Welcome to the Visual Cognition Lab at the Ohio State University!
We are recruiting new graduate students for the 2025/26 academic year. See the Get Involved page for details.
The research in our lab is characterized by three intertwined threads:
- Relational processing and its pivotal role in human cognition. In particular, Dr. Petrov has a strong interest in analogy making that dates all the way back to his PhD dissertation.
- A guiding hypothesis is that the visual system performs more sophisticated relational processing than it’s usually given credit for. Notably, we see relational roles in visual events – who does what to whom.
- Relational processing must be studied in computational terms and requires the coordinated resources of a general-purpose cognitive architecture.
Methodologically, we employ a combination of behavioral and psychophysical experimentation, mathematical and computational modeling, and philosophical reflection. Virtually all of Dr. Petrov’s publications are collaborative, and many of them involve both new experimental data and a computational model thereof.
Dr. Petrov’s home website contains preprints of his publications, syllabi for the courses that he teaches, some (old) open-source software, and many other resources. Check it out and thanks for stopping by!