I am interested in how human beings deal with dynamic objects and events. That is, in studying how our brains might have adapted to cope with motion and change, two fundamental aspects of our everyday lives. This interest has involved me in a number of research areas including face perception, biological motion, change detection and object localization.

Recent Publications:

Pilz, K. S., Vuong, Q. C., Bülthoff, H. H., & Thornton, I. M.  (2007). Looming facilitates the processing of unfamiliar faces. JEP:HPP, under review.

*Horowitz, T. S., & Thornton I. M. (2007). Objects or Locations in Vision for Action? Evidence from the MILO task. Visual Cognition, in press. 

Chen, M., Botchen, R.P., Hashim, R.R., Weiskopf, D., Ertl, T., & Thornton, I.M. (2006). Visual signatures in video visualization, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 12(5), 1093-1100. 

Chuang, L., Vuong, Q. C., Thornton, I. M.  & Bülthoff, H. H. (2006) Recognising novel deforming objects. Visual Cognition, 14(1), 85-88. 

Thornton, I. M. (2006). Out of Time: A possible link between mirror neurons, autism & electromagnetic radiation. Medical Hypotheses, 67, 378-382. 

Thornton, I. M. & Knoblich, G. (2006). Action Perception: Seeing the world through a moving body. Current Biology, 16(1), R27-R29. 

Pilz, K. S., Thornton, I. M. & Bülthoff, H. H. (2006). A search advantage for faces learned in motion. Experimental Brain Research, 171(4), 436-447. 

Vuong, Q. C., Hof., A., Bülthoff, H. H., & Thornton, I. M. (2006). An advantage for detecting dynamic targets in natural scenes. Journal of Vision, 6 (1): 87-96 2006 

Brouwer, A., Thornton, I. M., & Franz, V. H. (2005). Forward displacement in grasping and visually judging pliers. Visual Cognition, 12(5), 800-816. 

Thornton IM  & Vuong QC (2004). Incidental processing of biological motion.  Current Biology, 14, 1084-1089. 

Brouwer A, Franz VH, & Thornton IM  (2004). Representational momentum in perception and grasping.  Journal of Vision, 4(7), 575-584 (2004) 

Thornton IM  & Hayes AE (2004). Anticipating human action in complex scenes.  Visual Cognition, 11, 341-370. 

Thornton IM  & Horowitz TS (2004). The Multi-Item Localization (MILO) task. Perception & Psychophysics, 66, 38-50. 

Thornton IM , Vuong, QC, & Bülthoff HH (2003). A chimeric point-light walker, Perception, 32, 377-383. 

Fernandez-Duque D, Grossi G, Thornton IM, & Neville HJ (2003). Representation of Change: Separate Electrophysiological Markers of Attention, Awareness, and Implicit Processing.  Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 15(4), 1-17. 

Knappmeyer B, Thornton IM, & Bulthoff HH (2003). Facial motion can bias the perception of facial identity.  Vision Research, 43, 1921-1936. 

Battelli L, Cavanagh P, & Thornton IM  (2003). Perception of biological motion in parietal patients.  Neuropsychologica, 41 (13): 1808-1816 

Fernandez-Duque D, & Thornton IM  (2003). Explicit mechanisms do not account for implicit localization and identification of change: A reply to Mitroff et al. (2002).  Journal of Experimental Psychology: HPP, 29 (5): 846-858 

Thornton IM , & Hubbard TL (2002). Representational Momentum: New Findings, New Directions.  Visual  Cognition, 9, 1-7. 

Thornton IM  (2002). The onset repulsion effect.  Spatial Vision, 15(2), 219-243.

Thornton IM  & Kourtzi Z (2002). The perception of dynamic human faces. Perception, 31, 113-132

Thornton IM , Rensink RA & Shiffrar M (2002). Active versus passive processing of biological motion. Perception, 31, 837-853.