About
Robert Kentridge’s research examines the relationship between visual attention and visual consciousness and the perception of the material properties of objects.
In 1999, he discovered that prompting neurological patients to attend to areas in which they were blind as a consequence of their brain damage could improve their ability to respond accurately to stimuli of which they were unaware. His recent work has shown that the perception of colour as a material property occurs independently of colour experience – something at odds with long-held philosophical views about colour perception.
Relevant Publications
Norman, L.J., Akins, K., Heywood, C.A., & Kentridge, R.W. (2014). Colour constancy for an unseen surface. Current Biology, 24(23), 2822–2826. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.10.009
Norman, L.J., Heywood, C.A. & Kentridge, R.W. (2013). Object-based attention without awareness. Psychological Science, 24(6), 836–43. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612461449
Cavina-Pratesi, C., Kentridge, R.W., Heywood, C.A., & Milner, A.D. (2010). Separate channels for processing form, texture, and color: Evidence from fMRI adaptation and visual object agnosia. Cerebral Cortex, 20(10), 2319–2332. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhp298
Kentridge, R.W., Nijboer, T.C.W., & Heywood, C.A. (2008). Attended but unseen: Visual attention is not sufficient for visual awareness. Neuropsychologia, 46(3), 864–69. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2007.11.036
Kentridge, R.W., Heywood, C.A., & Weiskrantz, L. (1999). Attention without awareness in blindsight. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London (Series B), 266(1430), 1805–1811. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.1999.0850