Department of Psychology

Biography:

Keywords: auditory cognition, multi-modal perception and memory, environmental repetition and change, psychology and art

“Don’t you wonder sometimes / ‘Bout sound and vision?”

I received my doctorate in Auditory Cognition at the University of York, UK, and augmented the behavioral techniques I acquired there with event-related potential (ERP) methodology as a result of a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Rotman Research Institute, Toronto. I took up my first faculty position back in the UK at the University of Sussex and am happy to return to Toronto to join the staff at Ryerson in August 2008.

My core research interests centre around the perception and representation of sound: how we end up with very complex acoustic phenomenology from fairly humble beginnings at the ear, how we organise our memories for sound, and how the auditory system competes and collaborates with other sensory systems. My research has recently expanded into examining the links between Art and Psychology and I have recently completed work looking at iteratively copied drawing with UK artist Rachel Cohen, in addition to examining some of the interface characteristics of games such as RockBand.

My teaching interests stem predominately from co-authoring a contemporary (and I hope reasonably priced) undergraduate textbook on Cognitive Psychology, with the second edition underway. Consequently, I am keen to convey the wonders of cognition and perception to anybody willing to listen. So if you’ve ever wondered sometimes how you are able to remember the lyrics of a David Bowie song even though you haven’t heard it for years, or, how a static collection of yellow, blue, red, white and grey squares ends up with the kinetic title of “Broadway Boogie Woogie” then you should definitely stop by for a chat or visit the H.E.A.R. lab website.

Selected Publications:

Dyson, B. J. (2010). "She's a waterfall": Motion after-effect and perceptual design in video games involving virtual musicianship. Perception, 39, 131-132.

Dyson, B. J. & Cohen, R. (2010). Translations: Effects of viewpoint, feature and naming on identifying repeatedly copied drawings. Perception, 39, 157-172.

Quinlan, P. T. & Dyson, B. J. (2008). Cognitive Psychology. Pearson: UK.

Dyson, B. J. & Alain, C. (2008). Is a change as good with a rest? Task dependent effects of inter-trial contingency on concurrent sound segregation. Brain Research, 1189, 135-144.

Dyson, B. J. & Ishfaq, F. (2008). Auditory memory can be object-based. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 15, 409-412.

HOT! Psych Feature:

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