Billy Wooten
Professor of Psychology:
Psychology
Phone: +1 401 863 3973
Phone 2: +1 401 863 2727
Billy_Wooten@Brown.EDU
My research is concerned with several aspects of vision and visual perception.
Biography
Dr. Wooten received his PhD in Psychology from Brown University in 1970. His postdoctoral training was
as a Research Fellow at Harvard in the Department of Biology from 1970-72 and the Department of Ophthalmology
in 1972. He came to Brown in 1973 and has been Professor of Psychology since 1985. He served as Chair of the
Psychology Department from 1994-99.
Interests
Physiological Optics
The retinal image is determined not only by the physical stimulus, but also by the properties of the eye. Research in my laboratory, using psychophysical techniques, has examined such optical properties of the eye as intra-ocular scatter, lens absorption, and macular pigmentation.
Achromatic Perception
The lightness, or gray tone of an achromatic stimulus, is influenced by many factors in addition to simple reflectance. My research group has studied a number of factors in order to assess how they affect lightness: illumination level, adaptation state, retinal disparity, and contour complexity.
Color Vision
Besides wavelength, many factors determine a stimulus' color. We have explored how color appearance is affected by luminance level, chromatic adaptation, spatial contrast, and temporal factors. We have also conducted experiments in the areas of color blindness, peripheral vision, and the relation between language and hue.
Awards
Pre-doctoral Fellowships, National Institute of Health, 1966-68; 1968-69
Post-doctoral Fellowships, National Science Foundation, 1970-71.
Foreign Exchange Fellowship, Deutscher Akademischer Ausauschdientist, 1973.
Senior U.S. Scientist Award, 1981-82; Humboldt Foundation, West Germany.
Fellow of the Optical Society of America, elected 1985.
Summer Faculty Research Fellowship, U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, 1985.
Awarded a Faculty Research Fellowship by U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Served at the Human Resources Laboratory Williams Air Force Base (February, 1986).
Awarded a Faculty Research Fellowship by U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, November, 1986.
Nominated by the Council for International Exchange of Scholars, Fulbright Program for a Lectureship (January 1987). (Withdrawn due to civil war in Sri Lanka).
Nominated as a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Science, 1992.
Affiliations
Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology
Optical Society of America,
International Commission on Illumination
Teaching
I currently offer two undergraduate courses.
Elementary Psychology: An Introduction to Mind and Behavior (PY001) is a
survey covering the roles of inherited and environmental determinants of human behavior.
Topics include sensation, perception, learning, memory, motivation, emotion, neural processes,
language, social development, personality assessment, obedience, interpersonal attraction,
and the diagnosis, origins, and treatment of mental illness. Laboratory sections illustrate
methodologies used to study these issues. PY001 is a prerequisite for many other courses in Psychology.
Perception (PY027) covers both the experimental and theoretical literature dealing with all aspects of the
perceptual process. Specific topics include the perception of color, form, motion, and depth.
Demonstrations are used to illustrate phenomena.
Funded Research
National Eye Institute, 1975-78.
National Eye Institute, 1977-80 (Co-Principal Investigator with L.A. Riggs).
National Eye Institute, 1978-81.
National Science Foundation, Macular Pigment: Relationship to Acuity and Visibility, $127,000, 2004-present.
Two grant applications are currently under review:
one to the National Eye Institute
one to the National Science Foundation
