John W. Philbeck

Effective navigation requires being able to figure out where we are and to keep track of our location while moving about. The ability to navigate has profound consequences for one's sense of independence and quality of life. The ability to keep track of one's location is so crucial that individuals lacking it are essentially helpless, and yet our understanding of the neural underpinnings of self- motion sensing remains coarse. My research program investigates the psychological and neural processes underlying how we use vision to determine our location and how we remain oriented while moving about. To study these issues, I test the perceptual abilities of people from a wide range of ages, including individuals who have suffered certain forms of brain injury.

Woods, A. J., Philbeck, J. W., & Danoff, J. (2009). The various perceptions of distance: An alternative view of how effort affects distance judgments. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 35(4), 1104-1117.

Pothier, S., Philbeck, J. W., Chichka, D., & Gajewski, D. (2009). Tachistoscopic exposure and masking of real three-dimensional scenes. Behavior Research Methods, 41, 107-112.

Philbeck, J. W., Woods, A. J., Arthur, J., & Todd, J. (2008). Progressive locomotor recalibration during blind walking. Perception & Psychophysics, 70(8), 1459-1470.

Philbeck, J. W., Sargent, J., Arthur, J., & Dopkins, S. (2008). Large manual pointing errors, but accurate verbal reports, for indications of target azimuth. Perception, 37, 511-534.

Arthur, J., Philbeck, J. W., & Chichka, D. (2007). Spatial memory enhances the precision of angular self-motion updating. Experimental Brain Research, 183, 557-568.

Philbeck, J.W., Behrmann, M., Biega, T., & Levy, L. (2006). Asymmetrical perception of body rotation after unilateral injury to human vestibular cortex. Neuropsychologia, 44,1878-1890.

Philbeck, J. W., Behrmann, M., Levy, L. & Potolicchio, Jr., S. J., & Caputy, A. J. (2004). Path integration deficits during linear locomotion after human medial temporal lobectomy. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 16(4), 510-520.

Philbeck, J. W., Behrmann, M., & Loomis, J. M. (2001). Updating of locations during whole-body rotations in patients with hemispatial neglect. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 1, 330-343.

Philbeck, J. W., Klatzky, R. K., Behrmann, M., Loomis, J. M., & Goodridge, J. (2001). Active control facilitates non-visual navigation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 27, 141-153.

Philbeck, J. W., Loomis, J. M., & Beall, A. C. (1997). Visually perceived location is an invariant in the control of action. Perception & Psychophysics, 59, 601-612.

PhD 1997, University of California, Santa Barbara.