noise in perceptual artificial scotomas created by surrounding dynamic noise. Vision Research, 47, 1479-1489.

Simpson W.A., Manahilov V. (2006). The two-pulse experiment and cross-correlation. Vision Research, 46, 1178-1179.

Andrews, T. J., Purves, D., Simpson, W. A., & VanRullen, R. (2005). The wagonwheel illusion: Reply to Holcombe et al. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 560-561.

Manahilov V, Simpson WA, & Calvert J. (2005). Why is second-order vision less efficient than first-order vision? Vision Research, 45, 2759-2772.

Calvert, J., Manahilov, V., Simpson, W. A., & Parker, D. M. (2005). Human cortical responses to contrast modulations of visual noise. Vision Research, 45, 2218-2230.

Simpson, W. A., & McFadden, S. M. (2005). Spatial frequency channels derived from individual differences. Vision Research, 45, 2723-2727.

Simpson, W. A., Shahani, U., & Manahilov, V. (2005). Illusory percepts of moving patterns due to discrete temporal sampling, Neuroscience Letters, 375, 23-27.

Manahilov, V., Findlay, K., & Simpson, W. A. (2004). Factors limiting suprathreshold vision measured by a flash-sound simultaneity paradigm. Vision Research, 44, 2577-2585.

Manahilov, V., Calvert, J., & Simpson, W. A. (2003). Temporal properties of the visual responses to luminance and contrast modulated noise. Vision Research, 43, 1855-1867.

Simpson, W. A., Falkenberg, H. K., & Manahilov, V. (2003). Sampling efficiency and internal noise for motion detection, discrimination, and summation. Vision Research, 43, 2125-2132.

Simpson, W. A., Findlay, K., & Manahilov, V. (2003). Efficiency and internal noise for
detection of suprathreshold patterns measured using simple reaction time. Vision Research, 43, 1103-1109.

Braun, W. J., Rousson, V., Simpson, W. A., & Prokop, J. (2003). Parametric modelling of reaction time experiment data. Biometrics, 59, 661-669.

Carney, T., Klein, S. A., Beutter, B., Norcia, A. M., Chen, C., Tyler, C. W., Makous, W., Watson, A. B., Cropper, S. J., Popple, A. V., Robertson, K, Manahilov, V., Simpson W. & Wenzel, K. (2002). Extending the Modelfest image/threshold database into the spatio-temporal domain. Proceedings of the SPIE, Human Vision and Electronic Imaging VII (Ed: B. E. Rogowitz & T. N. Pappas), 4662, 138-148.

Manahilov, V., & Simpson, W. A. (2001). Energy model for contrast detection: Spatial frequency and orientation selectivity in grating summation. Vision Research, 41, 1547-1560.

Simpson, W. A., & Manahilov, V. (2001). Matched filtering in motion detection and discrimination. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 268, 703-709.

Manahilov, V., Simpson, W. A., & McCulloch, D. L. (2001). Spatial summation of peripheral Gabor patches. Journal of the Optical Society of America A, 18, 273-282.

Simpson, W. A., Braun, J., Bargen, C., & Newman, A. (2000). Identification of the eye-brain-hand system with point processes: A new approach to simple reaction time. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 26, 1675-1690.