I work in four research areas of human perception:

I. The perception of color and illumination:  I generate colored perceptual illusions of either 2- or 3- dimensional scenes to determine how illumination affects the colors we see.

II. Multisensory Integration: I study how the human psychophysics of how we combine sights and sounds into a single, unified experience.

III. Gestalt grouping principles:  I study how the proximity and similarity of colored dots interact depending on their spatial arrangement.

IV. Aesthetic Preferences:  My interest in aesthetics follows from my work in perception.  I use an eye-tracker to determine how the hemispheric laterality of the human brain influences judgments of the emotional content of portraits painted by Rembrandt.  I also study the works of the abstract artist Mondrian.

Coming soon . .

Heckman, G.M., Muday, J.A., & Schirillo, J.A. (2005). Chromatic shadow-compatibility and cone-excitation ratios. The Journal of the Optical Society of America: A, 22, 401-415.

Perkins, K.R., & Schirillo, J.A. (2003). Three-dimensional spatial grouping affects estimates of the illuminant. The Journal of the Optical Society of America: A, 20, 2246-2253.

Mayes, A., & Schirillo, J. (2005). Lights can reverse illusory directional hearing. Neuroscience Letters, 384(3), 336-338.

Wallace, M.T., Roberson, G.E., Hairston, W.B., Stein, B.E., Vaughan, J.W., & Schirillo, J.A. (2004). Unifying multisensory signals across time and space. Experimental Brain Research, 158(2), 252-258.

Schirillo, J.A. (2009). The Anatomical Locus of T-Junction Processing. Vision Research, 49, 2011–2025.

Melfi, T. & Schirillo, J. (2000). T-junctions in inhomogeneous surrounds. Vision Research, 40, 3735-3741.

Plumhoff, J.E. & Schirillo, J.A. (2009). Mondrian, eye movements, and the oblique effect. Perception, 38, 719-731. 

Schirillo, J., & Fox, M. (2006). Rembrandt’s portraits: Approach or avoid? Leonardo, 39(3), 253-256.