Igor S. Utochkin

Laboratory Head:Laboratory for Cognitive Research
Professor:Faculty of Social Sciences / School of Psychology

Igor S. Utochkin has been at HSE since 2005.

Education and Degrees

2006
Candidate of Sciences* (PhD) in General Psychology, Psychology of Personality, History of Psychology
2003
Degree in Psychology
Lomonosov Moscow State University

* Candidate of Sciences
According to the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) 2011, Candidate of Sciences belongs to ISCED level 8 - "doctoral or equivalent", together with PhD, DPhil, D.Lit, D.Sc, LL.D, Doctorate or similar. Candidate of Sciences allows its holders to reach the level of the Associate Professor.

Continuing education / Professional retraining / Internships / Study abroad experience

2016, October-December - visiting scholar in Vision and Memory Laboratory, University of California San Diego (La Jolla, CA, USA)

2015, October-December - visiting scholar in Visual Attention Laboratory, Harvard Medical School/Brigham & Women's Hospital (Cambridge/Boston, MA, USA)

Professional Interests

visual attention visual search object and scene perception ensemble summary statistics visual working memory

Awards and Accomplishments

Best Teacher – 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013

Young Faculty Support Program (Group of Young Academic Professionals)
Category "Future Professoriate" (2015-2016)

Student Term / Thesis Papers

Bachelor
L. Dulyan «The Effect of Attentional Load on Object Recognition and Individuation in Peripheral Vision». Faculty of Social Sciences, 2018
Y. Markov «Using the Statistical Mixture Model for Studying Object-Location Binding in Visual Working Memory». Faculty of Social Sciences, 2017
V. Khvostov «The Time Course of Retaining Hierarchical Representations in Visual Working Memory». Faculty of Social Sciences, 2017
T. Struchkova «The Dynamics of Complex Stimulus Illusory Disappearance under Motion-involved Blindness». Faculty of Social Sciences, 2016
N. Ponomarenko «Effect of Visual Feature Distribution on Ensemble Perseption». Faculty of Social Sciences, 2016
A. Belinskaia «Interplay Between Multiple Object Statistics in the Perception of visual Ensembles». Faculty of Social Sciences, 2016
K. Vostrikov «On a Possibility of Dividing Attention in the Perception of Global (Statistical) Properties of Multiple Objects». Faculty of Social Sciences, 2016
A. Gura «Psychophysical determinants of variety perception.». Faculty of Psychology, 2014
D. Rotar` «Branching or sequential text form as a determinant of trust in the information». Faculty of Psychology, 2014
Master
A. Yakovlev «Attentional Spread during One-shot Visual Perception of Multiple Objects». Faculty of Social Sciences, 2018
R. Vakhrushev «Ensemble Perception Under Rapid Serial Visual Presentation». Faculty of Social Sciences, 2016

Full list of of student term / thesis papers

Courses (2018/2019)

Psychology of cognition (Bachelor’s programme; Faculty of Social Sciences; programme "Psychology"; 2 year, 1, 2 module)Rus
Psychology of Sensation, Attention and Perception (Bachelor’s programme; Faculty of Social Sciences; programme "Psychology"; 3 year, 1, 2 module)Rus
Past Courses

Courses (2017/2018)

Psychology of cognition (Bachelor’s programme; Faculty of Social Sciences; programme "Psychology"; 1 year, 3, 4 module)Rus
Psychology of cognition (Bachelor’s programme; Faculty of Social Sciences; programme "Psychology"; 2 year, 1, 2 module)Eng
Psychology of Sensation, Attention and Perception (Bachelor’s programme; Faculty of Social Sciences; programme "Psychology"; 3 year, 1, 2 module)Rus
Visual Perception and Attention (Master’s programme; Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience; programme "Cognitive Sciences and Technologies: From Neuron to Cognition"; 1 year, 4 module)Eng

Courses (2013/2014)

General Psychology (Bachelor’s programme; Faculty of Psychology; 2 year, 1-4 module)Rus
Practical Training in Psychology (Bachelor’s programme; Faculty of Psychology; 3 year, 1-4 module)Rus
Psychology of Mistakes and Illusions (Bachelor’s programme; Faculty of Psychology; 2 year, 2, 3 module)Rus

Courses (2012/2013)

General Psychology (Bachelor’s programme; Faculty of Psychology; 3 year, 1-4 module)Rus
General Psychology (Bachelor’s programme; Faculty of Psychology; 2 year, 1-4 module)Rus
Psychology of Mistakes and Illusions (Bachelor’s programme; Faculty of Psychology; 2 year, 2, 3 module)Rus

Courses (2011/2012)

