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The unit of Applied Cognitive Research is a laboratory unit at the Department of Psychology (also Institute of Psychology III), Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of the Dresden University of Technology. Our activities entail both applied and basic studies of human eye movements, perception and cognition.

We are interested in - and we are ready to help you with - the investigation of diverse dynamic attention effects in real and virtual environments. Our domains of expertise are orienting reaction, picture and text perception, levels-of-processing effect in human memory, attention centred design in human-computer interaction and computer supported cooperative work, intelligent user's (and driver's) support with an on-line evaluation of intentions and situation awareness. Being devoted to rigorous scientific methodology, we make an extensive use of the fast high-resolution eye tracking and, when appropriate, of evoked coherences analysis of brain activities.

Apart from research, courses, seminars and interactive demonstrations are provided for undergraduate and graduate students of psychology, engineering and informatics (inclusive multimedia design). We are also involved in several international scientific projects, in the framework of the Division of Applied Cognitive Psychology of IAAP and contacts to our colleagues and other research and development units.

Fixations while observing a photo (a). By performing a cluster analysis frequency areas can be defined (b), that can be transformed into attentional landscapes (c). The resulting picture (d) shows the points of highest interest by illumination. From: Velichkovsky, B.M., Pomplun, M., Rieser, H. (1996) Attention and Communication: Eye-Movement-Based Research Paradigms. In Zangemeister, W.H., Stiehl, H.S. and Freksa, C. (eds.) Visual Attention and Cognition, Amsterdam: Elsevier.