Social interactions form the vast majority of our daily activities, and successful navigation of these interactions requires a variety of social skills. While most of us take our social skills for granted, some children, such as those with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), have difficulty forming relationships with their peers and tend to be misunderstood by their classmates and teachers. While the development of social skills is highly complex, at a fundamental level it is supported by mechanisms of visual attention and perception.

My recent work has focused on how children, adolescents, and adults with ASD attend to and make sense of social information. In particular, while most typically developing individuals show a bias to attend to the eyes of other people when interpreting social situations, this bias is less obvious in individuals with autism, and in some cases it is absent altogether. In addition to exploring relationships between attention, perception, and everyday social functioning, I have begun to observe and describe individual differences in these mechanisms, which may be particularly relevant for our understanding of ASD as a spectrum condition. My overarching goal is to understand how attention operates in service of the individual to support social interactions in everyday environments.

I am currently looking for keen undergraduate and graduate students to be involved in my research program.  If you are interested, please contact me at the email address below.

Email: ebirming@sfu.ca

Lab Website: http://sarg.educ.sfu.ca/

PUBLICATIONS

Refereed Journal Articles

Dalrymple, K., Gray, A., Perler, B., Birmingham, E., Bischof, W.F., Barton, J., & Kingstone, A. Eying the eyes in social scenes: Evidence for top-down control of stimulus selection in simultanagnosia. In Press at Cognitive Neuropsychology (Accepted on February 14, 2013).

Birmingham, E., Meixner, T., Iarocci, G., Kanan, C., Smilek, D., & Tanaka, J. (2012). The Moving Window Technique: a window into developmental changes in attention during facial emotion recognition. Child Development, (18 pages), e-pub ahead of print. DOI: 10.1111/cdev.12039.

Birmingham, E., Cerf, M., & Adolphs, R. (2011) Comparing social attention in autism and amygdala lesions: effects of stimulus and task condition. Social Neuroscience, 6(5-6), 420-435.

Dalrymple, K.A., Birmingham, E., Bischof, W., Barton, J.J.S., & Kingstone, A. (2011). Opening a window on attention: Documenting and simulating recovery from simultanagnosia, Cortex, 47(7), 787-99.

Dalrymple, K.A., Birmingham, E., Bischof, W., Barton, J.J.S., & Kingstone, A. (2011). Experiencing simultanagnosia through windowed viewing of complex social scenes. Brain Research, 1367(7), 265-277.

Ford, S., Birmingham, E., King, A., Lim, J., & Ansermino, M. (2010). At-a-glance monitoring: covert observations of anesthesiologists in the operating room. Anesthesia & Analgesia, 111(3), 653-658.

Birmingham, E. & Kingstone, A. (2009). Human social attention: A new look at past, present and future investigations. The Year in Cognitive Neuroscience, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2009 . 118-140.

Birmingham, E., Bischof, W.F., & Kingstone, A. (2009). Saliency does not account for fixations to eyes within social scenes. Vision Research 49, 2992-3000.

Birmingham, E., Bischof, W.F., & Kingstone, A. (2009). Get Real! Resolving the debate about equivalent social stimuli. Visual Cognition, 17(6), 904-924.

Birmingham, E., Bischof, W.F., & Kingstone, A. (2008). Social attention and real world scenes: the roles of action, competition, and social content. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 61(7), 986-998.

Birmingham, E., Bischof, W.F., & Kingstone, A. (2008). Gaze selection in complex social scenes. Visual Cognition, 16(2/3), 341-355.

Birmingham, E., Bischof, W.F., & Kingstone, A. (2007). Why do we look at eyes? Journal of Eye Movement Research, 1(1):1, 1-6.

Birmingham, E., Visser, T.A.W., Snyder, J.J., & Kingstone, A. (2007). Inhibition of return: unravelling a paradox. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 14(5), 957-963.

Smilek, D., Birmingham, E.,Cameron, D., Bischof, W.F., & Kingstone, A. (2006). Cognitive ethology and exploring attention in real world scenes. Brain Research, 1080, 101-119.

