Markus Grüner

PhD Candidate

University of Vienna

Biography

I’m a PhD candidate at the Lab of Ulrich Ansorge, currently finishing my PhD. I’m investigating the mechanisms of visual attentional guidance, for example, which features of shapes can guide visual attention and how selection history, salience, and reward influences attentional guidance. Additionally, I led a project investigating the influence of adaptive car lighting systems on attention, perception and driving behavior.

Interests

Experimental Psychology
Visual attention and perception
Mechanisms of Attentional Guidance
Influence of Salience and Selection History on Attentional Guidance
Attention and perception in real-world settings
Visual attention during night driving

Education

PhD in Psychology, expected fall 2023

University of Vienna
MSc in Psychology, 2016

University of Vienna
BSc in Psychology, 2013

University of Vienna

Skills

Experimental Psychology

Visual attention and perception

Statistics and Methods

R and R-Markdown, MATLAB PychoPy, Basics in HTML, CSS and JavaScript

Programming

R and R-Markdown, MATLAB PychoPy, Basics in HTML, CSS and JavaScript

Research Experience

Research Assistant and PhD student

University of Vienna, Department of Cognition, Emotion, and Methods in Psychology

December 2018 – May 2023 Vienna, Austria

Main projects:

Attentional guidance by simple 2D shapes
Influence of selection history on attentional guidance
Influence of physical salience on (top-down) attentional guidance
Influence of reward on attentional guidance

Skills learned and used:

Finding literature and learning about new, complex topics
Designing and programming (Matlab, PsychoPy) behavioral experiments
Analysing data with R using advanced statistics and methods (GLMMs, power analysis with simulations)
Preparing and reporting scientific results (conference posters, talks, manuscripts) in English and German
Developing new research questions and preparing proposals for grants
Teaching introductory courses on cognitive psychology and R.

Assistant for research project

University of Vienna, Department of Cognition, Emotion, and Methods in Psychology

August 2016 – November 2018 Vienna, Austria

Leading a research project in cooperation with an industrial partner investigating the influence of adaptive car lighting systems on attention, perception and driving behavior.

Skills learned and used:

Team work and project management
Designing experiments in real-world settings to answer practical questions
Collecting and analysing data from mobile eye trackers
Deploying questionnaires with LimeSurey

Internship and Student Assistant

University of Vienna, Department of Cognition, Emotion, and Methods in Psychology

June 2016 – July 2016 Vienna, Austria

Skills learned and used:

Eye tracking and EEG data collecting
Preparing and holding statistic tutorials
Organizational tasks

Teaching

@University of Vienna

Winter semester 2018

Cognitive Foundations of Experience and Behaviour
Introductory seminar for bachelor students, held in German

Summer semester 2019

Introduction to data analysis with R
Seminar for master students, held in German, on site

Summer semester 2020 and 2022

Analyzing experimental psychological data with R
Seminar for master students, held in German, online

Key Publications

(peer-reviewed)

Markus Grüner, Florian Goller, Ulrich Ansorge

January, 2023 Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 85, 958–‍1011

Top-down knowledge surpasses selection history in influencing attentional guidance

This publication provides strong evidence for the dominant influence of using a specific search criterion on involuntary attentional guidance, that would not be possible without the fine-grained temporal analysis used in this paper.

Marlene Forstinger, Markus Grüner, Ulrich Ansorge

June, 2022 Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 48(6), 613–‍638

Unseeing the White Bear: Negative Search Criteria Guide Visual Attention through Top-down Suppression

I contributed the research design used in this publication, which, for the first time, allowed us to investigate and provide evidence for a novel aspect of top-down suppression.

Markus Grüner, Florian Goller, Ulrich Ansorge

November, 2021 Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 47(11), 1493–‍1515

Simple shapes guide visual attention based on their global outline or global orientation contingent on search goals

Using multiple cue conditions allowed us to show that only specific shape features can guide visual attention. Additionally, I used a simulation approach to estimate the achieved statistical power.

Projects

Reward and visual attention

Investigating the influence of reward on bottom-up and top-down attentional guidance

Salience and visual attention

Investigating the influence of salience on bottom-up and top-down attentional guidance

Selection history and visual attention

Investigating how selection history influences attentional guidance

Shapes and visual attention

Investigating which features of simple shapes can guide visual attention

Adaptive car lighting systems and visual attention

Investigating the influence of adaptive car lighting systems on visual attention and perception during night driving

Publications

Quickly discover relevant content by filtering publications.

Markus Grüner, Ulrich Ansorge (2023). Do reward-associated stimuli capture visual attention independent of top-down control settings?. In Preparation.

Project

Markus Grüner, Ulrich Ansorge (2023). The influence of physical salience on bottom-up and top-down attentional guidance. In Preparation.

Project

Markus Grüner, Florian Goller, Ulrich Ansorge (2023). Top-down knowledge surpasses selection history in influencing attentional guidance. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 85, 958–‍1011.

PDF Cite Dataset Project DOI

Marlene Forstinger, Markus Grüner, Ulrich Ansorge (2022). Unseeing the White Bear: Negative Search Criteria Guide Visual Attention through Top-down Suppression. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 48(6), 613–‍638.

PDF Cite Dataset DOI

Markus Grüner, Florian Goller, Ulrich Ansorge (2021). Simple shapes guide visual attention based on their global outline or global orientation contingent on search goals. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 47(11), 1493–‍1515.

PDF Cite Dataset Project DOI

See all publications