Mary C. Potter

Potter's research centers on human perception of words, sentences, and pictures, asking how humans derive meaning from these inputs. Using rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) her lab has investigated temporal characteristics of attention, perception, memory, and comprehension, including the phenomena of attentional blink and repetition blindness. One of her key findings is that people begin to understand the meaning of a word, phrase, or picture within 10s of milliseconds, well before even a short term memory is formed. She has shown that this quickly-understood meaning guides even very early stages of perceptual experience.