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I have a Visual Perception Lab in the School of Psychology.
You can navigate my pages from the links below and also on the left. Email contact: 
1. Shape perception
I have a long standing interest in shape, including symmetry, contour curvature and part structure
(e.g. Bertamini, Friedenberg & Kubovy, 1997).
To study shape I have made extensive use of a special case of figure-ground, which is that of a visual hole
(e.g. Bertamini, 2006).
I have published a few studies on holes, but the 2006 paper is the one that makes the case most clearly why I think
holes are ideal stimuli to study figure-ground. I also try to debunk some confusing statements in the literature
about holes being treated as figures as far as shape is concerned. Apart from anything else this would be a serious problem
for many studies (some neurophysiological) about border ownership. These are studies that have used holes although sometimes they refer to them as
"windows".
Here are some demos related to work on
holes and completion carried out in collaboration with Johan Hulleman for a special issue of Acta Psychologica
(Bertamini & Hulleman, 2006)
2. Naive physics
At a more cognitive level I am interested in the kind of understanding of the world that we build from our visual experience.
Specifically, I think I started a sub-area of research concerned with intuitive optics, and I came up with the name for
the Venus effect
(Bertamini, Latto & Spooner, 2003).
The work on intuitive optics led to more work on mirrors.
With Rebecca Lawson we have discovered how difficult it is to access information about the projection on a
transparent surface (i.e., a surface perceived as transparent). This is
true even when the surface is in front of the observer.
With Luke Jones we have documented the fact that reflections can affect perception of
size and distance (when no other information is available).
Along with Ivana Bianchi we have studied the perception of the size of one's own head
(which we only know from looking into mirrors) (Bianchi, Savardi &
Bertamini, 2008).
3. Multisensory perception
It is important to study how vision interacts with other senses. I have studied two interesting cases of conflict, one generated
by holding a 3D Necker cube (Bruno, Jacomuzzi, Bertamini & Meyer, 2007) and the other
by holding an Ames' window. More recently, again in collaboration
with Nicola Bruno at the University of Parma, we have started working with the rubber hand illusion. This is a well known phenomenon
that is used to study how the internal representation of the body changes based on multisensory input
(Bruno, & Bertamini, 2010).
4. Evolutionary psychology
Finally, I have a side interest in evolutionary psychology. For instance I studied facial resemblance
using morphs (Bressan, Bertamini, Nalli & Zanutto, 2008).
I have also studied the role of leg length on perception of attractiveness. In the process we have argued for the advantages of using simplified stimuli (stick figures)
in the study of attractiveness (Bertamini & Bennett, 2009).
For a book with Michael Kubovy I carried out a survey of influential papers in Perception, you can see
a summary here
If you want, read my Warning.
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