My name is Rayan Haloul and I’m a Psychology major with a Business minor who’s currently in her fourth year of college. I first got into research last semester helping run trials for Dr. Jason Watson’s attention and cognition lab as I specifically was interested in the topic of attention. Most of my work involved leading participants through the trials that they encountered in the study that I helped run and would note participant behavior as they went through each trial. I was able to learn a lot about how urban vs. nature scenes elicit different mechanisms of attention in terms of which scenes had more “fascination” or interest for each participant.
The reason why I wanted to take part in this lab was because it felt like the next logical step for me as I wanted to delve more into research; and particularly attention itself. I also wanted to know more about eye tracking technology, like the one that’s currently being used in this lab and I wanted to see this technology first-hand and the way it measures attention through observing the eye(s).
I look forward to working in this cognition lab and learning more about attention, perception, & eye tracking technology alongside my fellow RA’s with the guidance of Dr. Carly Leonard.