Contact Information: Department of Psychology and Communication Studies Student Health Building University of Idaho Moscow, ID 83844-3043 phone: (208) 885-6927 fax: (208) 885-7710 bdyre@uidaho.edu

People > Dr. Brian Dyre Personal Background and Interests My primary research interests lie in an area of psychology known as visual psychophysics --the science concerned with linking our experience of the visual world (the psycho part) to the patterns of light projected into our eyes (the physics part). In particular, I am interested in how we use our visual sense to navigate through the world. For example, how can you estimate your speed by looking out the window of your car? How do you know what direction you are heading toward? My research attempts to identify the processes and computations our brains use to determine these parameters of our self-motion from optical flow--the dynamic pattern of light projected to a moving viewpoint. Answers to these basic research questions are particularly relevant for the design of displays to support navigation in extreme circumstances such as high-speed, low-altitude flight. Hence, even though most of my research can be described as basic vision science, principles derived from the results of this research can be directly applied to problems of display design and training. As a result, much of my research has been funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Other research areas of interest include psychophysical scaling of judgments of proportion and magnitude and computational modelling of a variety of perceptual processes, such as the eye movements we make while reading. Here at the University of Idaho I direct the Idaho Visual Performance Laboratory (IVPL), which I founded in 1996. Including myself, the IVPL currently consists of eight personnel--three of which are graduate students in the Human Factors M.S. program. The IVPL has a number of ongoing research projects, for more information please visit http://129.101.156.107/brian/research.htm. Selected Publications Hollands, J. G., & Dyre, B. P. (2000). Bias in proportion judgments: The cyclical power model. Psychological Review, 107, 500-524. Dyre, B. P., Richman, J. B., & Fournier, L. (2000). Allocation of Attention Affects Perceived Heading Direction with Transparent Flow Fields. In Proceedings of the IEA 2000/HFES 2000 Congress, 3-415 --- 3-418. Cortese, J. M., & Dyre, B. P. (1996). Perceptual similarity of shapes generated from Fourier descriptors. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 22(1), 133-143.   For a full list of research publications go to my publications page Courses I teach PSYCH 446: Engineering Psychology and Human Performance PSYCH 444: Sensation and Perception PSYCH 325: Cognitive Psychology

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