Practical Training in Psychology (Bachelor’s programme; Faculty of Psychology; 2 year, 2-4 module)Rus
Psychology (Bachelor’s programme; Faculty of Management; 1 year, 1-3 module)Rus
Psychology of Mistakes and Illusions (Bachelor’s programme; Faculty of Psychology; 2 year, 2, 3 module)Rus

Courses (2010/2011)

Experimental Psychology (Bachelor’s programme; Faculty of Psychology; 2 year, 2, 3 module)Rus
General Psychology (Bachelor’s programme; Faculty of Psychology; 2 year, 1-4 module)Rus
Psychology (Bachelor’s programme; Faculty of Management; 2 year, 1, 2 module)Rus

Editorial board membership

2014: Member of the Editorial Board, Российский журнал когнитивной науки (The Russian Journal of Cognitive Science).

Conferences

2014
Vision Sciences Society 14th Annual Meeting (St. Pete Beach). Presentation: Seeing variety: The determinants of visual representation of variance statistics
Vision Sciences Society 14th Annual Meeting (St. Pete Beach). Presentation: Distractor heterogeneity effects in visual search are mediated by "segmentability"
Vision Sciences Society 14th Annual Meeting (St. Pete Beach). Presentation: The perception of variety in color segmented sets
Vision Sciences Society 14th Annual Meeting (St. Pete Beach). Presentation: Visual size averaging is parallel but depends on the range
2013
Vision Sciences Society, 13th Annual Meeting (Naples). Presentation: Conjunction-guided selection in visual search

Publications

2019²

Article Tiurina N., Utochkin I. S. Ensemble perception in depth: Correct size-distance rescaling of multiple objects before averaging // Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 2019. Vol. 148. No. 4. P. 728-738. doi
Article Wolfe J. M., Utochkin I. S. What is a preattentive feature? // Current Opinion in Psychology. 2019. Vol. 29. P. 19-26. doi

2018⁵

Article Utochkin I. S., Khvostov V., Stakina Y. Continuous to discrete: Ensemble-based segmentation in the perception of multiple feature conjunctions // Cognition. 2018. Vol. 179. P. 178-191. doi
Preprint Markov Y., Tiurina N., Utochkin I. S. Different features are stored independently in visual working memory but mediated by object-based representations / Издательский дом НИУ ВШЭ. Series WP BRP "PSYCHOLOGY". 2018.
Article Dulyan L. G., Utochkin I. S. The Effect of Multiple Object Tracking on Peripheral Crowding // Journal of Vision. 2018. Vol. 18. No. 10. P. 851. doi
Preprint Dulyan L. G., Utochkin I. S. The effect of attentional load on crowding / Издательский дом НИУ ВШЭ. Series WP BRP "PSYCHOLOGY". 2018.
Article Utochkin I. S., Wolfe J. M. Visual search for changes in scenes creates long-term, incidental memory traces // Attention, Perception and Psychophysics. 2018. Vol. 80. No. 4. P. 829-843. doi

2017⁴

Article Zou B., Utochkin I. S., Liu Y., Wolfe J. M. Binocularity and visual search – Revisited // Attention, Perception and Psychophysics. 2017. Vol. 79. No. 2. P. 473-483. doi
Article Markov Y., Tiurina N., Stakina Y., Utochkin I. S. The capacity and precision of visual working memory for object and ensembles // Psychology. Journal of the Higher School of Economics. 2017. Vol. 14. No. 4. P. 735-755. doi
Preprint Yuri A. Markov, Igor S. Utochkin. The effect of object distinctiveness on object-location binding in visual working memory / Издательский дом НИУ ВШЭ. Series WP BRP "PSYCHOLOGY". 2017. No. 79.
Article Utochkin I. S., Vostrikov, Konstantin O. The numerosity and mean size of multiple objects are perceived independently and in parallel // Plos One. 2017. Vol. 12. No. 9. P. 1-20. doi

2016²

Article Utochkin I. S., Yurevich M. Similarity and heterogeneity effects in visual search are mediated by “segmentability” // Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. 2016. Vol. 42. No. 7. P. 995-1007. doi
Article Utochkin I. S. Visual enumeration of spatially overlapping subsets // The Russian Journal of Cognitive Science. 2016. Vol. 3. No. 1-2. P. 4-20.

