Karla K. Evans

Curriculum Vitae - Karla K. Evans

Karla K. Evans

Personal Information

Department of Psychology

Princeton University

Princeton , NJ 08540

Tel: (609) 258-5456

E-mail: kevans@princeton.edu

EDUCATION

(expected) June 2007

Ph.D., Department of Psychology, Princeton University

Advisors: Anne Treisman & James Haxby

2004

M.A., Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ

1998

B.S. of Experimental Psychology, Department of Psychology, Trieste University, Trieste, Italy

BRIEF SUMMARY OF RESEARCH

2004 - present

Crossmodal Binding of Audio-Visual Correspondent Features. The goal of these studies was to investigate the conditions under which there is crossmodal binding of non-speech auditory and visual stimuli and how and where it is realized physiologically.
Findings:
The pitch of a sound has cross-modal correspondence with both the location and the size of a visual object that might provide a basis for their integration.
I have used fMRI to localize the integration process and EEG to define neurophysiologic correlates of the process.

2003 – present

Perception of natural scenes. In this group of studies I focused on the question of what information we can get from a natural scene before focusing attention on the objects it contains.
Findings:
Object detection in natural scenes could reflect priming from disjunctive sets of complex features without binding.
There are limits to the number or the variety of categories that can be simultaneously identified and identification of an object in a natural scene requires attention.

2002 - 2003

Effects of advance information in visual search. The goal was to determine what attributes of object structure facilitate subsequent allocation of focused attention and aid binding.
Findings:
Advanced information that is well organized into homogeneous pairs increases the accuracy of responses and reduces false positives.
Additional structure contributed by lines linking paired elements seems to hinder the detection of a target in heterogeneous pair organization by increasing the rate of within-object illusory conjunctions.

2002 – 2004

In two fMRI experiments, we explored whether affective person knowledge extracted from minimal information is spontaneously retrieved in face perception.

Findings:

Faces associated with negative personality traits evoked enhanced responses in both perceptual and social cognition systems.
In contrast to this valence-based response, the response of emotion systems was specific to the trait inference.
The spontaneous retrieval of person knowledge was dependent on explicit memory in social cognition systems but not in perceptual and emotion systems.

2000 - 2004

Cortical representation of space around the blind spot.

Finding:

Cortical distances between activations to the two wedges were equally large for the blind spot eye and fellow eye in both areas V1 and V2/V3. Thus remapping appears unlikely to account for perceptual filling-in at an early cortical level.

1996 - 1998

Non-linear dynamics of acoustic streaming
Finding:
Development of a non-linear model that explains all states of acoustic streaming

SKILLS AND FIELD OF EXPERTISE

MATLAB Programming

E-Prime

FMRI and fMRI Data Analysis

Retinotopic Mapping

Statistics and SPSS

Stereoscope Design

EEG and Basic ERP Source Localization

TMS

EMPLOYMENT AND TEACHING

2002 – present

PSY 255 Cognitive Psychology

Assistant Instructor with Dr. Daniel Oshersen

Spring 2006

Research Assistant & Assistant Instructor, Department of Psychology, Princeton University

2004 Fall

Research Assistant for Dr. Anne Treisman

2004 Spring, 2005

PSY 101 Introduction to Psychology

Head Assistant Instructor with Dr. Joel Cooper

2003 Fall

PSY 101 Introduction to Psychology

Head Assistant Instructor with Dr. Sam Glucksberg

2000 – 2002

Research Assistant for Dr. Frank Tong, Department of Psychology, Princeton University

1998-2000

School counselor and professor of Psychology, Italian Minority High School Dante Allegieri, Izola, Slovenia

HONORS AND AWARDS

1994 - 1998

Fellowship of the Open Society Fund

2002 - 2003

Science/Engineering Fellowship, Princeton University

MEMBERSHIP AND PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS

Cognitive Neuroscience Society

New York Academy of Sciences

Vision Science Society

Society for Neuroscience

Advancing Science, Serving Society (AAAS)

SUMMER SCHOOL/WORKSHOP TRAINING

Summer Institute in Cognitive neuroscience, Dartmouth College, 2005

EEG workshop, Center of the Study of Brain, Mind and Behavior, 2004

TMS workshop, Center of the Study of Brain, Mind and Behavior, 2003

Graduate Statistics workshop

By Charles M. Judd ( University of Colorado Boulder), 2003

OTHER EXPERIENCES

Member of the Colloquium Committee at Princeton University

Member of the Organizing Committee for the Graduate Research Symposium, Princeton University

Leader of the Department Senior Thesis Writing Group

PUBLICATIONS

Evans K.K. & Treisman A., (2005) Perception of objects in natural scenes; is it really attention-free? Journal of Experimental Psychology; Human Perception and Performance, 31, 6, 1476-1492

Awater H., Kerlin J. R., Evans K.K. & Tong F. (2005) Cortical representation of space around the blind spot. Journal of Neurophysiology, 94, 3314-3324

Todorov, A., Gobbini, M.I., Evans, K. K., Haxby, J.V. (under review) Spontaneous Retrieval of Affective Person Knowledge in Face Perception.

CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS AND ABSTRACTS

Evans, K., Todorov, A., Gobbini, M. Ida, & Haxby, J. V. (2003, September).

Neural mechanisms of person perception: Spontaneous retrieval of prior evaluative inferences. ; Poster session presented at the Symposium of Multidisciplinary approach to the Science of Face Perception, Princeton, NJ.

Evans, K., Todorov, A., Gobbini, M. Ida, & Haxby, J. V. (2004, April).

Rapid Specific Categorization of Faces Triggered by Prior Evaluative Inferences. Poster session presented at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society conference, San Francisco, CA.

Evans, K. & Treisman, A. (2004, May) Perception of natural scenes; is it really attention-free? Talk presented at the Vision Science Society conference, Sarasota, FL.

Evans, K. & Treisman, A. (2004, November) Perception of natural scenes; is it really attention-free? Talk presented at the Object Perception, Attention and Memory conference, Minneapolis, MI.

Evans, K. & Treisman, A. (2005, May) Crossmodal Binding of Audio-Visual Correspondent Features. Poster presented at the Vision Science Society conference, Sarasota, FL.

Evans, K (2005, October) Neural Correlates of Crossmodal Binding of Correspondent Audio-Visual Features, Talk presented at Penn-Princeton Graduate Student Symposium in Cognitive Neuroscience, Princeton New Jersey.

Evans, K (2006, February) Perception of Objects in Natural Scenes and the Role of Attention, Talk presented as invited speaker at Scene Understanding Symposium 2006, MIT, Boston, Massachusetts.

Evans, K., Treisman, A., & Haxby, J. V. (2006, April) Neural Correlates of Crossmodal Interactions Between Corresponding Auditory and Visual Features. Poster session presentation at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society conference, San Francisco, CA.

Evans, K. & Treisman, A. (2006, May) Role of Attention in Visual-Auditory Crossmodal Interactions. Talk presented at the Vision Science Society conference, Sarasota, FL.