Nicholas Gaspelin
Associate Professor
16 McAlester Hall
(573) 882-1445
ngaspelin@missouri.edu
Gaspelin Lab Blog
Faculty
Lab Information
Attention and Distraction Lab Website
Rms. 50–60, McReynolds Hall
About the Lab

In daily life, we are often overloaded by multiple competing stimuli and tasks. To function efficiently, we use mechanisms of attention to selectively process the most relevant sensory information and juggle our cognitive processing resources amongst the most important tasks. Our research aims to understand in the cognitive neuroscience underlying attention in humans. For example, are there certain kinds of salient stimuli that have the automatic power to distract us? What kinds of attentional processes occur while we search complex visual scenes? What are the neural processes that help guide eye movements to relevant information? These topics are studies via experiments use cognitive tasks to  measure behavior, eye movements, and event-related potentials (ERPs). Our research is currently funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

***Dr. Gaspelin is accepting a Ph.D. student to begin in Fall 2025. Please email if interested!***

Education

Postdoc, Center for Mind & Brain, University of California, Davis

Ph.D., Psychology, University of New Mexico

B.A., Psychology, University of Iowa

Research Interests
  • Attention
  • Cognitive Control
  • Eye Movements
  • Event-Related Potentials (ERPs)
  • Cognitive Neuroscience
Teaching

Perception [PSYCH–4110–01]
Attention & Distraction Seminar [PSYC–513–01]

Selected Publications

For a complete list of publications and downloadable articles, please visit here.

Zhang, Y. & Gaspelin, N. (in press). Salience effects on attentional selection are enabled by task relevance. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance.

Gaspelin, N., Lamy, D., Egeth, H.E., Liesefeld, H.R., Kerzel, D., Mandal, A., Müller, M.M., Schall, J.D., Schubö, A., Slagter, H.A., Stilwell, B.T., van Moorselaar, D. (2023). The distractor positivity component and the inhibition of distracting stimuli. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 35(11). 1693-1715.

Luck, S. J., Gaspelin, N., Folk, C. L., Remington, R. W., & Theeuwes, J. (2021). Progress toward resolving the attentional capture debate. Visual Cognition, 29(1), 1-21.

Gaspelin, N., & Luck, S. J. (2018). The role of inhibition in avoiding distraction by salient stimuli. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 22(1), 79–92

Gaspelin, N., Leonard, C. J., & Luck, S. J. (2015). Direct evidence for active suppression of salient-but-irrelevant sensory inputs. Psychological Science, 22(11), 1740-1750.

Luck, S.J., & Gaspelin, N. (2017). How to get statistically significant effects in any ERP experiment (and why you shouldn’t). Psychophysiology, 54(1), 146-157.

Lab Area
Cognition and Neuroscience