Research projects

Combined eye tracking and EEG: To non-verbally investigate brain mechanisms of infants and people who have difficulties communicating, we have been combining eye tracking (to find out what somebody is paying attention to) and EEG (to measure what is happening in the brain).
The picture shows one of our young participants watching pictures on a screen while the eye tracker (underneath the screen) measures where he is looking and the EEG cap (on his head) records brain waves.
Social interaction
  • Real-life interactions: On a computer screen, we freely look at other people; however, we often inhibit gaze at others in social situations (e.g. in a crowded elevator). In our research we investigate attention and eye-movements in such social situations.
  • Theory of Mind: The ability to attribute beliefs and desires to other people allows us to behave appropriately in social situations. However, it is currently still unclear whether we use our „Theory of Mind“ implicitly without even noticing it or whether explicit skills are required. In our Replication Project we use eye-tracking to measure implicit Theory of Mind and to investigate whether and under which conditions it occurs.
Affective Neuroscience: Emotions and motivation drive our behaviour. In our research we investigate the neural and psychophysiological mechanisms in place for perceiving and displaying emotions. Our research topics include:
  • Attention to emotion: We are assessing how emotional faces attract our attention and whether this attraction depends on our personality, e.g. whether we are particularly anxious or fearless or on the situation we are in, e.g. in a laboratory compared to in real life.
  • Emotion association: We furthermore investigate, whether neutral objects can be associated with a certain valence (similar to a certain song or food that we associated with a positive or negative life event). Through reward and loss, we can associate words with a positive or negative valence. In our research we investigate how fast these associations are built and how the brain response changes when we associate words with a valence.
  • Virtual Reality: By putting on Virtual Reality goggles, we can find ourselves in any situation. We are investigating how participants feel in emotional scenes in the Virtual Reality, compared to when they simply see the same scenes on a 2D computer screen.
Theory of Mind: The ability to attribute beliefs and desires to other people allows us to behave appropriately in social situations. However, it is currently still unclear whether we use our "Theory of Mind" implicitly without even noticing it or whether explicit skills are required. In our big Replication Project we use eye-tracking to measure implicit Theory of Mind and to investigate whether and under which conditions it occurs. In addition to our own research, we are currently
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Neural mechanisms of attention in adults: To investigate the brain mechanisms involved in attention we are testing adults on several behavioural tasks while measuring their brain potentials with Electroencephalography (EEG). For more information on our findings, see e.g. Kulke et al., (2016). Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, Kulke et al., (2016). Developmental Psychobiology.

Previous projects

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Eye-tracking: To determine which objects our participants are paying attention to we used an eye-tracker to track their eye-movements. This allows us to determine with a high accuracy where someone is looking (see e.g. Kulke et al., 2015, PlosOne).

Eye-tracking accuracy: To investigate the spatial accuracy of our eye-tracker (Tobii X120) we ran a study looking at variance in gaze position measures.
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Attention development in infants: To investigate how attention develops in infants we are testing babies between the age of 1 and 9 months. We investigeted both behavioural tests, observing the infants' behaviour (e.g. Kulke et al., 2015, Plos One) and also neuroscientific tests, monitoring the infants' brain potentials using EEG (see e.g. Kulke et al., 2016, Developmental Psychobiology).
Our aim is to compare typically developing infants with infants with developmental difficulties (e.g. premature infants or infants with perinatal brain damage), to be able to identify early indicators of abnormal development that allow for early detection and treatment of developmental disorders.

Brain areas of attention in childhood: During my research visit to the University of California, San Diego (US), we developed an interactive version of our attention test, that can be used on tablets and touch-screen computers. Especially kids between the age of 5 and 10 years enjoy playing this game, allowing us to get an insight to attention development during childhood. 
Contact me if you are interested in participating or if you would like to hear more about my research.