Birmingham, E., & Pratt, J. (2005). Examining inhibition of return with onset and offset cues in the multiple cuing paradigm. Acta Psychologica, 118, 101-121.

Book Chapters

Birmingham, E., Ristic, J., & Kingstone, A. (2012). Investigating social attention: A case for increasing stimulus complexity in the laboratory. In J.A. Burack, J.T. Enns, & N.A. Fox (Eds.). Cognitive Science, Development, and Psychopathology: Typical and Atypical Developmental Trajectories of Attention (pp. 251-276). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Adolphs, R. & Birmingham, E. (2011). Neural substrates of social perception. In A.J. Calder, G. Rhodes, J.V. Haxby, & M.H. Johnson (Eds.), Handbook of Face Perception (pp. 571- 589). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Birmingham, E. & Kingstone, A. (2009). Human Social Attention. In N. Srinivasan (Ed.), Progress in Brain Research, Attention, 176 (pp. 309-320). The Netherlands: Elsevier.

Kingstone, A., Smilek, D., Birmingham, E., Cameron, D. & Bischof, W.F. (2005). Cognitive ethology: Giving real life to attention research. In J. Duncan, L. Phillips, & P. McLeod (Eds.), Measuring the mind: Speed, control & age (pp. 341-357). New York, NY: Oxford University Press

CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS

Paper Presentations

Birmingham, E, Meixner, T., Smilek, D., Iarocci, G. & Tanaka, J. The Moving Window Technique: A window into age-related changes in children’s attention to facial expressions of emotion. Paper presented at the 2011 meeting of the Vision Science Society (VSS), Naples, FL, USA (May 2011).

Kingstone, A., Birmingham, E., & Bischof, W.F. The science of social attention. Paper presented at the 2007 meeting of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology (ESCoP), Marseille, France (August 2007). Talk given by Birmingham.

Birmingham, E., Bischof, W.F., & Kingstone, A. Using the eyes to encode and recognize social scenes. Paper presented at the 2006 Eye Tracking Research and Applications Annual Meeting, San Diego, CA, USA (March 2006).

Poster Presentations

Kling, V., Chan, D., & Birmingham, E. Exploring attentional strategies during facial emotion recognition. Poster presented at the 2012 meeting of the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour, and Cognitive Science (CSBBCS), Kingston, ON, Canada (June 2012).

Birmingham, E., Riendeau, C., & Ristic, J. Selection of eyes in the dot probe paradigm: evidence for left visual field specificity. Poster presented at the 2012 meeting of the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour, and Cognitive Science (CSBBCS), Kingston, ON, Canada (June 2012).

Birmingham, E., Johnston, K., Foulsham, T., Larryant, B., Stemer, A., Kingstone, A., & Iarocci, G. Spontaneous gaze following within a naturalistic social situation in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders. Poster presented at the 2012 International Meeting for Autism Research (IMFAR), Toronto, ON, Canada (May 2012).

Chan, D., Kling, V., & Birmingham, E. Top-down control of attention during judgments of facial expression. Poster presented at the 2012 North West Cognition and Memory (NOWCAM) meeting, Burnaby, BC, Canada (May 2012).

Birmingham, E, Meixner, T., Smilek, D., Tanaka, J. & Iarocci, G.. Examining typical and atypical development of children’s attentional strategies during emotion recognition. Poster presented at the 1st Biennial ART-NeuroDevNet Winter Institute, Banff, AB, Canada (March 2011).

Birmingham, E., Cerf, M., & Adolphs, R. Eye tracking to social scenes: comparisons between amygdala lesions and autism. Poster presented at the 2010 meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, Montreal, PQ, Canada (April 2010).

Birmingham, E., Cerf, M., & Adolphs, R. The role of the amygdala in orienting attention to eyes within complex social scenes. Poster presented at the 2009 meeting of the Vision Science Society, Naples, FL, USA (May 2009).

Birmingham, E., Yanko, M., Bischof, W.F., & Kingstone, A. The role of attention in complex event perception. Poster presented at the 2006 annual meeting of the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour and Cognitive Science, Saskatoon, SK, Canada (June 2006).

