Professor Jane E. Raymond PhD

School of Psychology
Emeritus Professor of Visual Cognition

Contact details

Telephone: +44 (0)121 414 4912
Email: j.raymond@bham.ac.uk

Address: School of Psychology
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Professor Raymond is a visual perception/cognition specialist with a wide range of interests in how humans use and respond to complex visual information. She led the seminal work on the “Attentional Blink”, a finding that launched intensive interest in labs around the world on how selective attention operates over time. Her work has included studies on visual attention across time and space; how attention interacts with emotional/social responses to visual information, and how learning and reward affects attention and working memory. Recent work has linked the effects of environment (especially air pollution) and systemic inflammation on cognition. As Director of the Visual Experience Laboratory, she uses a range of approaches with a primary emphasis on behavioural, including eye movement analysis, and electrophysiological techniques.

An important thread running through all her research is how perception and cognition influences people in everyday tasks, including consumer contexts. Professor Raymond is an internationally recognised expert on the perception of counterfeit (e.g., banknotes) and has long been involved in problems related to authentication of consumer products. She has a long-standing interest and track record in the cognitive processes involved in advertising and packaging of consumer goods, trademark disputes, and counterfeit crime. She also maintains an active interest in the Psychology of Art.

Qualifications

BSc (Hons) Psychology, Dalhousie University, Canada
MSc Psychology, University of Washington, USA
PhD Psychology, Dalhousie University, Canada

Biography

Canadian born, Professor Raymond completed post grad work at the University of Washington (USA) and later at Dalhousie University (Canada) where she obtained her PhD (1980) on anomalies of visual contrast perception in Multiple Sclerosis. Her post doctoral work at Pennsylvania State University (USA) focused on oculomotor function and visual-vestibular interactions. Returning to Canada in 1983, she joined the academic staff at the University of Calgary where her research (funded by NSERC and Alberta Heritage Foundation, Canada) focused on visual attention and visual motion perception.

In 1995, took up a Chair at Bangor University (Professor of Experimental Consumer Psychology) where she expanded her basic research to link attention and emotion (funding from ESRC and BBSRC, UK) and expanded her work on consumer brand perception (funding from Unilever and Bank of England). In 2010, Professor Raymond was awarded a prestigious WPP/ Google Marketing Research Award for work in this area.

In 2012 she became Professor of Visual Cognition at the University of Birmingham where her basic research on attention expanded (funded by ESRC UK) and her applied interests increasingly focused on problems related to counterfeit (funding from Bank of England, Bank of Canada, and others). Becoming Professor Emeritus in 2020, she continues to collaborate on projects related to effects of urban environment on cognition; attention and art; and the cognitive basis of authentication.

Postgraduate supervision

Professor Raymond is currently only supervising PhD students on a part-time basis. New students might involve those interested in how cognition is affected by air quality or green space proximity and pollution; how the brain codes authenticity; or, consumer responses to counterfeit crime.

Research

Research supervised by Professor Raymond is conducted in the Visual Experience Lab. The primary aim of the work is to understand how humans respond to complex visual information at perceptual, cognitive, and emotional levels. This general question underlies our work that specifically asks:

How are human able to determine if valuable objects are “real” (as expected) or “fake” (mimics)? Work in this area involves questions about object categorisation, object discrimination, and the complex relationship between object parts and whole. It links visual perception with visual memory and conceptual knowledge, especially in consumer contexts.
What determines where we look when confronted with a complex scene? Work in this area addresses the interplay of low level, “automatic” sensory mechanisms driven by image data in the scene and higher order mechanisms that use previously acquired knowledge and habit to control looking behaviour. The lab uses an EyeLink 1000 to monitor eye movements in these studies.
How does exposure to poor air quality and other aspects of urban environments affect cognitive control and anxiety? Work in this area relates childhood and current exposure to performance on basic cognitive tests and control over emotional responses to threat.

Other activities

CEO of Secure Perception Research Ltd.
Collaborator on research at the “Drawing Lab”, Nova Scotia College of Art & Design/Dalhousie University, Canada.
Reviewer for many journals and research grant agencies

Publications

Recent selected publications:

Dodgson, D & Raymond J E. Banknote authenticity is signalled by rapid neural responses. (2022). Scientific Reports, DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-05972-8

Balter, L. J., Raymond, J. E., Aldred, S., Higgs, S., & Bosch, J. A. (2021). Age, BMI, and inflammation: Associations with emotion recognition. Physiology & Behavior, 232, 113324.

Garner, K.G., Bowman, H. and Raymond, J. E. (2020). Incentive value and spatial certainty combine additively to determine visual priorities. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-020-02124-w.

Raymond, J. E., Dodgson, D.B. & Pearson, N. (2020). 3D Micro-Optics Enable Fast Banknote Authentication by Non- Expert Users. Optical Document Security 2020 Proceedings, Reconnaissance International, ISBN 978-1-9163806-4-6. https://opticaldocumentsecurity.com/

Balter, L.J.T., Aldred, S., Bosch, J.A. & Higgs, S, Raymond, J. E. (2019). Inflammation mediates body weight and aging effects on psychomotor slowing. Scientific Reports, 9(1), 1-13.

Balter, L.J.T., Raymond, J. E., Aldred, S., Drayson, M.C., Veldhuijzen van Zanten, J.J.C.S., Bosch, J.A. & Higgs, S. (2019) Loneliness Predicts Inflammatory Responsiveness to a Mild Immune Challenge in Vivo. Brain, Behaviour & Immunity, 82, 298-301.

Balter, L.J.T., Bosch, J.A., Aldred, S., Drayson, M.C., Higgs, S., Veldhuijzen van Zanten, J.J.C.S., Raymond, J. E., Mazaheri, A. (2019) Selective effects of acute low-grade inflammation on human visual attention. Neuroimage. 202, 116098

Dodgson, D. B. & Raymond, J. E. (2019). Value-associations bias ensemble perception. Attention, Perception and Psychophysics 76(3), 746–758. Doi: 10.3758/s13414-019-01744-1

Raymond J. E. & Jones, S. P. (2019). Strategic eye movements are used to support object authentication. Scientific Reports. 9:2424 | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-38824-z or (https://rdcu.be/bnGuR).

Balter, L. J., Hulsken, S., Aldred, S., Drayson, M. T. Higgs, S., van Zanten, J.J.V.; Raymond, J. E¹., Bosch, J. A¹ (¹joint senior authors) (2018). Inflammation decreases emotion recognition - Evidence from the vaccination model of inflammation. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, 73, 216-221. (IF 6.31)

Thomas, P., FitzGibbon, L., and Raymond, J. E. (2016). Value conditioning modulates visual working memory processes. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. 42(1), 6-10.

Sawaki, R., Luck, S. & Raymond, J. E. (2015). How attention changes in response to incentives. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 27(11), 2229-2239.

O’Brien, J. & Raymond, J. E. (2012). Learned predictiveness speeds visual processing. Psychological Science, 23(4), 359 – 363.

View all publications in research portal