James Enns wants to discover the relationship between what the eye offers up and what the mind is expecting. Enn’s research delves into what he calls the “zombie within,” or the unconscious visual system we use when internalizing visual information. He is the director of the UBC Vision Lab.
According to his biography, his research “includes studies of how the visual world is represented inside and outside of focused attention, how attention changes the contents of consciousness, how perception changes with development, and how to design visual displays for optimal human performance.”
He has served as Associate Editor for the journals Psychological Science and Visual Cognition. His research has been supported by grants from NSERC, BC Health & NATO. He has edited two research volumes on the Development of Attention, coauthored a textbook on perception and published numerous scientific articles on vision, attention and cognitive science. His book, “The Thinking Eye, The Seeing Brain” was recently released by W.W. Norton (NY). His PhD is from Princeton University and he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
He was the recipient of the UBC’s Robert Knox Master Teaching Award in 2004.
