Kirsten Dalrymple

Postdoctoral Fellow
Dept of Psychological and Brain Sciences
Dartmouth College
Moore Hall 6207
Hanover, NH

Kirsten.Dalrymple [at] dartmouth.edu

+1 (603) 646 9195

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Focus of Research

My research interests involve the study of normal and abnormal visual perception. My primary research in the Social Perception Lab is aimed at studying Developmental Prosopagnosia in children. Developmental Prosopagnosia (DP) is the inability to recognize faces without any known brain injury or anomaly, a condition that is estimated to affect about 2% of the general population. Research on DP with adult participants has led to important findings about the cognitive, neural, and genetic bases of DP, yet little has been done to study this condition in children. This is surprising given that DP is due to a failure to develop the mechanisms necessary for face recognition and therefore emerges early in life. Critically, the study of DP in children will allow us answer important questions about abnormal and normal face perception. Learning about the etiology and progression of DP may also lead to deeper understanding of other selective developmental deficits such as dyslexia, dyscalculia, and specific language impairment. Three primary goals of my research on childhood DP are to 1) develop diagnostic tools, 2) study its developmental trajectory, and 3) identify and treat individuals with DP.

To learn about one of our DP kids, read Madi's story.

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My other research projects include 1) investigations of the neural mechanisms of face processing through the study of adults with acquired prosopagnosia, 2) the study of scene perception in Bálint syndrome, 3) the study of other neuropsychological cases related to abnormal visual perception (e.g. prosopometamorphopsia).These projects are being conducted in collaboration with my PhD supervisors at the University of British Columbia: Dr. Alan Kingstone and Dr. Jason Barton

Tests of Face Perception for Children and the Dartmouth Database of Children's Faces (DDCF)

During the process of developing tests of face perception for children, we took photos of over 120 children. These children posed 8 different facial expressions and were photographed from 5 different camera angles, under controlled lighting conditions. These facial expressions were rated for their believability by 20 independent raters. The top 40 female and 40 male models were included in a freely available database for use in research studies. To find out more about, or request access to the database, click here. Some of our tests of face perception are also available for download upon request.

Employment

• 2010-present Post-Doctoral Fellow, Social Perception Laboratory, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College & Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London.

Education

• 2006 - 2010 PhD Psychology University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
• 2004 - 2006 MA Psychology University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
• 2000 - 2004 BSc (Hons) Psychology Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada.

Courses taught

• PSYC 6: Introduction to Neuroscience Fall 2011

Honors and Awards

• 2010-2011 British Columbia Psychological Association Gold Medal Award for outstanding achievement of a Doctoral student in Psychology, British Columbia, Canada
• 2009 President’s Travel Scholarship in Psychology – Department of Psychology, UBC.
• 2008 Quinn Exchange Fellowship – Department of Psychology, UBC.
• 2008 Demetrios Papageorgis Teaching Assistant Award of Merit – Department of Psychology, UBC.
• 2007 Certificate of Academic Excellence (for outstanding Master’s thesis) – Canadian Psychological Association (CPA).
• 2007 Senior Graduate Studentship – Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research (MSFHR).
• 2006 President’s Travel Scholarship in Psychology – Department of Psychology, UBC.
• 2006 Post-Graduate Studentship (Doctoral) – Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).
• 2005 Junior Graduate Studentship – Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research (MSFHR).
• 2005 Post-Graduate Studentship (Master’s) – Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).
• 2004 Graduate Entrance Scholarship – Department of Psychology, UBC.

Publications

• Dalrymple, K.A., Gray, A., Perler, B., Birmingham, E., Bischof, W.F., Baron, J.J.S., & Kingstone, A. (in press). Eying the eyes in social scenes: Evidence for top-down control of attention in simultanagnosia. Cognitive Neuropsychology.
• Dalrymple, K.A. (in press). Prosopagnosia. In: M.J. Aminoff & R.B. Daroff (Eds.). Encyclopedia of the Neurological Sciences 2E. San Diego: Academic Press.
• Dalrymple, K.A., Barton, J.J.S., & Kingstone, A. (2013). A world unglued: Simultanagnosia as a spatial restriction of attention. Frontiers in Neuroscience.
• Dalrymple, K.A., Corrow, S., Yonas, A., & Duchaine, B. (2012). Developmental prosopagnosia in childhood. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 29(5-6), 393-418.
• Oruç, I., Krigolson, O., Dalrymple, K.A., Nagamatsu, L., Handy, T., & Barton, J. (2011). Bootstrap analysis of the single subject with event related potentials. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 28(5), 322-337.
• Dalrymple, K.A., Oruç, I., Duchaine, B., Pancaroglu, R., Fox, C.J., Iaria, G., Handy, T.C. & Barton, J.J.S. (2011). The neuroanatomic basis of the right face-selective N170 in acquired prosopagnosia: A combined ERP/fMRI study. Neuropsychologia, 49, 2553-2563.
• Dalrymple, K.A., Birmingham, E., Bischof, W.F., Barton, J.J.S., & Kingstone, A. (2011). Opening a window on attention: Documenting and simulating recovery from simultanagnosia. Cortex, 47(7), 787-799.
• Dalrymple, K.A., Birmingham, E., Bischof, W.F., Barton, J.J.S., & Kingstone, A. (2011). Experiencing simultanagnosia through windowed viewing of complex social scenes. Brain Research, 1367(7), 265-277.
• Dalrymple, K., Bischof, W., Cameron, D., Barton, J., & Kingstone, A. (2010). Simulating simultanagnosia: spatially constricted vision mimics local capture and the global processing deficit. Experimental Brain Research, 202 (2), 445-455.
• Dalrymple, K.A. & Kingstone, A. (2010). Time to act and attend to the real mechanisms of action and attention. British Journal of Psychology, 101, 213-216.
• Dalrymple, K.A., Kingstone, A., & Handy, T.C. (2009). ERP evidence for a dual-locus model of Global/Local processing. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 26, 456-470.
• Dalrymple, K.A., Bischof, WF, Cameron, D., Barton, J.J.S., & Kingstone, A. (2009). Global perception in simultanagnosia is not as simple as a game of connect-the-dots. Vision Research, 49, 1901-1908.
• Dalrymple, K.A., Kingstone, A., & Barton, J.J.S. (2007). Seeing trees OR seeing forests in simultanagnosia: Attentional capture can be local or global. Neuropsychologia, 45, 871-875.

 

 

Page last updated April 2, 2013