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  • Faculty

  • Ben van Buren

    Assistant Professor of Psychology (Clinical)

    Email
    vanburenb@newschool.edu

    Office Location
    G - 80 Fifth Avenue

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    Ben van Buren

    Profile

    Ben van Buren is interested in the richness of our visual experience — what causes objects to look more or less alive, emotionally expressive, or aesthetically pleasing?  His research is aimed at connecting these visual features with aspects of our mental lives that are better understood by psychologists — such as attention, perceptual organization, and memory.  Ben's recent projects have focused on the perception of intentionality from motion cues, event perception and the psychology of aesthetics.  He has also written about what visual illusions tell us about our mental architecture, and about meta-psychological questions, such as how to best study perceptual states.

    Ben directs the NSSR Perception Laboratory.  For the latest information on lab news and projects, please visit: http://www.nssrperception.com/

    Degrees Held

    Ph.D., Cognitive Psychology (Yale University)

    B.A., Philosophy, Cognitive Science (University of Pennsylvania)

    Recent Publications

    Colombatto, C., van Buren, B., and Scholl, B. J. (2019). Intentionally distracting: Working memory is disrupted by the perception of other agents attending to you — even without eye-gaze cues. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 26, 951-957. PDF

    van Buren, B., and Scholl, B. J. (2018). Visual illusions as a tool for dissociating seeing from thinking. Perception, 47, 999-1001. PDF

    van Buren, B., and Scholl, B. J. (2017). Minds in motion in memory: Enhanced spatial memory driven by the perceived animacy of simple shapes. Cognition, 163, 87-92. PDF | Demos

    van Buren, B., Bromberger, B., Potts, D., and Chatterjee, A. (2013). Changes in painting styles of two artists with Alzheimer's disease. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 7, 89-94. PDF

    Research Interests

    perception, cognition, animacy, event perception, gestalt psychology, aesthetics, visual science of art

    Current Courses

    Ad Topics in Visual Cognition

    Ad Topics in Visual Cognition (Spring 2020)

    Fund. of Visual Perception (Spring 2020)

    Independent Study

    Independent Study (Spring 2020)

    Psych of Aesthetics & Design

    Senior Work Project

    Senior Work Project (Spring 2020)

    Visual Perception Cognition

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