The University of Chicago
Department of Psychology
5848 South University Avenue
Chicago, IL, 60637
Office Phone: (773) 702-9412
Office: BPSB 112
Labs: Shevell Lab
Website:: https://sites.google.com/
site/allenelizabethc/
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Elizabeth Allen
Background
Elizabeth received an Hon.B.Sc. in Psychology from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada in 2007. She completed her honors thesis with Bruce Milliken, examining contextual effects on visual attention. She is currently a fifth-year doctoral student in the Integrative Neuroscience program, working with Steve Shevell and Sian Beilock. She has served as a lecturer for The Mind, and as a teaching assistant for Strategies & Processes of Negotiation, Experimental Design, and Sensation & Perception.
Research Interests
Elizabeth’s research focuses on the role of “high-level” cognitive processes in constructing and maintaining a coherent and stable percept of the world. For her Master’s project, she investigated the role of working memory in color constancy – the ability to perceive the colors of objects in the world as relatively stable despite changes in the light illuminating them. For her dissertation, she is using psychophysics and EEG to examine relations between individual differences in working memory and ambiguous figure perception, binocular rivalry, and perceptual completion.
Publications
Allen, EC, Beilock, SL, & Shevell, SK (2012). Individual differences in simultaneous color constancy are related to working memory. Journal of the Optical Society of America A, 29, A52-A59.
Allen, EC, Beilock, SL, & Shevell, SK (2011). Working memory is related to perceptual processing: A case from color perception. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 37(4), 1014-1021.
Recent Presentations
Allen, EC, Beilock, SL, & Shevell, SK (July 2011). Working memory is related to simultaneous as well as successive color constancy. Poster presented at the 21st Symposium of the International Colour Vision Society, Kongsberg, Norway.
Allen, EC, Mattarella-Micke, A, Shevell, SK, & Beilock, SL (May 2011). Working memory capacity predicts individual differences in perception of a bistable figure. Poster presented at the Vision Sciences Society Annual Meeting, Naples, FL.
Shevell, SK, Allen, EC, & Anstis, S (May 2011). Binocular fusion unmasks rivalrous suppression of the Craik-O’Brien-Cornsweet (COC) illusion. Poster presented at the Vision Sciences Society Annual Meeting, Naples, FL.
Allen, EC (April 2011). Research methods in action: Using psychophysics to study visual perception. Invited lecture for Research Methods Seminar, Roosevelt University.
Allen, EC, D’Antona, AD, & Shevell, SK (April 2011). The neural locus underlying our perception of brightness from borders. Talk presented at the Chicago Psychology Graduate Student Research Symposium, Evanston, IL.