Birmingham, E., Bischof, W.F., & Kingstone, A. Using the eyes to encode and recognize social scenes. Poster presented at the 2006 Eye Tracking Research and Applications Annual Meeting, San Diego, CA, USA (March 2006).

Birmingham, E., Smilek, D., Bischof, W.F., & Kingstone, A. Cognitive ethology and social attention in real world scenes. Poster presented at the 2005 annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, New York City, NY, USA (April 2005).

Birmingham, E., Yanko, M., Smilek, D., Bischof, W.F., & Kingstone, A. How does context influence social attention in real world scenes? Poster presented at the 2005 annual meeting of the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour and Cognitive Science, Montreal, PQ, Canada (July 2005).

Birmingham, E., Smilek, D., & Kingstone, A. The role of meaning and the individual in attentional selection. Poster presented at the 2004 annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, San Francisco, CA, USA (April 2004).

Birmingham, E. & Pratt, J. Examining Inhibition of Return with onset and offset cues in the multiple-cuing paradigm. Poster presented at the 2003 Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour and Cognitive Science, Hamilton, ON, Canada (June 2003).

INVITED TALKS

2012, November, UBC-SFU-UVic Face Day Workshop (Jason Barton, James Tanaka, Mario Liotti, Grace Iarocci, Ipek Oruc, Elina Birmingham), Vancouver, BC.

2010, October, Perceptual Expertise Network XXI Workshop, Chicago, IL, USA.

2010, April, ACT’s (Autism Community Training) 6th Annual Focus on B.C. Research, Simon Fraser University, Harbour Centre, Vancouver, BC, Canada.

2007, September, School of Psychology, Nottingham University, UK.

2007, September, Department of Psychology, Durham University, UK.

2007, September, Eye Tracking in Dynamic Scenes workshop, University of Edinburgh, UK.

FUNDING

2012-2013, VPR NSERC Bridging Grant

2011-2012, SFU Endowed Research Fellowship

2011-2014, SFU President’s Research Start-up Grant

SELECTED HONOURS AND AWARDS

2009-2011, Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research (MSFHR), Postdoctoral Fellowship

2009-2011, Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada (NSERC), Postdoctoral Fellowship

OTHER EXPERIENCE AND TRAINING

Training in Autism Diagnostic Methods
2011, Research Training for Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (Mar 28-31, Vancouver, BC)

2011, Research Training for Austism Diagnostic Interview — Revised (Mar 24-25, Vancouver, BC)

2009, Research Training for Austism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (Jan 27 and Feb 3, San Diego, CA)

2008, Two-day Clinical Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule Workshop (ADOS: Nov 3-4, San Diego, CA)

Consulting Activities
2012-2016, Visual Expertise in the Laboratory and in the Real World (University of Massachusetts/University of Victoria: J. Tanaka; T. Curran; D. Sheinberg; L. Scott).

TEACHING

EDUC 426: Teaching Children and Youth with Special Needs.

EDUC 829: Contemporary Issues in Learning Disabilities

EDUC 401/402: Literacy in the Urban Classroom

SERVICE TO SCHOLARLY COMMUNITY

Reviewer: Attention, Perception and Psychophysics; Autism Research; British Journal of Psychology; Cerebral Cortex; Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience; Consciousness and Cognition; Developmental Science; Experimental Brain Research; Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders; Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance; Journal of Eye Movement Research; Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders; Journal of Vision; Memory and Cognition; Neuropsychologia; Perception; Psychological Science; PLoS One; Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology; Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience; Trends in Cognitive Sciences; Visual Cognition; Vision Research

2012, Defining Cognitive Science Seminar, Cognitive Science Program, SFU, Burnaby, BC.

2010, Clinical Science Area Seminar, Department of Psychology, SFU, Burnaby, BC.

SERVICE TO UNIVERSITY

2012-present, Member, SFU Senate

2012-present, Member, SFU Autism Student Mentor Program Committee, SFU.

SERVICE TO FACULTY OF EDUCATION

2012-present, Member, Graduate Programs Committee
2012, Member, Graduate Awards Adjudication Committee