Former MSc student Theodora Banica published an article in PLoS One in which we investigated whether Kanizsa (illusory) contours are generated and perceived when observers are unaware of the inducers. This follows up earlier conflicting reports on this question. We conducted attentional cuing experiments as well as direct discrimination experiments while in some trials the inducing shapes were masked from awareness. We found no evidence that observers perceive Kanizsa contours when they are unaware of inducers.

Banica, T, & Schwarzkopf, DS (2016). Induction of Kanizsa contours requires awareness of the inducing context. PLoS One 11(8): e0161177.

Drs Christina Moutsiana and Benjamin de Haas published a study in Nature Communications in which we investigate perceptual biases for size judgements and their relationship to the spatial tuning of visual cortex (population receptive fields). We describe a model for how the visual system may infer object size from activation patterns in early visual areas. In this article we also present the our new psychophysical method for estimating perceptual biases across several visual field locations, Multiple Alternatives Perceptual Search (MAPS).

Moutsiana*, C, de Haas*, B, Papageorgiou, A, van Dijk, JA, Balraj, A, Greenwood, JA, & Schwarzkopf, DS (2016). Cortical idiosyncrasies predict the perception of object size. Nature Communications 7: 12110.