Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Birders of All Skill Levels Needed

A laboratory at Vanderbilt University is looking for birders of all levels of experience to participate in a project examining how perception and memory for birds differs between beginners and experts. They really do mean all levels of experience, from the true beginner to the expert with decades of study, and everything in-between.

These experiments are online on the web. They measure your ability to remember and identify birds and sometimes other animals or objects. Many experiments are fairly short. They can be done on any computer, wherever and whenever you decide to do them.

One of their current experiments is a bird identification test. Go online and test your birding skills. This is the web site for our experiments: http://expertise.psy.vanderbilt.edu

Once you register your own login id and password on the site, and complete a short survey of your birding expertise, you will be able to participate in any experiments that are available.

They expect to add new experiments over time. Some future experiments may include modest compensation. If you have questions, please contact Professor Thomas Palmeri (thomas.j.palmeri@vanderbilt.edu) at Vanderbilt University.

These experiments are not about birds or birding, but rather humans visual cognition.  If you are interested in reading about his research, http://catlab.psy.vanderbilt.edu/.