About

Brian Anderson is a Professor of Psychological & Brain Sciences and holds the Charles Puryear Professorship in Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University. He is also the founding Director of the Human Imaging Facility. Anderson received his B.A. in Social Science from the University of Maine at Augusta, an M.S. in Psychology from Villanova University where he studied under Charles Folk, and a Ph.D. in Psychological & Brain Sciences from Johns Hopkins University where he studied under the late Steven Yantis. His research has been recognized with several prestigious awards including the Steven Yantis Early Career Award from the Psychonomic Society, the Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology in the area of Perception and Motor Performance from the American Psychological Association, the Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions from the Association for Psychological Science, and the Elsevier/VSS Young Investigator Award from the Vision Sciences Society, among other honors.

Research topics

• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Science
• Machine Learning
• Cognitive psychology
• Psychology
• Cognitive science
• Neuroscience
• Geology
• Epistemology

Selected publications

• Snow Microstructure over Antarctic Landfast Ice

  2025-03-15

  preprintOpen access

  Landfast ice plays a significant role in climate and ecosystems in Antarctic coastal regions. From October to December 2022, we investigated the physical properties of snow and sea ice on Antarctic landfast ice in McMurdo Sound, following the protocols from the MSOAiC expedition. Our measurements confirmed some findings from MOSAiC (e.g. the potential mass transfer from the sea ice surface to snow , the high spatial variability of snow depth}, and the discrepancy between meteorological snowfall and snow accumulation),  but we also had observations that were contrasting our MOSAiC data, for example: 1) presence of salt up to 15 cm of snow height (as opposed to MOSAiC's 5 cm for a relatively similar total snow height), 2) the lack of the surface scattering layer on melting sea ice, which caused significantly lower albedos of bare sea ice (0.45, as opposed to MOSAiC's 0.65), 3) average densities of non-melting snow of 450 kg/m3 (as opposed to MOSAIC'S 350 kg/m3 ). Here, we will discuss the microCT measurements from our samples and relate them to the macroscale obervations of parameters like snow density, snow height, snow surface roughness, salinity or stable water isotopes. The main focus in this study in on the prevalance of a prominent depth hoar layer at the snow-ice interface, which we to be caused by the mass transfer between snow and ice because of the large vertical temperature gradients. This is also visible by the microscale roughness of the interface. Additionally, we will discuss the microstructure of the extremely dense wind slab that dominates most of the snow profile and the implications of these findings for modelling and remote sensing of snow on sea ice.   

  PublisherDOI

• Selection history upweights and downweights attentional priority without modulating perceived salience

  Journal of Vision · 2025-07-15

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  In visual search, attentional priority can be upweighted to enhance target-related features and downweighed to suppress distractor-related features based on experiential learning, or selection history. However, it is unknown whether these selection history effects modulate information processing at the level of perception. To test this question, individuals performed a visual search task with predictable target and distractor features. Specifically, in Experiment 1, in a between-subjects design, we presented a color singleton among three nonsingleton items that served as a distractor for one group, the target for another group, or was equally likely to be the target or distractor in a third group; the color of the singleton was fixed across trials in each group. In Experiment 2 we used two-color, eight-item displays. One color was always used for distractors when presented and a second color was always used for the target when presented; a pair of other colors unpredictably included the target in their subset. To test whether selection history would change perception of the predictive features, we used a psychophysical task whereby participants attempted to detect either the presence of a briefly presented color singleton (Experiment 1) or identity of the color of a briefly presented, uniformly colored stimulus array (Experiment 2). Across both experiments, participants showed more efficient search for the learned colors, enhancing the consistent target color and suppressing the consistent distractor color. However, we did not observe corresponding changes in perception of these colors, with no change in accuracy to detect or identify the briefly presented stimuli. These results suggest that attentional priority for previously learned features can boost visual search performance without influencing the perceived salience of briefly presented stimuli.

  PublisherDOI

• Reward history alters priority map based on spatial relationship, but not absolute location

  2025-04-30

  preprintOpen access

  Attention is rapidly directed to stimuli associated with rewards in past experience, independent of current task goals and physical salience of stimuli. However, despite the robust attentional priority given to reward-associated features, studies often indicate negligible priority towards previously rewarded locations. Here, we propose a relational account of value-driven attention, a mechanism that relies on spatial relationship between items to achieve value-guided selections. In three experiments (N = 124), participants were trained to associate specific locations with rewards (e.g., high-reward: top-left; low-reward: top-right). They then performed an orientation discrimination task where the target’s absolute location (top-left or top-right) or spatial relationship (“left of” or “right of”) had previously predicted reward. Performance was superior when the target’s spatial relationship matched high-reward than low-reward, irrespective of absolute locations. Conversely, the impact of reward was absent when the target matched the absolute location but not the spatial relationship associated with high reward. Our findings challenge the default assumption of location specificity in value-driven attention, demonstrating a generalizable mechanism that humans adopted to integrate value and spatial information into priority maps for adaptive behavior.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• How Statistical is “Statistically-Learned” Distractor Suppression?

