Nilli Lavie

Nilli Lavie
Institutions	University College London (Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience)
Website www.attention-focus.com

Nilli Lavie, FBA, is a Professor of Psychology and Brain Sciences and Director of the Attention and Cognitive Control laboratory at the University College London Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience. She is an elected Fellow of the British Academy, elected Fellow of the American Psychological Society, elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology, and elected Fellow of the British Psychological Society. She is also an honorary life member of the UK Experimental Psychology Society. She is known for providing a resolution the 40 year debate on the role attention in information processing and as the creator of the Perceptual load theory of attention, perception and cognitive control.

Biography and Education

Prior to her academic career, Lavie was a well-known night-lifer^[1] in Tel Aviv Israel. She made various media appearances in both film (in the Lemon Popsicle film series and ‘A Message from the future’^[2]) and fashion (including modelling Fiorucci,^[3] Dunlop, and Merci Tights), and was a long-term partner of Israeli poet, artist, filmmaker, publicist and playwright David Avidan.

Lavie obtained BA Degrees in Psychology and in Philosophy from Tel Aviv University, where she also completed a PhD in Cognitive Psychology.

In the mid-nineties she was the first (and is still the only) psychologist to receive the prestigious Miller fellowship for postdoctoral training at UC Berkeley, which she held in Anne Treisman’s laboratory.

Following her postdoctoral training, she moved to the UK where she married the late Jon Driver and held her first faculty job at the MRC-Applied Psychology Unit (now the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit), Cambridge, UK. In late 1995 she joined UCL where she currently works and has written over 100 scientific papers.

She has received a British Psychological Society Cognitive Section Award for outstanding contribution to research on Human Cognition (2006). In 2011, she was selected as an "inspirational woman" in the WiSE (Women into Science, Engineering and Construction) campaign. In 2012 she received the Mid-Career Award from the Experimental Psychology Society . She was named an 'Academic Champion' at UCL (PALS division) and invited to give the first lecture at their inauguration (2012). She was also selected as an academic role model at UCL Faculty of Life Sciences (2012).

Research

Lavie’s research^{[4][5][6][7][8]} concerns the effects of information load on brain mechanisms, psychological functions (perception, conscious awareness, memory and emotion) and behaviour. This research is guided by the framework of her Load theory of attention and cognitive control.^[7][9] Lavie originally proposed the Load Theory in the mid-nineties^[4] to resolve the "Locus of Attentional Selection" debate. This debate started in the late fifties and stirred much research over the years.

Load Theory offered a new approach concerning the nature of information processing that reconciles the apparently contradicting views in this debate regarding the issue of capacity limits versus automaticity of processing. In Load Theory - perceptual information processing has limited capacity but processing proceeds automatically on all information within its capacity. The theory made an important contribution to the understanding of the impact of attention on information processing, visual perception and awareness. It also explains how people use their working memory during task performance and the ways in which people can exert cognitive control over their perception, attention and behaviour.^[7][9][10]

In the media

Lavie has made numerous media appearances in many TV science documentary programmes,^{[11][12][13][14]} interviews, and articles in the print and electronic media. These include UK media channels such as BBC One, BBC Two, BBC News, Channel 4 and in the print The Guardian, The Times, The Independent, New Scientist, The Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail as well as international media outlets including Good Morning America, Discovery, National Geographic, Oprah, CBS News, NBC News, PBS Newshour, TIME, ESPN News, Fox News, Discover, Wired and Wall Street Journal in the US; ABC News in Australia; and Die Ziet in Germany, for example in the years 2015-16.^{[15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37]}

References

1. "לילות תל אביב עם דוד אבידן המדריך לחיי הלילה". Booksefer. Retrieved 2015-04-23.
2. A Message from the Future, retrieved 2015-04-23
3. "Fiorucci". www.fiorucci.it. Retrieved 2015-04-23.
4. Lavie, N. (1995). Perceptual load as a necessary condition for selective attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 21, 451-468.
5. Lavie, N. (2000). Selective attention and cognitive control: dissociating attentional functions through different types of load. In S. Monsell & J. Driver (Eds.). Attention and performance XVIII, pp. 175–194. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT press.
6. Lavie, N. (2005) Distracted and confused?: selective attention under load. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 75-82.
7. Lavie, N. (2010) Attention, Distraction and Cognitive Control under Load. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(3), 143-158
8. Lavie, N. & Tsal, Y. (1994). Perceptual load as a major determinant of the locus of selection in visual attention. Perception & Psychophysics, 56, 183-197.
9. Lavie, N., Hirst, A., De Fockert, J. W. & Viding, E. (2004) Load theory of selective attention and cognitive control. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133, 339-354.
10. Carmel, D., Fairnie, J., & Lavie, N. (2012). Weight and see: loading working memory improves incidental identification of irrelevant faces. Frontiers in Psychology, 3, 286.
11. "Series 1 - Terror in the Skies". Channel 4.
12. "How to Avoid Mistakes in Surgery, 2012-2013, Horizon - BBC Two". BBC.
13. Barry, Tom (2010-02-01), The Truth Behind Crop Circles
14. Weird Connections: Invisible Gorilla (Season 2 Episode 3)
15. Discovery Channel. "They Really Didn't Hear You". Discovery Channel.
16. "Watch Out! Visual Concentration Can Leave You Temporarily 'Deaf'". ABC News.
17. "Science Update: The Science Radio News Feature of the AAAS". www.scienceupdate.com.
18. "Deutsche Welle". DW.COM.
19. "Why youngsters zone out when playing computer games". The Daily Telegraph.
20. "Deaf to the World". The Times.
21. "Staring at your phone screen can make you temporarily 'deaf'". Tech Insider.
22. "Zoning out: Teenagers really can't hear you when playing computer games". Express.
23. "Smart Phones Actually Cause Temporary Deafness". Mirror Daily.
24. John, Tara. "There's a Scientific Reason Why You're Ignoring People, Study Says". TIME.com.
25. "Focusing On A Task May Leave You Temporarily Deaf: Study". Tech Times.
26. "Why you can get away with not hearing your partner while you're flicking through Facebook on your phone". Telegraph.co.uk.
27. Carroll, Linda. "Here's why you can't hear people when you're scrolling on your phone". TODAY.com.
28. "Why your man watch TV and chat at the same time". Daily Mail.
29. "Apparently We All Spend Over A Quarter Of Our Time Being Distracted". Marie Claire.
30. "Can you hear me now? Study: Screens can interfere with hearing". Good Morning America.
31. "Checking mobile phones eats up 15 per cent of our leisure time". Daily Mail.
32. "Texting or playing with your phone makes you temporarily deaf". Daily Mail.
33. "How good are you at concentrating? Take the test". Telegraph.co.uk.
34. Epstein, Sarah. "Can you spot the O's? This teaser tests just how distracted you are". TODAY.com.
35. "How quickly can you spot the two 'O's in these puzzles?". The Independant.
36. "How easily distracted are YOU? Try this puzzle and find out". Daily Mail.
37. Ambridge, Ben. "How good are you at concentrating?". The Guardian.