Carly Leonard, Ph.D.

Carly Leonard headshot
Associate Professor
Behavioral/Cognitive Neuroscience

Mailing Address:
Department of Psychology 
Campus Box 173, PO Box 173364 
Denver, CO 80217-3364

Physical Location:
North Classroom Building
1200 Larimer Street
Room 5005G (5th floor)

Office Hours:
By appointment (current students, check course syllabus for office hours)

Expertise Areas:
Experimental Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Visual Attention, Working Memory, Schizophrenia

Ph.D., Psychological & Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, 2008
B.A., Psychology and Economics, Rutgers University, 2002

Dr. Leonard is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology, with an interest in understanding how perceptual and attentional mechanisms interact to create subjective experience and influence behavior. Specifically, her laboratory employs psychophysics, EEG/ERP, and eye-tracking methodologies to investigate how current goals and previous experiences modulate visual perception and behavior. Currently, her Laboratory for Integrative Vision is focused on studies that investigate the attentional and inhibitory mechanisms that underlie individual differences in eye movement behavior. Dr. Leonard also has done extensive studies about how these mechanisms may vary in people with schizophrenia.

Prior to her arrival at the University of Colorado, Dr. Leonard conducted research at the University of California, Davis with Dr. Steve Luck and collaborated extensively with Dr. Jim Gold at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. She received her PhD from Johns Hopkins in 2008, working with Dr. Howard Egeth in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. She completed her undergraduate work in Psychology and Economics at Rutgers University in 2002, while also completing a minor in Cognitive Science and working with Dr. Zenon Pylyshyn.

Leonard, C. J. (2021). Consensus emerges and biased competition wins: A commentary on Luck et al. (2021). Visual Cognition. 29(9), 560-562.

Salagovic, C. A. & Leonard, C. J. (2021). A nonspatial sound modulates processing of visual distractors in a flanker task.  Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 83(2), 800-809.

Leonard, C. J., Robinson, B. M., Hahn, B., Gold, J. M., & Luck, S. J. (2020). Increased influence of a previously attended feature in people with schizophrenia.  Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 129(3), 305-311.

Luck, S. J., Hahn, B., Leonard, C. J., Gold, J. M. (2019). The hyperfocusing hypothesis: A new account of cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 45(5), 991-1000.

Lee, J., Leonard, C. J., Luck, S. J., & Geng, J. J. (2018). Dynamics of feature-based attentional selection during color-shape conjunction search. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 30(12), 1773-1787.

Leonard, C. J., Robinson, B. M., Hahn, B., Luck, S. J., & Gold, J. M. (2017). Altered spatial profile of distraction in people with schizophrenia.  Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 126(8), 1077-1086.

Leonard, C. J., Balestreri, A., & Luck, S. J. (2015). Interactions between space-based and feature-based attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 41(1), 11-16.

Leonard, C. J., Robinson, B. M., Kaiser, S. T., Hahn, B., McClenon, C., Gold, J. M., & Luck, S. J. (2013). Testing sensory and cognitive explanations of the antisaccade deficit in schizophrenia. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 122(4), 1111-1120.

Leonard, C. J., Lopez-Calderon, J., Kreither, J., & Luck, S. J. (2013). Rapid feature-driven changes in the attentional window. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 25(7), 1100-1110.

Leonard, C. J., Kaiser, S. T., Robinson, B. M., Kappenman, E. S., Hahn, B., Gold, J. M., & Luck, S. J. (2013). Toward the neural mechanisms of reduced working memory capacity in schizophrenia. Cerebral Cortex, 23, 1582-1592.

Leonard, C. J., & Egeth, H. E. (2008). Attentional guidance in singleton search: An examination of top-down, bottom-up, and intertrial factors. Visual Cognition, 16(8), 1078-1091.

PSYC 3144 Human Cognition
PSYC 4164 Psychology of Perception
PSYC 4511 History of Psychology