  Journal of Vision · 2025-07-15

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Salient items, such as uniquely colored stimuli, can be suppressed. Suppression is greater for a salient distractor that is frequently encountered. Such suppression has been argued to occur via statistical learning such that the priority of a distractor is down-regulated based on the predictiveness of its features. However, there are more generalized mechanisms that could lead to learned distractor suppression, such that each color becomes less distracting after each encounter via either feature-specific or feature-nonspecific decay. To test between these plausible mechanisms, participants searched for a unique shape target in the presence or absence of a salient color singleton distractor. Across all experiments, the frequency of the color of the singleton was manipulated to create one high- and several low-frequency singleton colors. Each experiment varied the manner in which these frequencies were realized: The high-frequency and each low-frequency color were presented either intermixed within blocks of trials or individually across blocks. When the colors varied across blocks, the ordering of blocks varied either unpredictably, in a fixed order, or were front-loaded so that all the high-frequency singleton blocks occurred before each low-frequency singleton block. We observed greater suppression for the high-frequency than the low-frequency colors across experiments. Fitting the RT data with computational models revealed that this learned distractor suppression was best explained by both a feature-specific and a feature-nonspecific exponential decay function; both models fit the data better than a model in which attentional priority reflected the frequency with which the color of the distractor was encountered, although some individual participants were best fit by this model. These results suggest that learned distractor suppression may be better explained as a skill that develops from experience suppressing stimuli that can be both feature-specific and feature-nonspecific, as opposed to a product of the learned predictiveness of distractor features.

  PublisherDOI

• How Flat is Flat? Investigating the spatial variability of snow surface temperature and roughness on landfast sea ice using UAVs in McMurdo Sound, Antarctica

  2025-05-14 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen access

  Abstract. How do snow distribution patterns influence the surface temperature of snow on sea ice? Despite its crucial role in the sea-ice energy balance, snow on Antarctic sea ice remains under-sampled and poorly understood. To address this knowledge gap, we used an Uncrewed Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and ground measurements to produce a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of the snow topography and a map of snow surface temperature over relatively uniform landfast sea ice (2.4 ± 0.04 m thick) in McMurdo Sound, Ross Sea, Antarctica during our field season in November-December 2022. A key methodological innovation in this study is an algorithm that corrects thermal drift caused by Non-Uniformity Correction (NUC) events in the DJI Matrice 30T thermal camera. The new algorithm minimizes temperature jumps in the imagery, ensuring consistent and accurate high-resolution (9 cm/px) snow surface temperature maps. Our airborne maps reveal a mean snow depth of 0.16 ± 0.06 m and a mean surface temperature of -14.7 ± 0.4 °C. As expected, the largest surface temperature anomalies were associated with visible sediment depositions on the snow surface, which were manually identified. We found that the small-scale topography on a seemingly flat snow field significantly influences the incoming solar radiation (irradiance) at the point scale. Using a model that accounts for topographical effects on irradiance, we found that assuming uniform irradiance over our study (200x200 m) area underestimated irradiance variability due to relatively small-scale surface topography. The modeled mean irradiance, which accounts for surface topography, is 592 ± 45 Wm−2 (1 Standard Deviation), whereas the mean measured irradiance at the point scale is 593 ± 20 Wm−2. This shows that assuming a flat surface fails to represent the full irradiance range and may impact non-linear energy balance processes. While we initially hypothesized that snow depth was a key driver of snow surface temperature, our results indicate that sediment deposition and irradiance exert a far greater influence, overriding the effect of snow depth for this test site. Our results improve our understanding of snow’s spatial distribution, how it influences snow surface temperatures and how it may influence the sea-ice energy balance.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Signal suppression makes search less effortful