2015¹

Article Utochkin I. S. Ensemble summary statistics as a basis for rapid visual categorization // Journal of Vision. 2015. Vol. 15. No. 8. P. 1-14. doi

2014²

Article Utochkin I. S., Tiurina N. Parallel averaging of size is possible but range-limited: A reply to Marchant, Simons, and De Fockert // Acta Psychologica. 2014. Vol. 146. P. 7-18. doi
Article Gusev A., Mikhailova O. A., Utochkin I. S. Stimulus determinants of the phenomenon of change blindness // Psychology in Russia: State of the Art. 2014. Vol. 7. No. 1. P. 122-134. doi

2013³

Preprint Utochkin I. S. Conjunctions can guide attention through visual search / NRU Higher School of Economics. Series PSY "Psychology". 2013.
Article Utochkin I. S. Visual search with negative slopes: The statistical power of numerosity guides attention // Journal of Vision. 2013. Vol. 13. No. 3. P. 1-14.
Chapter Булатова М. Е., Уточкин И. С. Репрезентация численности в подмножествах, образованных признаками и их сочетаниями // В кн.: Когнитивная наука в Москве: новые исследования. Тезисы конференции (19 июня 2013 г.) / Науч. ред.: Е. В. Печенкова, М. В. Фаликман. М. : Буки Веди, 2013. С. 42-46.

2011³

Article Utochkin I. S. Hide-and-seek around the centre of interest: The dead zone of attention revealed by change blindness // Visual Cognition. 2011. Vol. 19. No. 8. P. 1063-1088. doi
Article Utochkin I. S. Involuntary remembering of words in various attentional demands / Пер. с рус. // Journal of Russian and East European Psychology. 2011. Vol. 49. No. 3. P. 24-39.
Article Utochkin I. S. Strategies of visual search for changes in complex scenes // Journal of Russian and East European Psychology. 2011. Vol. 49. No. 5. P. 10-29.

Scientific interests

I am interested in visual perception and attention. My current work is focused on several main topics:
Ensemble perception. Despite our attention and visual working memory (VWM) have severely limited capacity - 3-4 objects at a time, at any given moment we still see much more than these 3-4 objects. Numerous studies of past decades show that this is possible because ensemble representation, the special mode of perception that allows us to see large sets of objects in the absence of the information about individuals. The visual system is believed to construct rather generalized images of ensembles via computing summary statistics, such as aprroximate number or average size, orientation, speed, brightness, even facial expression, etc. My research concerns two main issues: 1) The role of summary statistics in perceptual grouping, segmentation, and categorization: How can visual summary statistics be used by the visual system to decide which members of an ensemble belong to the same type of objects, and which members belong to different types; 2) What is the role of attention in extracting summary statistics?
Attention and visual search. Visual search is a very useful task for studying the deployment of attention over space and time. In visual search we can easily and independently manipulate numerous stimulus factors (the number of objects, their features, their similarity and dissimilarity, their density, etc.), as well as high-level sets via instructions and rewards. My specific interest in visual search focuses on the following question: How the statistical distribution of similar and dissimilar objects (as derived from statistical processing of a visual ensemble) affects the settings of the "attentional window", a hypothetical tradeoff between the number of immediately attended objects and the amount of capacity given to each of those objects?
Dead zone of attention. When perceiving a natural scene, one is normally attending to most significant objects or their parts. These are termed the "centers of interest" (CI), while other details of the scene are termed "marginal interests" (MI). My recent finding from the change blindness pardigm is that observers attend to MI's differently depending on the location of those MI's. Specifically, in my change blindness experiments participants failed to notice marginal changes for longer time in close proximity to a CI as compared to remote MI's. This effect was termed the dead zone of attention. The current research in my lab is indended to understand the nature of this effect. Is it elicited by some low-level spatial inhibition? Or is it caused by a high-level strategy of scene inspection?

Courses

General Psychology: Sensation and Perception (2nd year)
Experimental Psychology (3rd year)
Psychology of Errors and Illusions (elective, 2nd year)

Ad-hoc reviewing

Attention, Perception and Psychphysics

Journal of Optical Society of America A

Journal of Vision

PLOS One

The Russian Journal of Cognitive Science

Psychology. Journal of HSE

Timetable for today

Full timetable

Apr

2018

Scientists From HSE Awarded New Grants from RSF

The Russian Science Foundation has announced the most recent winners of three-year grants for scientific research. Among the recipients are a number of projects carried out by scientists at the Higher School of Economics.

Oct

2015

Behavioural Genetics Research as a Path to Optimise Learning for All

On October 5th, 2015 Yulia Kovas will give an open lecture at the HSE Centre for Cognition & Decision Making — 'An Introduction to Behavioral Genetics'. Professor of Genetics and Psychology at Goldsmiths College, London University and Co-director of the Russian British Laboratory of Psychogenetics and author of many academic articles, Yulia Kovas will talk about the problems facing contemporary behavioral genetics, how DNA influences the individual variations of a person’s psychological features, what role the interaction between genes and the environment plays in the formation of behaviour and other questions of contemporary behavioral genetics.