Experimental visual studies exploring perception or cognition in the human fetus

The human fetus holds the key to unlocking the initial origins and predispositions of all aspects of human psychological development. Despite this, difficulties related to experimentally manipulating the behaviour of the fetus to assess capacities have sidelined the fetus within the developmental sciences. Instead, the focus has been on the human infant.

This research project seeks to harness new developments in the fields of obstetrics, medical physics, and psychology. The methodological constraints surrounding research on the human fetus are now reduced. These recent breakthroughs open up the capacity to explore cognitive development in the fetus in ways that have not previously been thought possible.

This project seeks to uncover the cognitive and perceptual capacities of the human fetus via the delivery of visual stimuli through maternal tissue to the fetus. Our prior work has modelled how light penetrates maternal tissue to reach the uterine environment and we have published a number of studies demonstrating the experimental manipulation of fetal behaviour due to perceptual or cognitive characteristics of visual stimuli. This work has only just begun.

We need to understand all aspects of perceptual and cognitive development in the fetus in order that we can determine the foundations of psychological functioning. To that end, this project could focus on perceptual capacities. This could include topics such as

• object tracking
• motion processing characteristics such as biological or scrambled motion, visual field development. 

Alternatively, this project could focus on cognitive development with stimuli including but not restricted to:

• agentive motion
• learning and memory
• emergent causality
• gravity
• object permanence

One Ph.D. would be unable to explore all these dimensions and, at most, three could be feasibly explored over the course of three years.

Location

Hamilton Campus

Essential

• Evidence of experimental data acquisition with developmental populations
• Evidence of experimental data analysis skills from data with developmental populations
• Evidence of excellent scientific writing skills

Desirable

• Ultrasound coding skills
• The ability to engage with pregnant people for recruitment and data acquisition purposes, resulting in positive experiences for those people.