  Cognitive Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience · 2025-09-18 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Physically salient stimuli compete for attention but can be suppressed under certain conditions. Highly salient distractors can be suppressed more efficiently than less salient ones. However, the implications for the suppression of salient-but-irrelevant signals on the subjective effort of searching are unclear. On one hand, the neural processes involved in signal suppression may themselves be effortful to engage. On the other hand, the facilitation of search that results from reduced competition from the distractor in the visual system may render the act of searching less mentally effortful. Using a recently developed technique of relating physical effort to the putative mental effort required by different search conditions, we assessed whether observers were more motivated to exert physical effort to avoid the demands of ignoring high- or low-salience distractors. We replicated greater suppression for high- than low-salience distractors and showed that participants exerted more physical effort in exchange for search displays containing the high-salience distractors. However, in a situation where high- and low-salience distractors captured attention equally, participants no longer exhibited this preference. Our results suggest that observers prefer the conditions in which they search most efficiently, even when those conditions involve stronger recruitment of suppressive mechanisms of distractor processing.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Role of Scene Context in the Guidance of Attention Based on Object-Location Associations

  Journal of Vision · 2025-07-15

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Relationships between objects and their locations (e.g., clock on the wall, pot near the stove) can be used to guide attention in visual search through naturalistic scenes. Due to these associations being formed throughout the lifespan, the mechanisms that underlie the development of such learning-dependent attentional guidance are unclear. By pairing arbitrary stimuli, for which participants lack semantic knowledge, with locations in scenes, unique insights can be gained concerning the role of experience in scene-based attentional guidance. Previous work found that associations between arbitrary shapes (objects without semantic information) and location could be formed via statistical learning mechanisms. This was done by associating a given shape with a region of the scene (i.e., wall, counter, floor) where it would most likely appear over trials. It was found that search was faster when the target appeared in the high-probability location relative to a low-probability location. In the current study, we tested whether this learning was context-dependent. We used three scene categories (kitchen, bathroom, living room) and three arbitrary shapes with different location associations in each scene category. Specifically, each shape was associated with a different region (wall, counter, floor) in each category of scene, with 75% contingency. While eye position was tracked, participants were cued to search for one of the three target shapes in a subsequently presented scene, where they would respond via keypress to the orientation of a small T within the shape. Results showed no effect of when the target appeared in the associated high-probability location relative to an unassociated low-probability location. This suggests that the learning of the object-location relationships that guide attention is not dependent upon context and rather occurs in a context-general manner across categories of scenes.

  PublisherDOI

• Reward history alters priority map based on spatial relationship, but not absolute location

  Psychonomic Bulletin & Review · 2025-04-29 · 1 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Getting a grip on visual search: Relating effort exertion to the control of attention

  Attention Perception & Psychophysics · 2025-02-01 · 3 citations

  review1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Orienting bias towards electronic nicotine delivery system (ENDS) cues

  Addictive Behaviors Reports · 2025-12-11

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Background: Abnormal attentional biases for tobacco cues have been observed in the dot-probe task. With a recent increase in electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) use, researchers have investigated the effect of ENDS use on early and later stages of attentional bias. Studies have provided support for later-stage attentional biases among ENDS users but not an orienting bias, which may be difficult to detect with smaller sample sizes, and due to low reliability. The present study tested orienting bias among young adult ENDS users and nonusers to ENDS-related images using a modified dot-probe task. Method: = 114) following their history of ENDS use. A modified version of the dot-probe task was used where a rotated target letter ("T") appeared shortly after image (ENDS-related and neutral) offset, requiring a directional response. Results: The ENDS group exhibited a significantly larger ENDS-related orienting bias compared to the control group in response time and accuracy. A habituation effect was also observed, with the ENDS-related attentional bias being restricted for the first epoch of trials. Consistent with previous studies, the ENDS-related attentional bias exhibited low internal reliability. Conclusions: A significant but short-lived orienting bias towards ENDS-related cues in ENDS users was observed. Similar to other substances of abuse, ENDS use affects early-stage attentional processes. Our findings also suggest ways to more robustly measure such early-stage attentional biases in ENDS users.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant F31DA033754

  NIH · $84k · 2015

• Components of selection history and the control of attention

  NIH · $1.9M · 2019–2024

Frequent coauthors

• Andy Jeesu Kim

  University of Southern California

  52 shared

• Laurent Grégoire

  Texas A&M University

  47 shared

• Haena Kim

  University of Chicago

  42 shared

• Andrew Clement

  Millsaps College

  36 shared

• Steven Yantis

  34 shared

• Ming‐Ray Liao

  Texas A&M University

  29 shared

• Susan Courtney

  Johns Hopkins University

  22 shared

• James Grindell

  Texas A&M University

  15 shared

Labs

• Learning & Attention LabPI

Awards & honors

• APS Fellow
• Charles Puryear Professorship in Liberal Arts