Evaluation – University of Copenhagen

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Institut for psykologi > Forskning > CVC - Center of Excellence > Evaluation

Excerpt from Psychology at the University of Copenhagen:

Research Assessment March 2011

by

  • Professor Nicholas Emler (University of Surrey, UK)
  • Professor Anders Eriksson (University of Florida, USA)
  • Professor Sheina Orbell (University of Essex, UK)

Visual cognition

The Center for Visual Cognition exemplifies the highest level of attainment of international research groups. The director, Professor Bundesen, published a theory of visual attention (TVA) in the most highly respected journal in Psychology, Psychological Review, in 1990, which has since been highly cited and perhaps even more importantly adopted by two other of the most influential researchers on attention and, by implication, cognitive psychology as the basis for theoretical elaborations of TVA-also published in Psychological Review. In 2005 Professor Bundesen with two of his colleagues in the Centre extended TVA to neurological data in another article in Psychological Review. The best available overview of this impressive body of research is provided in a monograph published by Oxford University Press in 2008 by two of the main scientists at the Centre, namely Bundesen and Habekost.

At the time of the review the Centre is selected for a generous research support as a unit under the Centre of Excellence Program of the University of Copenhagen and has grant support from national research agency The Danish Research Council of Culture and Communication, an international research agency, such as NORDFORSK as part of an international network of researchers studying cognitive control. The Centre is involved in close to a dozen research collaborations with other researchers in most of the countries in the European Union.  Of particular note is that a test based on TVA is now included in two major longitudinal studies examining the relation between genes, basic psychological abilities and aging, and adult development. Finally, the neural extension of TVA (NTVA) is used as framework for describing impacts of neurological conditions and disorders.

The members of the group are working on interrelated problems within a shared conceptual framework to the extent that collectively their research could be described as a coherent ‘programme'.  The age profile is good.  It benefits from effective intellectual leadership by an individual clearly invested in supporting, mentoring and developing the careers of his more junior colleagues.  The culture of the group is strongly internationalised and with a potent publication and dissemination strategy.  The core members of the group have good publication rates (between one and two articles per year in English-language peer-review journals over the last five years).  The research does have a significant international impact.  Graduate students are strongly integrated into the group's intellectual project and into its international and publication culture, and are evidently encouraged to develop their own international profiles.  It is a model for a research-active department with a strong international reputation.