Dr Sarah Laurence

As we navigate through the world, there are many situations in which we need to recognise the other people we encounter.  For example, bumping into an old friend during a trip to the supermarket, children recognising their parent at school pick up, or identifying a perpetrator captured on CCTV footage. My research interest is in visual perception and I have mainly focused on how people perceive and recognise faces. I am interested in how the visual system organises information when processing faces. I have examined how these processes change across the lifespan from childhood to old age, how they differ across people (individual differences), and how they change depending on the familiarity of a face or how long we have known someone. I am also interested in how research on face recognition can be used to make a positive change in the world. For example, how can we help people who have difficulties recognising faces? How can we improve face identification in security and policing settings?

I am currently one of the Strand Leads for the Forensic Cognition Research Group alongside Graham Pike. I am also a member the Open Psychology Research Centre (OPRC) , the Harm Evidence and Research Collaborative (HERC) and a member of the Centre of Police Research and Learning. I am committed to open research and was involved in the production of an OpenLearn Create module on the topic.